My core concern that brings me here is I am concerned about an anti-fascism that is not anti-racist, and I am concerned about an anti-fascism that is anti-black.
And I think that if one gets involved in an anti-fascism that is not anti-racist, it is like a dog chasing its tail.
You are just going to be running in circles.
Hello, Stitchers.
Welcome to Stitch Please, the official podcast of Black Women's Stitch, the sewing group where Black Lives Matter.
I'm your host, Lisa Wulfort.
I'm a fourth generation sewing enthusiast with more than 20 years of sewing experience.
I am looking forward to today's conversation.
So sit back, relax, and get ready to get your stitch together.
Hey friends, hey, it's Lisa from Black Women Stitch and the Stitch Please podcast.
And as I say every other week, this is a very special episode because actually I didn't really want to do this episode, but I was on Reddit and I was doing a little bit of
research to feed my curiosity about the Norwegian Red Hat of Resistance, which indeed took me to Reddit because that's where you can find lots of information.
That trip to Reddit was...
an adventure where I felt at almost any time I could have been hate-crimed.
It's really weird over there.
It's y'all have you ever been to Reddit?
Like, ugh.
But I went to the anti-fascist knitting thread convinced that of course, as opposed to like the regular Reddit knitters, I would find the anti-fascist knitters and it would be
cool.
It was not.
Because...
As I was scrolling and reading and learning about people's feedback and responses to this Norwegian red hat of resistance, I found a post that had been prompted by a black woman
and her critique of the red hat.
A black woman maker had said that she found the red hat to be performative and she found it to be virtue signaling.
As a result of that, this post went on for about
300 comments.
And of course me, being a nerd, I read every single one, every single one, looking, reading.
that's interesting.
And then I find that they mention this woman by name.
Who, who was the person they were asking?
Who was the person that didn't like the hat?
Who was the person that said it was performative?
Who was the person that said it was virtue signaling?
And then they put her name in there.
which is exactly how I find her when I go to Instagram.
And I thought, and I said this in a comment, I said, this is foul.
You are wrong for dropping her name in here and not tagging her.
This is wrong to be talking about her behind her back like this.
Ultimately, a few days later, I saw that her name had been removed, but not after being on that post for 19 days.
so that people could have found her and said all types of nonsense her way.
And what it reminded me of was in some ways the exact reasons I ended up creating Black Women's Stitch.
That even in spaces that are meant to be progressive, that are meant to be for the liberation of all, we find that the opinions of black women are unwelcome unless we are
celebrating what is already being done.
And unless we are applauding
We must be enemies of progress.
That is not true.
And today's episode is going to talk about why.
I started Black Women's Stitch because I did not feel safe in a quilting community.
This was a community of people that I had been with and had known for about 15 years.
When my father died, suddenly they made me a quilt.
When my kids were born, they sent me a quilt.
However, when I started organizing with Black Lives Matter,
and standing up to the white supremacist incursion that was invading the community of Charlottesville in 2017, when I got and put my body on the line for rally after rally
after rally, when I stood shoulder to shoulder with folks in my community and a white supremacist drove his car down at full speed, murdering a woman and injuring 19 people
right there in front of me, when my spouse and I woke up screaming for weeks from nightmares.
I made the mistake and went to a quilt retreat thinking that that would be a soft place for my heart to land.
I know that some black makers who are listening to this who have a very familiar or similar story.
All is to say, the folks that I thought I was in community with, it turns out I was only in a type of provisional community.
As long as I was the person they thought I was, I was welcome to stay.
The minute I stepped out of how they had perceived me,
and who they thought I was, I was no longer welcome.
I had survived a white supremacist terror attack, and I can tell you I did not cry one tear until I got the message that I was no longer welcome in that group.
And I was no longer welcome because of my advocacy for the lives of black people.
I then learned that that made them uncomfortable.
And that was when I realized that discomfort is a lot worse than oppression for some folks.
So the reason I'm even here talking about the red hat, but not talking about the red hat, is because I think it's an important reminder for black creatives, especially those black
creatives like myself who have platforms where we are trying to move forward for the cultivation of joy.
of liberation, of documenting the records of Black creativity.
I think it's important that these platforms be seen and recognized for the work that they've already done.
Let's get into that red hat.
Let me tell you a little bit about that.
Now, the red hat is called Melt the Ice.
It is a pattern that was created by Needle and Skein, which is a very progressive yarn shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The pattern is based on a Norwegian hat.
The Norway
folks are known for their colorful resistance to Nazi occupation in 1942, which involved wearing these hats, which were banned.
Because there's Scandinavians in Minnesota, the, needle and skein people decided to create this pattern, sell it for five bucks on Ravelry, which is where knitters go to get their
patterns.
And I think fight with each other, but this was designed as a fundraiser.
And so,
It has been successful as of when I last checked, think they've got up to $800,000 that they've raised for selling this pattern.
The challenge becomes that the hat has become a sign for some people of your willingness to care about anti-fascism.
So let's talk about this red hat, though we're not really talking about the red hat.
The red hat is something that comes to us from Norway.
It is specifically about a moment in Norwegian history in 1942 when the Nazis invaded and were taking over.
Norwegians expressed their protest against the regime by wearing red hats.
The regime didn't like it and on February 26, 1942, banned red hats.
Fast forward to 2026, February 26, also the same day, a Thursday.
They want folks to wear red hats in solidarity with the same anti-fascist move that was done in Norway, which was wearing them in protest.
A Norwegian company called the Red Hat Company, along with Needle and Skein, a progressive Minnesota-based yarn company, are collaborating to celebrate this particular action on
February 26th.
There's something I want to tell you really useful about the red hat.
What I want us to think about is this action on February 26 and what the red hat is meant to represent.
It's meant to represent unity, democracy, and a unique principle that I just want y'all to indulge me telling you all about because I'm a word nerd.
I'm so sorry.
I'm a word nerd, but this is a great word, mneskaverd.
Mneskaverd.
And it means the value of a human being
simply for being human.
It is a beautiful word and concept and there is no word for it, no single word for it in English.
And I know, cause I spent like 50, 11 years in school learning English, you know, like me and my PhD could not find an English word for Minescovert.
If you know it, email me at black woman stitch at gmail.com.
One word though, don't get cute.
Don't give me a phrase.
Give me one word, Minescovert.
The thing about Minescovert,
and the value of a human being simply for being human is that that idea is fundamentally incompatible with America.
It is fundamentally incompatible with America.
Our origin story is not the story where every single human person is invested with Mneskaverd and that we respect the Mneskaverd of every single person.
Our nation was created in terms of a declaration of our independence by someone who said they valued and that we as a nation should value that all people are endowed by their
creator with certain inalienable rights.
And among those rights are
the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
They then proceeded to quickly alienate the shit out of those rights for black people.
We thought they were supposed to be inalienable, and we got totally alienated, all right?
Totally.
My point is, what American history teaches us, and black history in particular teaches us, is that there have been things done to black folks that have tested the boundaries of what
American democracy can handle.
And this is now why we have the policing apparatuses that we have today.
This is the reason why we even have a US Marshal Service that was part of this fugitive slave law.
All of these things are, you you really like you scratch a little tiny bit of almost any American institution.
And there's some anti-black racism back there, like credit score, anti-black racism.
All of that are things that have been done to black people specifically through laws that
absolutely minimize the value of our human worth.
My purpose here in having this conversation is because I went into an anti-fascist knitting thread thinking that I would actually be talking with people who were actual
anti-fascists and that their anti-fascism was mature, that it was robust, and it turned out to be neither.
In fact, their anti-fascism was kind of knitting.
And if you didn't want to knit the things that they wanted to knit, then I guess you were a fascist, even if you were a black woman who had been doing this work for years and
years.
And that is, I think, the challenge that I want us to talk about is these crafting spaces show themselves again and again and again, whether it's a Facebook knitting group,
or a Facebook crochet group, or an anti-fascist knitting thread, there routinely are ways in which black women find ourselves in the crosshairs of something hostile and gross, only
to be victimized by it, and expelled and critiqued, rather than listened to, rather than being heard and having people make more informed decisions.
I think what the Reddit thread showed me and what I've learned with just my brief time um on the internet and almost on the planet is that anti-fascism does not equal anti-racism.
And if your anti-fascism is not anti-racism, if your anti-fascism is not anti-racist, I don't want it.
And if your anti-fascism is also anti-black, you will go nowhere.
Anti-fascism that is also anti-black is really like a dog chasing its own tail.
Because in America, that is where a lot of this is fed from.
There are reasons that we have chains in museums that were made for toddlers.
That is anti-blackness.
part of it that has been in the DNA of this country and that in the DNA of black people as well.
I think something I'm also really wanting to kind of put my arms around black women about is like, I don't know how many ways we can tell you the same thing.
I don't know how many ways we can say, it just feels to me like it's always listen to black women until we say something you don't like.
It is okay if a black woman who has been engaged in this work for quite some time thinks that knitting a red hat and wearing it on a particular day is performative or virtue
signaling.
That doesn't stop.
anybody from making it.
It's not meant to be a ban or a moratorium.
It is an observation.
It does not mean that this person is all of a sudden a fascist and doesn't want to take down the regime.
I think what I'm wishing for is more grace and more of the benefit of the doubt to be given to Black makers.
But I also want
Blackmakers for us to also remember that we have the power to create and build the things that we need and that we don't have to accept anybody's crumbs.
We don't have to accept the discipline or reprimands of people who wouldn't listen to us in the first place.
On August 12th, 2017, I was standing with a group of counter protesters when a white supremacist drove his car through the crowd.
He killed one woman.
and injured about 20 other people.
In the resulting chaos, the group that I was organizing with decided to get off the street to minimize our risk and exposure to any white supremacists who might be lurking.
The suggestion was made, and I'm not sure how, that we should turn our shirts inside out.
Our shirts all said Black Lives Matter.
And by turning them inside out,
that was meant to minimize our risk.
I thought it was silly.
I'm sure I did it.
It was a very scary time.
But me turning my shirt inside out is not going to hide me from a white supremacist who wants to harm me.
It doesn't matter what my shirt says.
It matters what my skin says.
And my skin has already told my story before a white supremacist knows who I am.
Now, there was somebody who did
switch his shirt inside out and was able to change his experience entirely.
And this is a white supremacist.
A white supremacist was photographed marching with the crew of white supremacists that had come to the town early in the day.
Later on in the afternoon, that same man is photographed among us, among the counter protesters, in a shirt that he has turned inside out.
He was able to extract himself from the white supremacists and attach himself to the counter protest simply by changing his shirt.
So to wrap up, let's talk about the hat, but we're also not talking about the hat.
Congratulations to.
Needle and Skein, the yarn shop that has done this amazing effort selling this pattern and raising so much money for much needed mutual aid.
That is absolutely laudatory and worth celebrating.
And it is not possible to have all of your anti-fascist energy stitched into a hat.
The black women makers that I know who are leveling critiques.
those who have felt comfortable or felt like speaking out publicly, are leveling them not based on hostility to a hat.
They are leveling these critiques based on their extensive experiences of working in predominantly white creative spaces and feeling unsafe and being unsafe, feeling unheard
and being unheard.
Black critique is not a dismissal.
It's not erasure.
It is not meant to shame at all.
It is an observation based on experience, based on lived experience, both within the craft industry, craft communities and beyond.
Let me just say this as we, know, the slogan of the Stitch Please podcast is that we will help you get your stitch together.
The advice that I'm going to help us get our stitch together is this.
We've got a long ways to go.
This fight, this struggle is a marathon and not a sprint.
And it is important that if something makes you uncomfortable, and I'm speaking exclusively here to those folks in the anti-fascist knitting circle, in the anti-fascist
knitting Reddit, in these places that want to do the right thing, your discomfort is not
an actionable offense.
Your discomfort is a fundamental step toward growth and moving differently.
Sometimes you have to sit with the critique.
That's how we learn.
And if you're not willing to learn, if you're not willing to listen, then how are we gonna get out of this?
I'm not counting on them to get me out of shit.
I'm just saying.
yeah.
Black women, y'all.
I love us.
I'm so grateful to be in creative community with y'all.
And you know what?
Y'all know it.
Being black is lit.
It's kind of dangerous, but that shit is lit.
Happy Black History Month.
You've been listening to Stitch Please, the official podcast of Black Women Stitch, the sewing group where Black Lives Matter.
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