June 2024 - Pride Month and Juneteenth

Happy Pride Month! We hope everyone is feeling loved, supported, welcomed, and celebrated as we move closer to summertime. Pride Month is all about celebrating LGBTQ+ folks and honoring the longstanding history of the use of protest as a means to show the world that regardless of sexual orientation, gender expression, or gender identity, people deserve access to human rights. This month, we’d like to highlight the ways in which fair trade empowers and supports LGBTQ+ folks around the world – click here to shop our Pride collection!

*Before we get into Pride, we don’t want to neglect to mention that we’re also celebrating Juneteenth this month! Juneteenth commemorates the liberation of slaves in Texas on June 19th, 1865–making them the final slaves to be notified of their freedom, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. In a similar way to Pride, Juneteenth celebrates the newfound rights and freedoms that were achieved in part by civil disobedience. While Juneteenth is a U.S. holiday and most of the products in our shop were made abroad, you can click here to shop our collection that honors Black history!*

One of the guiding principles of fair trade bars discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation. At BCFT, some of the ways we show our support are employing queer folks, normalizing the use of correct pronouns by having them on name tags, having a gender neutral restroom, and routinely giving back to the local LGBTQ+ community through donations. We also do our best to work with vendors who share our value of diversity, equity, and inclusion as it pertains to LGBTQ+ folk.

We acknowledge that many of the artisan & farmer partners who make the things in our store are from countries where Pride is not something they can openly celebrate, due to anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and social norms. Despite this, we recognize that Pride is for everyone–including folks who are unable to celebrate and be their true selves. Many of our partner vendors sell Pride related products year-round and value the importance of celebrating LGBTQ+ identities, and we couldn’t be more thankful.

Below are three examples of how our vendor partners value LGBTQ+ identities!

WorldFinds

WorldFinds’ Equality Cause bracelet directly supports LGBTQ+ community members, as 15% of its sales are donated to the Matthew Shepard Foundation. This foundation facilitates diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) trainings and lobbies for anti-discrimination legislation. To date, WorldFinds has raised over $6,000 dollars for this initiative!

Fair Anita

Fair Anita is a queer-owned brand which acknowledges that in many countries (including some of those in which their artisan partners work), LGBTQ+ identities are criminalized. When Fair Anita recently launched a Pride fan, they strategically chose to work with their Cambodian artisan partners due to the country’s more progressive laws regarding LGBTQ+ people.

Conscious Step

Each Conscious Step sock design donates to a different charity! Proceeds from their Pride flag socks are donated to The Trevor Project. From Conscious Step: “The Trevor Project offers life-affirming services to LGBTQ young people, who are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers. They have provided hundreds of thousands of people with support on-line, in person, over the phone, and via text – big conversations with bold impact. Conscious Step donates $1 to The Trevor Project for each pair of socks purchased, with a committed annual gift of $40,000.”