Kathleen Hanna launches charity T-shirt line featuring Kim Gordon, Ad-Rock, Chuck D, and more
So much bile spills from our president’s mouth in any given week that it’s become shockingly easy for his latest offenses to nudge out the old ones. There’s one word, however, that’s hard to shake: “shitholes.” Back in January, Donald Trump reportedly characterized Haiti, El Salvador, and several African countries as such, and now Kathleen Hanna is responding to it with an endeavor as cool as it is charitable.
The Julie Ruin singer and riot grrrl legend has launched a new charity T-shirt line, TEES 4 TOGO, which features designs inspired by a slew of cool-ass celebrities and countercultural icons, including Kim Gordon, Ad-Rock, Justin Vivian Bond, Chuck D, Jill Soloway, and W. Kamau Bell.
All profits will benefit a Pasadena-based non profit organization called Peace Sisters, which aims to provide funding for the school tuition of girls in Dapaong, a city in Togo, West Africa. The TEES 4 TOGO site says the “sweatshop-free shirts are collaborations between the artists and the performers who inspired them.”
In a statement, Hanna says this of the endeavor:
We’re not gonna have equality in the world if we don’t hear African women’s voices. And we’re not gonna hear women’s voices if they have no education. Another part of this is Trump saying Africa is a shithole. How can I respond to that as a citizen? How can I do something positive in light of that? I found an organization run by somebody who grew up in West Africa, who flies money back to the school every year, and has already been doing it for 15 years. This is my opportunity to be an ally to her already successful project.
Shirts go for $40, the same cost of sending a girl to school in Togo for one year. See the full line of designs here.