newradicalchic pay lipservice here

New. Know your rights. Blue and black on blue, limited to 9, Huey logo on shoulder.
“The Clash played at the Roxy on January 1st 1977. I could not understand a fucking word they were singing, but the energy was like being hit over the head with a plank. You could not just be a fan, you wanted to be a part of it, you wanted to get involved”
Dub DJ & director Don Letts on seeing his first Clash show

For the athletes the olympics are the summum of sports. For political leaders of every variety it’s about scoring points for their regimes.
1968 was the year of revolution. It was also the year of the Olympic games in Mexico. Like the Chinese, the Mexican government faced resistance. To be able to show itself as a new champion of a modern, westernised only slightly dictatoresque state it had to erase any loudmouth opposition. Yet early on in that same year, just months before it’s glorious summer of peace and its show of worldwide unity and brotherhood it bloodily crushed a students revolt which -supported by the radical workers- rocked the nation. that’s the other side of the Olympic medal that they’ll never show you. Check out he excellent book ‘68 on that revolt. It’s a cheapo at amazon.
The blood had hardly dried when two black athletes from the US spoiled the fun one more time. They defied the enlightened western imperialism by allying themselves visually and impressivley in front of the whole world with the revolutionary black movement in the West. Let’s hope athletes will have the guts to speak out on the war, the environment, Tibet, slavelike working conditions all over the world, etc once again. Why should the powers that be always ru(i)n the show?

Know the roots, that’s what this new shirt’s all about. We had a canvas that sold out. We still have some posters and now -by popular demand- we have the shirt!

A lot of people know the iconic image of two proud black athletes at the Mexico 1968 olympic games. But what was their statement. Tommie smith (200m olympic goldwinner) and John Carlos (finishing third) used their medal-stand-moment to speak for “shift workers, blue-collar people, and the underdogs… the people whose contributions to society are so important but don’t get recognized.”
“A lot of athletes thought that winning medals would supercede or protect them from racism. But even if you won the medal, it ain’t going to save your momma. It ain’t going to save your sister or children. It might give you fifteen minutes of fame, but what about the rest of your life? I’m not saying that they didn’t have the right to follow their dreams, but to me the medal was nothing but the carrot on a stick.
We wanted the world to know that in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, South Central Los Angeles, Chicago, that people were still walking back and forth in poverty without even the necessary clothes to live.
The beads were for those individuals that were lynched, or killed that no-one said a prayer for, that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the middle passage. We were trying to wake the country up and wake the world up too.“