Brooklyn Tweed Blog

What if I told you there was a thread, unspooling itself across time and space, between 19th Century slavery abolitionists like Anna Murray Douglass and Sojourner Truth and the work of modern scholars, activists and artists working to abolish the prison industrial complex? While the political linkages may be obvious and the social, economic and environmental stakes of both struggles have been laid out by previous blog posts in this series, I am talking about a literal thread -- the material of craft. Although the dominant representation of the relationship between enslaved Africans and cotton is the agricultural labor of...

Stories are powerful. They have been part of human civilizations since time immemorial. They shed light on cultural values, and reveal what is important in our societies. In education in the United States, we often only hear one side of stories. In fact, some stories are untold intentionally because they make us feel uncomfortable and show the ugly sides of this country. The uncomfortable truth is that often the stories we don’t tell are the ones that have contributed directly to making this country what it is today. We must understand there is no single-story, and creating access to more...

The history of cotton in the United States is complex and racialized. To fully understand cotton from a historical perspective, both European colonization in the Americas and African enslavement must be contextualized. The history of cotton in the U.S. includes the hoarding of Native land resources and the exploitation of free slave labor. Additionally, from a sociohistorical perspective, the legacy of cotton presents a record of human activities and the effects of those activities. For example, chattel slavery in the U.S., was primarily used for cotton production, meaning that human beings were treated as property, sometimes worked to death, and...

Our hearts are bursting and our LYS partners are over the moon with the outpouring of support and care you all have shown through our Apart Together initiative. Whether by purchasing sweater quantities from open shops, allocating your BT buys to shuttered stores, or simply sharing this initiative with your social circle, you have played an active role in bolstering small businesses and easing the stress of so many fiber friends.  In the first waves of COVID-19, our shared community rushed to safeguard cherished local yarn stores who were flailing. Through your impactful efforts, you have amassed over $95,000 to...

Pay What You Choose —  Support How You Can In the wake of the developing pandemic of COVID-19, there remains a lot of uncertainty and fear. But we have also seen an encouraging surge of compassion and generosity from our community. Though socially isolated, our hearts and minds are aligned in brainstorming ways to bolster this interconnected network of small businesses, makers and designers.  Our industry is founded on the hard work and full hearts of beloved brick-and-mortar local yarn stores. Many are shuttering their doors to help flatten the curve and stop this virus from spreading. By looking out for their customers...