DOTM Mar 2023: Bread and Roses T-shirt

Our Design Of The Month for March 2023, made of 100% organic cotton, and supporting grassroots labour unions in South Asia. Outside the US, this design is available here a shirt made by a workers' cooperative.
It celebrates the victory of the Bread and Roses strike in March 1912. 20,000 garment workers, mostly women and girls, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, had walked out on strike and were denounced by the American Federation of Labor as "revolutionary" and "anarchistic". The workers instead turned to the radical Industrial Workers of the World union for support. The name of the strike referred to the workers wanting their basic needs met, "bread", as well as the beautiful things in life, "roses".
The workers held meetings which were translated into almost 30 languages, faced down brutal police and militarily repression, who killed one woman and beat and jailed many others, and eventually won big concessions across the whole garment industry. In particular, the workers won a 15% pay increase, double pay for overtime and amnesty for most of the strikers.
Design by Berlin based artist and tattooer Nora Lehrmann. Instead of doing another t-shirt with the strike's slogan she decided to create a more subtle design consisting of a beautiful drawing of roses and wheat as a symbol for bread. The beginning and end date of the strike are displayed in a banderole. While 12 of March marks the day of the offer of the employers, it is March 14 that marks the day of the victory celebration and the agreement of the workers to agree to the employers offer. For the design we chose March 14 as the featured date.

• 100% organic combed ring-spun cotton
• Fabric weight: 5.3 oz./yd.² (180 g/m²)
• Regular unisex fit
• Set-in sleeves
• 1 × 1 rib at collar
• Double-needle topstitch on the sleeves and bottom hems
• Self-fabric neck tape on the inside of the back
• The fabric of this product holds certifications for its organic cotton content under GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) and OCS (Organic Content Standard). Stanley and Stella Fair Wair Foundation-made
• Supports grassroots labour unions in South Asia through ExChains and social enterprise dna merch
• Printed in the US individually just for you, with no overproduction or waste
• Global shipping from the US

Size guide