The present anarchy of our commerce
Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 17 years ago, in 2007, on the World Wide Web.
I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Seeing as it’s the day after Thanksgiving, that makes it time for everybody’s favorite anti-anti-consumerist holiday, Buy Something (if you feel like it) Day!
In the spirit of the occasion, I’d like to note that I’ve added a couple more t-shirts to the Rad Geek People’s Clothing Collective storefront, for celebrating International Ignore the Constitution Day. Enjoy! Each of the shirt designs comes in two styles (sometimes men and women’s; sometimes two unisex styles), so be sure to check out the storefront for the full selection. Enjoy!
War is the Health of the State / The Mirrour which Flatters Not |
This is what an Anarchist looks like! |
International Ignore the Constitution Day / |
International Ignore the Constitution Day / |
Celebrate Tyrannicide Day! |
Rad Geek People’s Daily |
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Laura J.
Who said that the Constitution was “A covenant with death and an agreement with hell” again? I feel like I used to know the author’s name.
That was William Lloyd Garrison, radical abolitionist and Christian anarchist; it was one of his favorite slogans, and he used it repeatedly, in print, in speeches, and as a slogan for the Anti-Slavery Society. It’s an allusion to the King James Version translation of Isaiah 28:15.
While I’m not sure how exactly you feel about the fair trade movement, I’d like to mention that I would personally be far more likely to buy something if it was fair trade. It’s not so much out of a personal commitment to “lifestylism” or whatever as just the fact that I’m not super-comfortable contributing to the excessive cruelty of the clothing industry.
I do rather like a couple of your designs, though (particularily “the mirror which flatters not).
labyrus,
Thanks for the kind words about the designs. I’d feel more comfortable selling fair trade t-shirts as well.
My main problem at the moment, though, is that I don’t have any significant start-up funds to buy a lot of pre-made shirts, so basically the only option is a print-on-demand seller like CafePress. Thus far I’ve just set up the designs on CafePress because I had already set up an account for experimental purposes, and at the time they were the main company in the field that I knew something about. I would be quite interested (for both labor standards reasons and for others) in moving to a different supplier if one can be found.
One complication is that most of the options (e.g. Skreened!) seem to get their shirts more or less exclusively from American Apparel. But if I’m going to move the shirts to another supplier for ethical reasons, I’d like for the beneficiaries not to be engaged in union busting, institutionalized sexual harassment, all beneath a patina of phony posturing.
So, if anyone has a lead on a good alternative supplier, I’d be very interested in hearing it. I’ll probably put up a post on the front page, too, to try to get some help from the LazyWeb on this one.
I’ve used a couple options successfully:
http://justshirts.ca have nice, good quality shirts at a very good price. They sometimes deliver orders late, though.
http://nosweatapparel.com/ have pretty good shirts and are a bit better organized than Just Shirts, although last I checked the prices weren’t quite as good.
I’ve also recycled used shirts (good quality blank t-shirts) by buying them from the Goodwill or similar stores and getting them printed. This is the cheapest option and while it’s not “sweatshop free” it is at least avoiding paying sweatshops directly.
I’d reccomend going with a local screenprinter over the internet businesses (at least check prices). Especially if you have specific needs or want to do a small run, it’s good to be able to talk to the printer in person because they might be able to give you some options to make the small run cheaper, or let you keep the screen from a small run so printing more is less of a hassle.
You could also learn to screenprint yourself. It’s a bit pricey to start, but it isn’t that difficult if you follow instructions and it’s kind of fun.
The big caution I’d give you (and I’m sure the reason you’re doing the cafepress thing right now) is to make sure you don’t get more shirts made than you can sell. Particularily with something like a blog, shirt sales aren’t likely to be all that frequent, although you could try marketing them to infoshops and other small businesses that might sell anti-war or anarchist t-shirts.
The fewer colours you use the cheaper printing works out to be with screenprinting too, so you may find you have to tweak some of your designs.
Good luck with the t-shirt thing