Roses are Red and Black is Black,
Typically, the voice of the marketplace ( culturally situated marketing) produces a moral argument as to why you should shop. We are familiar with moral arguments around shopping including accolades of environmentally conscious production, fundraising and charity, and even our own story as to why we make shit and you should buy it. We are youth cultural producers and innovators who have seen multi-billion dollar fascist corporations profit off of the images of “female skaters” while being nothing of the sort. Creating our own product ( experiences and parties, skateparks and more ) is how we as a collective attempt to harness some of the value our images and words have put into the world. Cultural workers, organizers and skateboarders are WORKERS, and connecting the worker to their value in the face of the commodification of NEARLY EVERYTHING is an experiment in building power at the root. If you wear BRUJAS you are wearing a symbol of the origin of a movement that has inspired hundreds of feminist skate collectives to form as well as other brands to experiment with moral marketing. Today we take a moment to blow the whistle on Black Friday by saying what we’ve always said, support young people with big ideas.
There is technically no ethical consumption under capitalism. At every point we’ve come across dilemmas and made decisions to the best of our abilities while understanding there is nothing pure left on earth. A recycled garment made by workers with a living wage in Los Angeles might have a white factory owner who stands in favor of apartheid Israel and has sexually assaulted his employees. Why are you all so afraid of talking about shit that isn’t marketable in this industry, to have conversations that are real and UNCOMFORTABLE ? Many people from the BRUJAS collective have left over the years, conscious of the power of their image and labor in search for more power over their ideas and a community less focused on building power through the market, getting more grassroots with it. We applaud these efforts, but the conflict has been uncomfortable and complicated to say the least. We have to keep supporting each other and using the system against itself.
BRUJAS has market power, AND tangible losses. Making bad quality shit makes $ making good quality shit is hard. We have only brought in collaborators whose business models and scale afford them significantly more flexible income when they are supporting our vision in its totality. We do not collab on someone else’s agenda, we don’t model other people’s products. Our most powerful play in this game has been stored in the brilliant ideas of the individuals that make BRUJAS a collaborative effort and true vision for a new world at the very end of it. Our wealth, our profit, lies in our ideas and our commitment to supporting each other, no matter how tough it gets.
The BLACK from BLACK Friday apparently comes from an old book keeping practice to signify profit. In contrast to Red, BLACK means that the net sales outweigh the net costs, IMPOSSIBLE FOR BRUJAS ATM. Our ideas are so expensive, brilliant, genius, new, fresh, all we can do is keep screaming louder than our dollar and dream up ways we can move into sustainability as a company to fulfill all the needs of each other’s projects and survival. The network of projects supported or created by BRUJAS members is significant. For us BLACK Friday is best defined as a day to celebrate the work of BLACK artists whose ancestors built the wealth that has been compounded and invested into many of the products flying around the Internet.
The Black Artist Party of Los Angeles, founded by Taj Williams, also a BRUJAS collaborator and designer, is an art collection and radical project that seeks to support Black artists in Los Angeles by purchasing, showing and selling their art. They also work to raise consciousness of the power of creative identification by distributing BLACK hats. We are supporting this project today through our BLACK Friday sales. Though the prices and quantities of this capsule are higher than our customer usually responds to, we would like to call attention to the fact that only $10 more cost added gets you a garment that will last forever. The quality and production standard are unmatched at this price point by other brands. So if your committed to supporting your friends and their dreams forever, or at least for the last 12 years we have on earth, hold one of these pieces as a symbol of mourning for all that we have lost at the expense of capitalism. An ode to understanding all that we are loosing to the other companies whose cheap products most of the market is supporting today. Red in Spirit, BLACK Friday in praxis, BRUJAS.
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