Morning Comrades.
Before I get into this weekend’s drop a few words about where the merch department of Black Lodges is going. Short story: I am taking an indefinite break from it, bar a few occasional collabs if and when they appear.
The long story is just that, a little longer and feel free to skip this part if you aren’t that interested in it- the links for this weekend’s drop are below. For the last 7-8 years the merch department was my main source of income, amazing as that was but the pandemic brought so many disruptions with it, purely from a logistical POV, that trying to make this work through it has been nerve wrecking and that was never the point. BL was always supposed to be fun and my excuse to not “work” and right now it isn’t. Also, after 2 years of trying to make this work I have used up all of my pre-pandemic savings to make this work, with that, adulting sets in and I am going to start looking for work come Monday.
In an ideal world I would like BL to be a project purely for Mutual Aid groups but I have to do some adulting first. Once and if that is sorted I can re-think this part of the BL universe. Black Lodges isn’t going away, far from it, the merch department is just taking a break for a while after this drop. The focus will be entirely on this newsletter for the time being so that I can also wrap up my PhD and do whatever work that finds my way. IF you are interested in allowing me to spend more time on this than being stuck in an office, you can definitely do so by becoming a patreon below.
There are three t-shirts available in this drop. All three come solely with a front print and without branding as I wanted to focus on the message and not the brand. The above is from me and is “inspired” by the War Is Over campaign by Lennon/Ono.
All profits are immediately donated to Mission Lifeline, a German Non-Profit that exists to save and help refugees coming to Europe. I know it is widely unknown but the EU borders, especially to our south and east are heavily guarded, people die every day and our policies in regards to refugees are beyond pale. Due to the war in the Ukraine, Mission Lifeline re-focused their efforts to help, aid and transport EVERYONE needing it from the Ukraine into the EU. They know what they’re doing and I am more than confident in how they work. At the point of writing, there have almost a million people fleeing the Ukraine and this will only become more. The humanitarian disaster of this war is hard, if not impossible to put into words and it is our duty to do what we can. This is a small part of it.
I asked two friends of mine to join me on this drop and they are Branca Studio from Catalonia and Jeremy Dean from the US. I admire both of their work a great deal and as far as I am concerned the delivered above and beyond with their designs for this drops. These are their t-shirts:
If you are still waiting on t-shirts from me and want to help out here, please use this code when checking out: LATESHIPPING to get rid of all shipping costs. If this isn’t for you, no worries at all but if I may ask, please share this with any and everyone so that we can really deliver the goods to those that need it from this community. I will be posting images you can save and post in our telegram channel and all over social media. Thank you in advance.
At this point I feel that I have said what needed to be said about how I interpret the world as it is, what needs to be done and what this community can and quite frankly should do. You can always go back to the previous emails on the site to re-read emails, and for the remainder of this email I am going pass on some of the resources that I trust and use to help me make sense of this world. All pictures are linked to their respective sources and if you are looking for additional input, here you go.
Deprogram is a podcast by three more than solid comrades. Get into it. Seriously.
That’s it from me for this week. Thank you for your time and attention, I hope you got what you needed and were looking for this week. This program will return on Monday, recharged, I hope and until then, I remain yours, without compromise,
V.