Freshjive’s delivery 2 is inspired by the German Expressionist Movement’s eventual influence on the militarization and privatization of public spaces with its corporate-governmental liasions being directly responsible for the emerging police state and the growing inequality in our society.

View the full lookbook HERE and the product detail HERE. Available now at select retailers worldwide.

The congenital racism of the United States, the heritage of an economic order based on slave labor and the absurd culture of white supremacy, endures all too obviously.

Not only can one perceive this systemic racism in the broad brushstrokes of the demographics of poverty and incarceration, but also in the relentless cascade of tragic stories about black and brown lives disrupted or cut short with impunity by state (and state condoned) violence.

The case of Travon Martin has triggered an increase of media attention on such narratives, all of which expose the contradictions of a political order which pays lip service to an ideology of equal rights for all but which in practice adheres to a racial hierarchy of justice.  Here are just a few stories from recent months:

September 21, 2011 The State of Georgia executes Troy Anthony Davis for the murder of off-duty Savannah police officer, despite that “seven of the nine nonpolice witnesses later recanted or changed their testimony, some alleging police intimidation for their original false statements.”

November 19, 2011 Police in White Plains, NY, responding to an accidental medical alert, begin to break into the home of 68-year-old former Marine Kenneth Chamberlain Sr.  When Chamberlain protests that they are not needed, a police officer is recorded as screaming “I don’t give a f*** n*****, open the door.” Then the police break in and taser the elderly Chamberlain to death.

March 7, 2012 Plain clothes police enter a home in New Orleans on the authority of a search warrant for a marijuana offense and shot and killed unarmed high school basketball player Wendell Allen. Hear his mother speak in this video.

March 21, 2012. Responding to a “disturbance” in a Chicago neighborhood, an off-duty plain clothes police officer identifies himself as a cop and then starts shooting at Antonio Cross, probably because cell phones in black hands look like guns to the police.  Innocent bystander 22-year-old Reika Boyd is fatally shot in the head. Chicago police call the killing “justified“. Survivors and family members speak out here.

April 4, 2012 Police in Newport, CA force baseball star Tori Hunter to present his ID at gunpoint in his own home. Luckily, he was not murdered by the police.

50% of the proceeds of this T will go to the Occupy The Hood L.A. Action Assembly, which is both an Occupy L.A. affinity group as well as a local chapter of the national Occupy the Hood network. The Occupy the Hood L.A. Action Assembly has been organizing around issues of housing rights and police harassment, as well as other issues. A media wing called Occupy Shadow Media has been producing video reports which show What The Fuck is Really Going On.

T-shirt available exclusively at Reserve Online.

Like D.W. Griffith’s epic 1915 film, the United States was born racist.

Though the framers of the U.S. Constitution were intellectually inspired by Enlightenment principles of universal human rights, their culture of white supremacy and economic interests blinded them to the humanity of dark skinned people.

This racism was written into the founding legal document of the United States. In Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution, a distinction is made between “free Persons” and “other Persons”:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

The “other persons” were of course the population of black slaves, who counted as 3/5ths of a “free Person” for the sake of determining appropriate levels of taxation and representation in the House.

After the Civil War, this “3/5th Compromise” was rendered moot by the 13th Amendment’s abolition of chattel slavery, while the 14th Amendment superseded Acricle 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution and guaranteed “due process” and “equal protection” to every “person”.

But today, even after the election of a mixed-race President, these Constitutional guarantees remain elusive in practice, where institutional and cultural racism are reflected in disproportionate poverty and incarceration rates for dark-skinned people.

And then there are those all too common and ugly episodes, like the recent killing of the unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, which throw this endemic racism into high relief.

50% of the proceeds of this T will be going to the Occupy The Hood L.A. Action Assembly. T-shirt available exclusively at Reserve Online.

As a sacred symbol of faith to her legions of devotees, Santa Muerte serves as a symbol of worship to millions throughout Mexico. Translated to mean “Saint Death” in English the role of Santa Muerte is inextricably tied to the omnipresence of death and the celestial. Embraced by civilians who occupy much of Mexico’s lower class, for many Santa Muerte has replaced Catholicism as their primary religion.

Santa Muerte’s following has grown considerably throughout Mexico over the past forty years. Although the true origins of the faith vary depending on the source, many believe that the tradition of Santa Muerte personified in the form of a female skeleton is a syncretism of pre-Columbian and Christian beliefs. In European Christian traditions, human mortality is represented through skeletons in art. Moreover, in Latin American Catholic traditions, the skeleton was often used as a reminder to confess one’s sins.

After Saint Bernard of Clairvaux died, August 20, 1153, he was portrayed in the form of a skeleton. Associating the notion of death with Saint Bernard’s skeletal depictions, many people considered the Saint’s portrayal as a symbol of death. Taking on various interpretations since its inception, the skeletal image of the Saint evolved into a female form imitative of the Aztecan goddess of death, Mictecacihuatl.

While the roots of the devotion remain speculative, popular opinion points to the 1940s as the time when the cult of Santa Muerte blossomed into the form known today. Widely embraced throughout lower-class neighborhoods of Mexico City, the cults’ following has grown considerably within the past two decades.

Public Display

Although Santa Muerte’s following has grown considerably within the past two decades, the practice of devotion is only beginning to emerge in public. Previously practiced within the privacy of one’s home, shrines dedicated to the Saint have now begun to appear throughout Mexico, with many altars emerging in the most impoverished slums such as Mexico City’s Tepito barrio.

Now celebrated in an increasing number of public spaces, additional symbols have emerged as a result of Santa Muerte’s growing popularity. Worshipped by her devotees, followers of Santa Muerte often leave valued possessions in the form of offerings. Candles have also taken on their own meanings in regards to the cult as well, with offerings of different colored candles providing the promise of various forms of well being for her followers. For example, blue candles are offered to heal the sick, while green is offered to help with legal problems, the yellow candle is for monetary help while white candles are offered purely to give thanks.

Her Following

Unrecognized and often condemned by the Catholic Church, the majority of Santa Muerte’s following live on the periphery of what many consider “legitimate society.” Disillusioned with the Catholic Church for its inability to deliver them from poverty, many of Mexico’s poor have gravitated to Santa Muerte instead. Additionally, the criminal underworld joined the impoverished and unlawful in devoting themselves to the deity, as for many, the cult of Santa Muerte reflects their uncertain and often dangerous way of life.

From drug traffickers to prostitutes, to gang members and petty thieves, legions of devotees recognize Santa Muerte as their principal goddess. It’s what anthropologists call a “cult of crisis,” a social phenomenon that occurs during times of wide-spread social and economic hardship. Devotion to Santa Muerte peaks during such times, as those going through particularly trying experiences seek hope in the goddess. Although many of Santa Muerte’s followers are not criminals, the cult has still received negative public perception throughout Mexico for being linked to organized crime. Criminals and drug traffickers, often superstitious and highly pious, pray to the goddess to protect them despite their illicit endeavors. Additionally, altars dedicated to the goddess have been found in drug houses throughout Mexico and the U.S.

The influence of Santa Muerte is only growing. Originally embraced within Mexico, today the cult is spreading into the United States through immigration. In large metropolitan centers within New York, Texas and Southern California, the cult is becoming more visible as more people gravitate to the tradition.

We’ve also designed a custom made team cardigan for his crew including his cut man and coaches Eric Brown and Freddy Roach. Made of high quality denim, canvas and velvet, the cardigan reflects Zach’s personal influence with roots in traditional boxing style.

This upcoming Saturday is Zac’s 3rd professional fight. It will be held at the Warner Center Marriot and tickets can be purchased online at Bashboxing.com. Keep up with Zac at Zacharywohlman.com

In the United States, brutality against people of color, particularly African Americans, has been only one of the historical functions of the police — another has been political suppression of poor and working classes.

In his history of policing in the United States, Kristian Williams points out that these two functions have often overlapped, particularly in the formative period of the antebellum South, where “slavery… was a system of production as well as a system of race control.”   The control of slave populations, in other words, was required by both “the demands of White supremacy and by the economic needs of the plantations system.”

But after the Civil War, as modern capitalism took shape, the emerging industrial working classes began to be targeted as objects of police control.

Originally, these police forces were privately funded by industrial enterprises and used to break up labor strikes. However, in an early instance of corporate welfare, these expenses were gradually transferred to the State.

The Pennsylvania State Police, for example, was created in the aftermath of the 1902 Great Anthracite Strike, on the recommendation of a commission which concluded that “peace and order… should be maintained at any cost, but should be maintained by regularly appointed and responsible officers… at the expense of the public.”

In this way strikers who “had previously had their heads cracked by guards in private employ (or police leased to the company, which comes to the same thing), they increasingly had the honor of having their heads cracked by impartial public servants, authorized by the government and funded by the tax.”

Today’s police forces are heirs to this history, and though the economic order of the United States has transformed dramatically since the industrial age, people who organize against its injustices should not be surprised when the state’s coercive forces line up against them.

Crack! Crack! is da Sound of da Police!

T-shirt available exclusively at Reserve Online.

Palmistry, also known as Chiromancy, is an age-old tradition practiced all over the world. Used to draw insight about one’s life through the unique characteristics of one’s hands, palmistry is a popular practice for those seeking guidance or understanding about their own life and future.

Early Beginnings

While records vary as to where the practice originally started, many point to Ancient India. With texts referencing palm reading as far back as 2000 BCE in India, the earliest references to palmistry itself can be found in the ancient Vedic text, The Laws of Manu.

In Ancient Greece the hands were considered a subject of great interest. The Greek philosopher Aristotle who pondered the role and significance of the hands. It is said that after discovering an ancient Arabic document regarding palmistry on an altar dedicated to the Greek god Hermes, Aristotle wrote several texts on the subject of palm reading.

As the tutor of Alexander the Great, some believe that Aristotle influenced Alexander’s interest in the practice. Referenced in his work, De Caelo (On the Heavens) Artistotle wrote about his curiosity with hands and their connection to the celestial, “The lines of the hand are not written into the human hands without reason,” he wrote. “They come from heavenly influences and man’s own individuality,” he reasoned. From its early beginnings, the practice spread throughout the world, in numerous ancient cultures from Tibet to Egypt.

Traits of the Hands

Many palmists classify the general shape of the hands into two separate categories: the receptive hand, and the realistic hand.
Typified by a more fragile and delicate frame, owners of the receptive hand are regarded as sensitive and considerably more emotional. Their rich line patterns signifying a range of interests.

Alternatively, the realistic hand is defined by its assertive and outgoing features. Generally square and more broad in shape, those with realistic hands are often considered more active and determined.

Significance of Hand Lines

Although palmists highlight a variety of characteristics when performing palm readings, for many, the lines of a hand offer the greatest insight into their subject’s life. While other less pronounced lines offer insight into personal subjects such as money, sex and marriage, palmists generally give the most weight to three specific lines. Visible on most hands, the life line, head line, and heart line refer to the three identifiable lines that cross the palms of both hands.

The heart line, positioned directly below the fingers, is the first of the prominent lines. Known to relate to matters of love and attraction, the deeper and more pronounced the line is, the more committed one is towards love. Beginning beneath either the index or middle finger and extending across to the other edge of the palm, the heart line offers insight into one’s approach to relationships and intimacy.

The head line extends across the center of the hand, directly below the heart line and is affiliated with matters of the mind. Said to represent one’s mentality and intelligence, palmists
gain insight into one’s learning habits and memory from this line. For example, a long straight line extending from below the index finger to the opposite edge of the palm indicates one’s method of thinking; the straighter the line, the more realistic the thinking. Conversely, a short or broken head line indicates a short attention span or absence of deep thought. Head lines that curve up represent a more retentive memory, while lines that curve down tend to represent more creative and imaginative people.

The third identifiable line on the palm, the life line, represents one’s vitality, physical health and general well being. While opinions vary in regard to its meaning, many palmists believe that the life line also indicates one’s life expectancy. Long and deep lines characterize a healthy and energetic life, while short and shallow lines indicate a life that may be stifled or controlled by others.

“The left hand is the one we are born with, and the right is what we have made of it,” explains one popular palmistry proverb. A time honored tradition that has spanned across the globe, the true relevance of palmistry is proven through its ubiquity across generations of diverse cultures.

Check out our Tumblr to see a collection of palms and their various hand lines at freshjive.tumblr.com

With roots in the slave patrols of the antebellum south, modern police forces in the United States have earned a reputation for both political suppression and racist brutality.

The following are some low-lights from this dismal history, though hidden behind this brief list are untold numbers of people who have been unjustly beaten or killed by these state sponsored gangs:

Fred Hampton, December 4, 1969

Nothing exemplifies the confluence of racist violence and political suppression so much as the murder 21 year old Fred Hampton by FBI agents and Chicago police officerswhile he slept in his bed next to his pregnant girlfriend on December 4, 1969.  See the 1971 documentary that explores the story of the murder and captures many of Hampton’s speeches here.

Rodney King, March 3, 1991

Not all police violence is used for the purposes of political suppression, however — sometimes it’s just good sport. The tasing and brutal beating of Rodney King on March 3, 1991, which happened to be captured o video by bystander George Holliday, exemplifies the run-of-the-mill racism and brutality of U.S. police forces. Though the video showed an out of control gang of cops mercilessly beating the helpless King, a mostly white jury in Simi Valley failed to convict any of the officers involved. This miscarriage of justice led to widespread looting and civil unrest in the spring of 1992.

The night of the beating, an LAPD watch commander summarized the incident: “…tased, then beat… basic stuff, really.”

Amadou Diallo, February 4, 1999

In an early Bronx morning, a gang of four plainclothes NYPD officers fired 41 shots at 23-year-old Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo because he reached for his wallet.  Dially was completely unarmed. All four officers were acquitted by an Albany jury.

Sean Bell, November 25, 2006

In another early morning shooting frenzy, 23-year-old Sean Bell was killed killed “in a hail of 50 bullets” fired by a group of 5 undercover NYPD officers. The unarmed father was on his way home from his own bachelor party.

Oscar Grant,  January 1, 2009

While on his way home from New Years Eve festivities, 22-year-old father Oscar Grant was publicly executed on an Bay Area transit platnorm– shot in the back as he lay on the ground – by BART cop Johannes Mehserle.

All the victims on this incomplete list were young an black, but no one is safe from the brutality of police culture — especially those who chose to confront the injustices of the system.  Just ask Iraq vet Scott Olsen or elderly pensioner Dori Rainey.

T-shirt available exclusively at Reserve Online.

With a population of over 2.5 million people, Miami, Florida has emerged as a cultural metropolis and global destination to the world over the past three decades. Celebrated for its diverse mixture of ethnicities and culture, the city has been nicknamed, “The Capital of Latin America,” while evolving into an esteemed center for finance, commerce and entertainment.

While the Miami of today can pride itself on its rich cultural landscape and global notoriety, the Miami of the late 70’s and early 80’s was known for a far less glamorous reason. As the epicenter of the nation’s cocaine trade in the 1980’s, Miami emerged as the crime capital of the world, adding a dark chapter to the city’s illustrious history.

Prime Location

Prized for its seemingly endless miles of unguarded coastline, in the 1970’s Miami became the prime destination for marijuana smuggling. However, as more smugglers gravitated to the trade, the city grew oversaturated with the illegal product as the price of marijuana fell due to its abundance.

While numerous cartels throughout South America smuggled drugs through Miami, it was the Colombians who maximized the trade to its potential. As the marijuana trade grew saturated, traffickers began including small amounts of a new product with their marijuana shipments. That new product was cocaine, and its introduction to Miami would drastically alter the complexion of the city.

Hot Commodity

As the popularity of cocaine grew in the late 1970’s, a budding and insanely profitable industry emerged around it. At various levels of the operation, numerous groups formed to facilitate the trade. From growers, to smugglers, to transporters and distributors, the emergence of cocaine provided opportunities for criminals and common people to become extremely wealthy in a relatively short amount of time. Yet while cocaine turned many fledgling entrepreneurs into overnight millionaires, no group capitalized off the trade more than the united forces of Pablo Escobar, the Ochoa Brothers and Juan Luis Gonzalez otherwise known as the Medellín Cartel. It is said that at the height of their trade the cartel earned close to $60 million a day.

As illicit drug money poured into Miami and its neighboring cities, the complexion of South Florida began to change as well. Running out of places to store their cash, traffickers turned to Florida’s banks to stash their ballooning wealth. As local banks overflowed with “narco-cash”, many turned to the Federal Reserve Bank to weather the influx of money. In one year alone the Federal Reserve Bank of Miami generated a surplus of cash estimated at over $5 billion; an amount greater than all of the other Federal Reserve Banks in the nation combined.

But with drugs and money came violence. As profits surged from the popularity of cocaine, so did battles for territory and dominance of the trade. Daytime machine gun fights and drive by shootings became the norm as Miami emerged as the most dangerous city in the world. “It just became commonplace that we’d be jumping from crime scene to crime scene,” remembers Sgt. Al Singleton of the Miami police. Regularly examining up to five separate murders in a night, Singleton and his police squad endured Miami’s deadliest years. Rising steadily each year from 1976 into the early 1980’s, by 1981 the annual homicide rate in Dade County Florida reached a record breaking 621. With countless murders ravaging the city, the Dade County Medical Examiner enlisted the help of Burger King, arranging to borrow special refrigerated trucks to store the surplus of dead bodies.

Initiating a blind hiring frenzy to combat the rampant crime, the Miami Police department began to lower the requirements for employment. Greatly reducing provisions initially aimed to attract qualified and capable officers, the lax requirements for hire resulted in one the largest police corruption crises the city had ever seen. In two years alone, 40 Miami police officers were arrested or suspended for their involvement in the cocaine trade.

Beginning of the End

As pervasive and profitable as it was, in the mid 1980’s, the cocaine trade began to unravel from within. Turmoil within the cartels deteriorated the trade as heightened force at the federal level made it increasingly difficult for smugglers to operate. Capturing major players involved in the trade, once arrested many individuals incriminated other members of their operation, as the violence and destruction of the trade began to receive national attention.

Surprisingly enough however, the downturn of the cocaine trade in South Florida created new opportunities for the city as well. As the trade declined, so did the businesses and establishments that many traffickers frequented. As a result, this new void empowered speculators whose businesses’ had profited during the height of the trade. With a surplus of capital these individuals would enhance the economy of South Florida in the following years.

“Drugs destroy a community when you’re dealing with the street level,” recalls Miami homicide detective Nelson Andreu. “When you’re talking about drug dealing on a level where major drug dealers are living here and vacationing, buying homes and laundering money, that picks up the economy of a city or community.” Through various avenues of enterprise, much of the recovered profits from the fall of the cocaine trade went into the infrastructure of Miami. Helping to rebuild the city from the ground up, many believe that the Miami of today was built from the profits of the cocaine trades illicit past. A dark memory in the city’s history, Miami in the 1980’s will be remembered for its violence and destruction and culture of excess.

Complimenting the main line, the basics collection consists of the classic t shirt and tank top in various exclusively designed fabrics and patterns. View the full collection here.

Available now in select retailers worldwide or at Reserve Online.