OUR STORY:
First and foremost, this is a project/philosophy/imagining rooted in love and community.
Love for the future, love for solidarity, love for history, and love in all its manifestations--particularly resistance as a form of love.
'TO RESIST IS TO LOVE WHAT COULD BE' started as a simple affirmation and has grown to become its own symbol and declaration of one's commitment to advocating for justice and solidarity between communities.
The project's strength lies in recognizing shared histories across time and communities. Oppression and marginalization are, unfortunately, languages understood by communities across the globe. Yet, from these historically marginalized communities, we have seen how people use their love for the future--for rewards they might never reap--as their own form of resistance.
This is a project to recognize the collective efforts across various socio-political movements (Women' Rights, Trans Rights, Housing Rights, Queer Rights, and Desire for Political Transformation) and how resistance has become rooted in love for "what could be," i.e., a desire to create a better world for people you may never meet, for a life you may never live.
Our organization aims to recognize the efforts of various mutual aid groups in New York City that actively fight to keep their respective modes of resistance going. This is a project about continuity, recognizing these shared and continuous fights for liberation, recognition, and solidarity.
To do this, our organization sells t-shirts, crew necks, and tote bags to donate 100% of the profits to mutual aid organizations in New York City that symbolize each socio-political movement.
Each shirt is custom screen printed with our iconic red heart and then spraypainted with a slogan extracted from a political placard from each political movement.
Although our project initially started as a way to raise money and support smaller mutual aid organizations, it has transformed as both a counternarrative and a platform to reflect on the intersectionality of political movements across time.
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OUR MISSION:
TO RESIST IS TO LOVE WHAT COULD BE, can not, and should not be reduced to a shop or fundraising project. TO RESIST IS TO LOVE WHAT COULD BE, which is a reimagination of community organization and activism.
This is a project/philosophy/imagining of how we--the college student, the local organizers, and the “ordinary” citizen--can genuinely engage with history, activism, and politics without confining ourselves to the conventional expectations of capitalism and consumerism. This is a project that strives to reject the widely accepted frameworks and practices of charity and philanthropy.
Our mission is to create genuine interactions between our communities and our advocates by recognizing shared and collective histories. While this started as a way to incorporate art and history to raise money for local mutual aid events, it has slowly transformed into a platform of cross-cultural engagement. Our team has provided opportunities to get more involved within our local communities through fundraisers, art initiatives, organization collaborations, free art commissioning, advocacy workshops, and community events.
Our organization’s success lies within our devotion to the communities we advocate and work alongside with. Our project strives for authentic engagement in everything that we commit ourselves to. This is foundational to our work. Since our inception, we have always aimed to break the walls between consumer-creator often seen as necessary for work of this nature. Our team questions these standards throughout our practices, often creating new frameworks to reenvision how activism, history, and communities can meaningfully engage with each other.
We are not a brand. Instead, we would rather think of our work as a project/philosophy/imagining of restructuring the popular approach to collective action. It is a rejection of these very traditions that reinforce the standards and norms created by capitalism-oriented structures. Instead, we hope to offer not only a rejection of these popular conventions but also an imagination of how community groups can meaningfully engage with advocacy work beyond the confines of neoliberal philanthropy.
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instagram: @toresististolove
email: toresististolove@gmail.com
email: toresististolove@gmail.com