Popular socialist streamer Hasan Piker recently did something cool this week where he launched a new line of merchandise aimed at supporting workers. Some of the profits will go to strike funds to help pro-labor causes across the country, in addition to the clothes being made by union shops. A tie-dye Bernie Sanders shirt is also available in the store, which is extremely metal.
Hasan Piker tweeted last Monday that he’s been working on the said merchandise for a year now and that all apparel is made by unions in the United States, and happily announced that all proceeds from the unionize tee go to strike funds.
The “Ideologie” collection includes three t-shirts and three hoodies, with slogans like “no value without labor” and “united we bargain, divided we beg” on the two union-themed t-shirts, and pepes and some memes on the hoodies. Also, Hasan Piker cosplays as video game characters like Link from The Legend of Zelda.
All of the merchandise is currently available for pre-order, and some of it has already sold out. The unionized t-shirts had reportedly raised $126,000 for striking workers. When workers go on strike, often they lose pay and benefits, and strike funds are what they rely on to get through long and arduous negotiations.
While it’s a perfect fit for Piker’s main audience of left-leaning, very online zoomers and millennials, it also comes at a time when high-profile labor actions are dominating the news. Employees at John Deere have been on strike for weeks, rejecting two new contract proposals in their quest for better pay and benefits. Workers at Amazon’s New York warehouses are currently organizing to unionize. This week, baristas at two Starbucks locations in Buffalo will vote on whether or not to form a union.
That may seem insignificant, but the company is so concerned that a positive vote will embolden employees at other stores that it has dispatched former CEO Howard Schultz, who is so wealthy that he spent over $100 million on a vanity presidential campaign without blinking, to calm them down. During a meeting with the employees, Schultz compared them to Holocaust survivors on trains in Nazi Germany, and said the company was working on a new cold brew station to make their lives easier because “50-60% of our customers are into cold brew.”
Even the technology and video game industries are challenging their bosses. Google employees organized a union earlier this year. Netflix employees walked out in protest of Dave Chappelle’s recent transphobic stand-up trainwreck. In the wake of the ongoing fallout from allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination at two of the largest gaming publishers, Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft, developers have begun organizing and demanding changes.
All of this is to say that Piker’s new merch line pro-labor has truly arrived at just the right time to get people’s interest. It’s also fascinating to see how influencers use their celebrity to begin with. The majority of Twitch streamers do not make any money from it. Only a few people become wealthy as a result of it. Many of the people who can make a living doing it do so thanks to merch deals. While audiences and the services that monetize them are fickle, selling real things to real people continues to be a reliable way to turn fame into cash. It’s interesting to see that in Piker’s case, it’s being used to promote empowered workers. Hopefully, more and more streamers will start using their merch for charitable purposes.
