An inexclusive form of membership... All who are involved with Griot Apparel simultaneously maintain other independent projects. We believe art, entrepreneurship, philosophy, and politics to be constitutive parts of free and democratic life. We are persistently plotting future design moves and artistic projects, refining our business plans, artistic practices and adapting our worldview as we go along-- steady on the grind: pushin, pluggin, and reflecting.
The founders first met in 1999 on Mt. Olympus Drive in Syracuse, NY, in the freshman dorms at Syracuse University. Julia came from Reading, PA to study fine art and illustration and Kevin from Passaic, NJ to read philosophy and international relations. Since then, we both have traveled to live in other parts of the world, eventually making homes for ourselves on the planet of Brooklyn. Old ideas cyclically blossom into designs and new seeds are constantly sowed.
To change the popular perception of youth culture... We are thoroughly educated and broadly informed, internationally exposed and locally active members of a still-youthful but readily mature generation.
One must speak and spread truth... To create a better world, one must do more than spread blame. We seek to do what those who came before us have refused to do: accept responsibility for our own world. Our motive is to encourage consumers to own up and learn from the successes and mistakes of the past. We promote education.
Our generation is creative and working to make positive changes even after the elderly members of Congress and asses in assemblies around the world have abandoned us to dilapidated schools and corrosive curricula. Overall, members of the media have done a poor job of pointing towards good explanations of problems and possible courses for improvement. But all is not lost.
In the aftermath of Nixon, we should know what to expect of public institutions when the public does not demand much for itself--only the wealthy and powerful will be served. There is space for industriousness, entrepreneurship, and especially innovation to make a difference. Private individuals and private companies can serve a public good, if only because it is an emerging market and no one else is willing to do it.
We are not cynical, but by now have learned the ultimate lesson: that we must do for ourselves what we cannot expect others to do. We are seeking out and offering creative solutions to complex problems. We are not the only group in the game of trying to do some good, and many seek to do much more than influence fashions, e.g. see:
STANDarfur
AIDemocracy
AIESECommerciales
USAgainstSweatshops
Genocide Intervention Network
Truth and light are natural cleansers... We put in effort to clothe the middle class masses and clean the messes left behind by our forefathers -- in so doing, we can carry the legacy of our mothers into the political domain.
We have been left to simultaneously engange in an attempt to learn what we are not taught by our governments, to uncover the means by which we can improve what we will inherit, and discover how we can institutionalize progress where all that seems to be institutionalized is greed and egotism. We work together, across class and gender and race, to create a better future.
This is how we assert ownership over the process of human history: by reclaiming the government, economy, education, and our own minds.
Civilizations move in cycles. History keeps repeating itself. While politicians repeat cliches, it is up to regular people to demand change. If we are to improve upon the record, we must begin to engage with sincerity the tragedies as well as the triumphs in our collective past to identify the best way forward. In so doing, we create a new culture. We can then demand of those directing the public institutions that they act on our behalf, reflect our culture, and explain how they intend to do so in our own terms.
Innovative and irreverent: we stay fresh... Youthfulness and honesty blend to comprise our mode and method. Freshness will liberate us from the history left behind by the aged and paranoid, the fearful and the foolish. We use irony, style and art to yield analysis and critical thought.
Many members of our cadre are astutely aware of a heated political climate, some are broadly informed by multiple cultures and different cultural movements--the latter are especially qualified to reflect on our world. This is who we represent (i.e. our 'market').
We stay in the streets, absorbing from other cultures while we think independently from the crowds and form a culture of our own.
We are also sensitive to the dictates of demography, anthropology, and economics. We understand that the present youth culture will take the world back--that globalization, immigration, and information will continue to change America to the disadvantage of conservatives.
The current culture lacks certain liveliness, skepticism and optimism. Some middle-aged retain the spirit of their youths lived in the 1960s and 70s, but they are a minority in their age group, they have fallen out of vogue and out of power.
The nascent youth can be especially optimistic about the prospects for reviving a fading culture, since educational opportunities are more widely distributed and international exchanges open up the avenues for cooperation across cultures and continents. As we learn more, we improve the chances of creating a new and better world and our own chances of benefiting in it.
Education should teach us to be skeptical about the rhetoric and motives of currently sitting and previous political leaders. We should doubt the veracity of those in power when they claim to represent us. They will not represent us until we demand that they do.
From hip hop to punk rock... Hip hop and punk rock are not the sources of the cultural decay and moral perversity which ostensibly pervades. Conservatives blame artists and critical thinkers for the state of affairs, but artists have historically been critics while members of the conservative classes have always been purveyors of corruption.
Early punk rock and hip hop artists embodied a spirit of independence and moral reflection unknown to those conservatives who actually cause moral decay. While artists like Sid Vicious and Tupac Shakur are continuously condemned by the aging culture, Henry Kissinger holds a Nobel Prize for Peace and his advice is considered coveted by the White House. The irony of this should not be lost.
We don't trust the sanitized histories we have been fed. We know that any sincere effort to create a better world will require that we first develop a truthful view of the world as it is.
Our designs popularize subjects which text books and politicians ignore... We expose the examples which will free us from the old ways of thinking. Artists, musicians, and philosophers have done much revolutionary work but their contributions remain unexplained in our schools.
The popular histories have been overwhelmingly partriarchal and lacking in critical assessments, leaving us without real examples to follow or learn from. We are told false or fractional tales about national heros--popular history has evolved into fiction. Destruction perpetrated or funded by our own governments in the name of 'the people' is left unexamined in most curricula. How are we to move forward?
We educate about a complex legacy and insert honesty into histories gone rotten with sugarized spin.
A better world is possible, but we must expand our views about what the world is like by valuing truth in order to make the possibility of a better world real.
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