What “Dismantle Threads” Means and Why I Started It

I started this brand to sell shirts.

That doesn’t seem like something an anti-capitalist, socialist-democrat-ish, definitely Marxist artist would lead with. But it’s true.

When I started this company two years ago, I was in transition. Three neurodivergent kids, homeschooled by me, and a massive move that stripped away our community and everything that felt safe. Which we chose, but also felt pushed. We needed people who didn’t just wave from the driveway or offer to carpool, but who understood that democracy was crumbling around us and apathy was winning.

We could have stayed and tried to pivot. I can see that now. Instead, we chose chaos.

The move, the upheaval, the constant adjustment left me open and raw. My kids were entirely dependent on me for their social and educational lives. I was entirely dependent on my husband for income. It felt like every part of my life belonged to someone else.

I needed something that was mine. Some semblance of control. I needed to know that the life surrounding me was a choice, not a dependence. As much as I’d like to deny capitalism, and believe me, I’d love to, I also exist within it. And financial freedom is freedom.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), a 9 to 5 wasn’t going to work for me, or for us. So I did what any millennial in an existential spiral would do: I took to YouTube.

I started watching financial independence influencers. You know the ones: “Start your own business!” “Side hustles that make millions!” “Passive income for beginners!”

Ha.

Spoiler, it’s bullshit. Passive income isn’t passive, and “freedom” sold through ads is still capitalism.

Of course, I could see that. But those videos also gave me a strange kind of hope.

You see, I’ve lived chapters of my life attempting to deny the existence of capitalism. Living low waste, entirely thrifted, growing my own food, making my own soaps, cutting my family’s hair… the list goes on. I still live that way, mostly. But there’s a balance, and it’s taken a lifetime to find it.

I can’t escape capitalism while it’s still the main economic system. Even living off-grid, while noble and exciting, still requires dipping in and out of it. And not everyone can live that way sustainably. So rather than deny its existence, I decided to confront it, with this new idea of balance at the helm.

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Building Something That Matters

It takes time to build a business. It takes energy and effort away from daily life, from the kids who need schooling and the garden that needs pruning. And while the talking heads on my screen wanted me to pump out a “Live Laugh Love” shirt and laugh all the way to the bank, I couldn’t do it.

Blame it on that late-diagnosed autism, but I physically couldn’t do it.

In fact, I found any road toward running a small business challenging, ethically. My brain was constantly grappling with needing money independent from my husband and needing an existence independent from the systems binding me. Maybe they were one and the same.

I realized that if I was going to spend hours designing, writing, thinking, it had to matter. It had to be something I believed in, something worth the time I was taking from my family and from myself.

Years ago, when my kids were little, I ran a small screen-printing studio out of our home. I spent hours pulling ink through mesh, layer by layer, learning how design and message could live together. I carved my own stamps and pressed tiny prints onto newborn onesies. I loved it. Eventually, I moved away from manual printing and toward direct-to-garment production. Partly out of convenience, but mostly for sustainability. Less waste, less inventory, and more room to focus on the art itself.

That’s where Dismantle Threads came from: the need to create art that resists the system it’s sold in, the fact that it’s sold at all. It’s a contradiction, the same one so many of us live with every day.

What I didn’t expect, though, was the catharsis.

Each piece I made felt less like screaming into a void and more like a conversation with comrades. I started finding my people, helping amplify their voices when they couldn’t. Folks showing up to work with a threat to strike draped across their chest, a cheeky bit of feminist resistance stamped on their morning mug, or a call to action stitched to their backpack.

I was helping a conversation happen, one that needs to happen, often and in spaces where it might not organically come up.

It isn’t revolution, literally. But it is community.

We can’t escape systems of oppression while they remain the status quo. We can’t use “the master’s tools… (to) dismantle the master’s house.” (Lorde)

But we can challenge them, one act, one connection, one message at a time.

To dismantle is to take apart what harms us, not to destroy for destruction’s sake, but to examine the parts, learn how they work, and build something better in their place. It’s the opposite of apathy.

My designs aren’t neutral, and they’re not meant to be. They’re small acts of resistance stitched into everyday life, reminders that the systems we live in were built by people, and people can unbuild them too.

I didn’t start this thinking it would change the world. But I’ve learned that even the smallest act of expression, especially when it risks something, can be a kind of hope.

Audre Lorde said, “Your silence will not protect you.” I think about that a lot. Every time I make a new design, or hit publish, or say something that might make someone uncomfortable, it’s me choosing not to be silent.

Maybe that’s what Dismantle Threads really is: a way of stitching noise into the quiet places. Small threads of connection between people who refuse to stop caring, even when caring costs something.