Neil Gaiman had worn some version of a black T-shirt almost every day for the past 36 years. Then, on a sultry Tuesday in May, he decided to make a major wardrobe change.
“I’m wearing the first red T-shirt I’ve worn since 1987 because I’m a member of the WGA,” announced Mr. Gaiman, the bestselling author of “The Sandman” and “Coraline,” from a picket line in New York. “I’m on strike.” His tomato-red shirt, depicting a raised fist holding a pencil, bluntly declared that it was time for writers to put down their pencils—albeit in capital letters and with exquisite obscenity for the record.
Throughout New York and Los Angeles, you can see T-shirts advertising unions of creative workers almost everywhere. On the subway, in line at the grocery store, and at the coffee shop, creative types and their allies in both cities are eager to wear support for the strikes on their literal sleeves.
The Writers Guild of America, the union representing 11,500 screenwriters, went on strike in early May after failing to reach an agreement with Hollywood producers on the details of a new contract, including compensation for work on streaming services and the use of artificial intelligence. When SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, decided to strike of its own last week, the quarrel took on new proportions. As the demonstrations enter their 13th week, an urgent need has arisen: clean T-shirts.
“If you’re picketing in your WGA strike T-shirt several days a week, not to put it too vividly, but the laundry becomes a to press worries,” says Josh Gondelman, a writer and comedian living in New York. “Anywhere you can get extra WGA T-shirts, it becomes an interesting topic on the picket line, just from a practical point of view.”
Writers Guild members get two T-shirts when they sign up for a picket, and the weather in both cities was excruciatingly hot, meaning picketers couldn’t get away with wearing the same two shirts for several days in a row without doing laundry. “Even though we have a short week of surgery, I want to assure everyone that my WGA blue shirt still smells like it has been a full shirt,” wrote writer Mike Royce said on Twitter.)
To meet this need, online retailers immediately started popping up, with shirts with different WGA logos and no clear information about where the proceeds from those shirts went.
Enter WGAStrikeShirts.com. The online store, run by a screenwriter and 12-year Writers Guild member named Tripper Clancy, sells WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike paraphernalia, including hats, tank tops and Mr. Gaiman’s Pencils Down T-shirt. Since its inception on May 5, the website has sold more than $100,000 worth of merchandise, according to Mr. Clancy, with 100 percent of net proceeds going to the Entertainment Community Fund, a charity that supports artists, performers and employees in the entertainment industry.
The bestsellers include a plain white shirt with black lettering that reads “Pay the Writers and the Actors and the Crew and the Teamsters and Everyone Else Who Makes You All the Money”, and a black T-shirt with a red “fist of solidarity” naming the unions involved in the strike.
As the strike continues, union merchandise is increasingly becoming the ubiquity of New Yorker tote bags. Since WGAStrikeShirts began selling apparel, actors like Ike Barinholtz and Tatiana Maslany and filmmakers like Nick Stoller have been spotted on the picket line carrying sports messages. Jason Sudeikis recently showed up to support the strike in New York in a “Writers Guild on Strike” baseball hat, and the black SAG-AFTRA shirts given to members were also a popular picket line choice: Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano, and Christian Slater have all recently appeared in theirs. Due to the extreme heat, SAG-AFTRA started handing out white T-shirts this week that Mandy Moore, Vanessa Hudgens and others immediately took to the streets.
Personal style has long been a way of expressing political or social affiliation, but what one wears on the picket line is especially important: by wearing matching union attire, employees become a visual representation of the solidarity they are trying to reflect.
“Especially with a strike or any other kind of solidarity event, you want to have a visual impact and show the strength in numbers,” said Sara Tatyana Bernstein, a professor of fashion and cultural studies who co-founded Dismantle magazine. “Clothing often expresses individuality and expresses your personality. In this case, it’s more about expressing your community and collective power than individuality.”
Fashion, said Professor Bernstein, has always been a cornerstone of political expression, especially when it comes to union action. She pointed to the New York City department store strikes of 1937, where Woolworth workers wore their uniforms while working, and to the French Revolution, when slogans were sewn into expensive waistcoats to show solidarity with the revolutionaries. She said the slogan T-shirts worn on the picket lines of this summer’s strikes were a contemporary extension of those practices.
But figuring out exactly where to buy T-shirts that support labor movements can be a bit of a dilemma, especially when it comes to thrift shopping. Vintage union T-shirts have long been a hipster favorite, but many second-hand sellers have grown wary of peddling them for fear of being accused of making money off a cause they weren’t a part of.
“The sale of vintage New York City Union merchandise, especially unions, is a touchy subject among union workers,” said Kevin Fallon, the owner of the popular online vintage store Fantasy Explosion, which recently opened a brick-and-mortar outpost in Brooklyn.
“In the past, I received DMs and emails asking them to stop selling it because they were afraid of job site impersonators and the stolen courage,” he added, “so I try not to sell NYC union stuff anymore.”
For the team behind WGAStrikeShirts, transparency is key. The shop prominently advertises that it is run by WGA members, with the proceeds going to the support fund. And while each shirt is not made in a union shop, they are screen printed in one and all financial details are disclosed in a Twitter thread every month.
Wearing matching union merchandise on the picket lines and beyond has contributed to a sense of solidarity among writers who often work alone. The best thing about wearing it, Mr. Clancy said, is that “you get people out of the woodwork who say, ‘I’ve got your back, I’ve got your back.’ You also get questions from people like, ‘Why is the guild on strike? Why don’t you just make a deal with the studio?’”
“Every time that happens, he said, “it gives you a chance to explain.”
