I was wandering down Huntington looking for a suitably incendiary place to put my sticker, when I noticed this sign outside of the dry cleaner near Symphony Market. This sign, ostensibly designed to make students feel more comfortable and ultimately choose this particular business to clean their jungle-juice-stained shirts, takes on a bit of a creepy feel when complemented with this rather violent sticker. It becomes a message not from the well-meaning dry cleaner, who just wants to get that vodka-cranberry stain out of your nice dress at a decent price, but rather from the consumer culture that somehow convinces an astounding number of people to pay $135 for a pair of sneakers because they were named after a basketball celebrity and have been ruthlessly marketed to their demographic. "Welcome back students," it says, "to another year of brand-worshipping consumerism at the cost of the people who made your shoe at less than minimum wage because a minimum wage doesn't exist in their country because the company that designed your glamorous shoe and convinced you that you needed it has lobbied, bribed, and coerced their government into deregulating industry so they can work in free trade zones and take all their profits out of the country without paying taxes!!!!"
^I tried to make that as angry as the sticker.
- Rebecca Willett
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