The way I read Shaun’s post was that it was a critique aimed at corporate America and Levi’s marketing strategies and not the grassroots efforts of people in Braddock and the mayor.
Levi’s has made their fortune off sweatshops and their feel-good ads mask their labor practices. It is commendable that they helped rebuilt the community youth center in Braddock. Nearly all corporations do charity work. This should not, however, blind us to class politics and the means by which corporate power has run communities and the environment into the ground.
What I find disheartening about the mayor’s post is that he seems to imply that Levi’s (a multi-billion corporation) has benefited the community and Justseeds has done nothing positive. It discredits the efforts that the Pittsburgh members (Mary, Shaun, Bec, and Swoon) have done in the past and continue to do, and it assumes that a massive corporation and a handful of artists are on the same playing field.
Critique and analysis of corporations, cities and the issues they face is always needed and the mayor’s comments seems to want to dismiss the issue of the post – the content of the Levi’s ad.
Lastly, people often make the mistake that Justseeds speaks as a unified group. There is not a “we” in Justseeds. There are 25 members all with different opinions and backgrounds living from Montreal to Mexico City and Oakland to Philadelphia. Half of the collective was not even at the last retreat in Braddock, as an aside, the mayor was incredibly generous is letting us host the retreat in Braddock. I cannot imagine for a second that JS members did not thank him during the retreat and nor do I buy the notion that we did not clean up after ourselves. We did a large group clean up and I personally helped load up Shaun’s truck with recycled goods and trash. If we did not clean the house to your standards, please accept our apologies and let us know some way that we can repay your generosity in the near future.
So, Mayor John, let’s continue the dialogue, but with courtesy and discussion that is critical and constructive. “We” artists in Justseeds, four of which live in Pittsburgh, two with studios in Braddock, are much closer allies than a multi-national corporation.

I wouldn’t criticize the mayor for accepting the offer of help from Levi’s and I don’t feel like this post has anything to do with that. I think the problem here is about what role corporations should play in our lives.
Should corporations swoop in every once in a while to provide charity or should corporations be there for the long term, providing the jobs that mean people can pay the taxes that go toward the continual development of local infrastructure like libraries and community centers?
In the short term, any struggling town can benefit from charity. A lot of international aid works like this in developing countries when there is a natural disaster or famine. But it’s not a sustainable form of development because the people affected are left with no extra power or resources to prevent it from happening again in the future.
I’ve no doubt the children of Braddock will benefit from the new community center but what happens when they need to start earning a living? Unless they move to an island in the Pacific they won’t get a job from Levi’s. They certainly won’t be able to pay any taxes in Braddock to help maintain that community center either.

a few years back i heard a great line i’ll now paraphrase “with the invention of illustrator and photoshop, everyone thinks they’re an artist.”
now, with blogs, many fancy themselves noam chomsky, each quivering in anticipation that their hackneyed take-down will contain the zinger of this partnership that i haven’t seen coming for a mile out.
even better? nigel’s critique isn’t even his own, his weapon of choice actually quotes tom waits?? don’t most people stop doing that by sophomore year in college?–and then from blackbook?!? now those are some change agents preoccupied for the oppressed and working poor.
and, for the record, i’d be delighted to build the blackbook wing of the community center, or the angry, blogging misanthropes free clinic in braddock (or any number of our mon valley communities) but that would require more than sitting on their asses and typing cliche screeds about corporate blah blah.
add up all these deskchair warriors of social justice, typing away on their chinese-made ipads while sipping fair trade coffee and not one of them has ever performed sustained effort to help a community like braddock.
in closing, back to where this all began, since there is no “we” in justseeds, the final portion of this post is specifically for mr. shaun slifer.
who, after relocating from perhaps the whitest and most hyper-gentrified city in the country, selected new rapidly gentrifing pittsburgh neighborhood a block down from a cupcake shop, ‘pan-asian’ fusion cuisine, and a designer shoe boutique.
shaun- i could introduce you to my friend mayor phil in duquesne, a small mill town across the mon, and you can move justseeds THERE and turn things around. shaun, they’ve had nine arsons in july alone, along with other violence.(all, much like braddock used to) then, nine years later, i can take cheap, uniformed shots at you and your efforts to heal Duquesne (on my blog, natch!) AFTER my friends crash at your place gratis, the year prior.
to the critics: please, do something first, *then* critique, and if you must, please at least be original. as dali once said, “The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.” we’ve got a daisy chain of devastated towns here in the mon valley. i’ll even make the introductions.
levi’s is flawed, i’m deeply flawed, but, so are you. 2/3 of that sentence is trying. and, in lyrical tribute to my bud eddie mullins at blackbook: meatloaf once said “two out of three ain’t bad.”
mayor john fetterman

Mayor John says:
“any critique of the levi’s campaign is a critique of me and everything i’ve done in town for the past 9 years.”
It may feel that way, John, but it’s not. Shaun is pointing out a deep irony of capitalism: Levi’s offshoring of labor has decimated local communities just as surely as the collapse of the steel industry decimated Braddock. For Levi’s to associate its brand with the glamor of labor in a struggling company town is a double betrayal of the mill towns it helped destroy.
(If Braddock residents saw a UPMC ad glorifying its commitment to building community, I’m sure they’d feel just as sickened.)
But that irony is old news. It’s been around since Andrew Carnegie started building libraries.
But thinking the Levi’s ad is gross is not the same as thinking Mayor John made the wrong decision. $2 million is a lot of money. Hopefully, it will have a lasting impact in Braddock long after these ads are a distant memory.

Hey, leave me out of this!

Mayor
Again, thank you for letting us stay in your place. I apologize if you feel we took advantage of your goodwill in anyway.
I do however take offense to your hard edge critique of 25 individuals located in 14 cities across North America, who as a group make up Justseeds, it is quite amazing. To dismiss the work these people do and state that only yourself and Levi’s are “trying” is inane. Obviously the folks in Justseeds are not elected officials or multi-national corporations and thus are working in different (often less public) manners to make positive change.
In Shaun’s short critique of the absurd Levi’s commercial there was no critique of your collaboration with the company. Yet apparently you saw any critique “coming for a mile out”. I am thus astounded by your reactionary responses to a critique obviously not directed at “all the real work being done to improve upon Braddok’s current state” (as Shaun stated) but at a corporation that is touting “urban frontiers” as something that “breaks on purpose” because we need something to do. What kind of idiotic history lesson is Levi’s trying to push on us. You know and I know that communities across this country did get broke on purpose, and its because labor is cheaper elsewhere, and a corporation’s ties to community are as rooted as smoke blowing in the wind.

I am not going to repeat more of the same, but my feelings echo all of the assertions that this blogpost was intended to criticize the practices of corporations not the mayor,the citizens of Braddock, or the decision to accept money from Levis. It is greatly disappointing that what has resulted is a childish personal attack, and a public airing of grievances that could have been discussed in a more appropriate and constructive way.
As far as corporations go, Levis is just one of many that engages in philanthropy and charity as a means of promoting an image as a socially responsible company to consumers and investors. It is a tactic that is meant to divert attention away from other issues that may include their labor or environmental practices, in addition to their political affiliations and complicity in repression and even murder. Levis is not unique. The list could go on and on: Nestle, Pfizer, Coca-Cola, Monsanto, Target…this is not an assertion, this is the hard truth.
And as far as the comments made about what “we”- Justseeds do in the real world in our commitment to work with community and support social justice movements, I think we have made a big effort to promote the work we do and the work of others, which is all well documented on this website and elsewhere.
Mr. Mayor, you don’t know me, but several years ago I helped install doors on the convent where Justseeds stayed, clean up Transformazium’s church and board up the windows there in addition to helping out with their public art project. Although these efforts are small in comparison to the work you do and the collective efforts of everyone working in Braddock on a daily basis, its what I contributed before I went back to my armchair to blog more.
Concerning the mess we made in the convent, as far as my knowledge goes, you do not even live there. And the people who lived there at the time of my visit would have more justification in criticizing any damage we did. Perhaps you own the building, but I think I saw you once the entire time I was there.
It is true that Levis billboards are not plastered all over Braddock, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that they are not the target audience with this ad campaign since I see posters of Braddock all over the bus stations in the shopping districts in Manhattan. This is making the working people into a brand. If this results in raising awareness about the situation in Braddock (as I have watched the other mini-films online- the one where you are interviewed and the one where people in Braddock are interviewed) then great. Somehow I doubt that it is going to improve the widespread unemployment and devastating economic crisis we currently face.
-Molly Fair
Justseeds member
Brooklyn, NY

Regardless of what Levi’s has or hasn’t done for Braddock, it’s still a pretty corny ad…

I’m catching on to this blog a little late, but I couldn’t help but to elaborate on the actual ad, especially regarding what the audience takes away from viewing it – which I see as blatantly about post-recession American Reconstruction. The ad needs to relate to the general public who knows nothing about Braddock, so it connects to the post-recession struggle this country is going through. It alludes to ‘work’ ideals of the Obama administration – “pioneer” and “frontier” are metaphors used to connect American identity to work ethic and innovation. Braddock is secondary because it has to be – an allegory, case study, and literal interpretation of the ‘work’ that needs to be done. The ruins look cool, but they also inspire thoughts of work in rebuilding this country. In one and a half minutes or less, what I think gets taken away with the audience is something along the lines of “Americans are rebuilding America, this is a great and respectable thing to do, levis likes this work.” The intention is to sell jeans, inspire, and to pay tribute.
My hunch is that the audience is on to corporate advertising strategies since it’s been decades since companies have latched brands on to much bigger, broader, concepts than the goods themselves could possibly carry the weight of. In a 2010 America, assuming that any mass-advertised goods are foreign made is a safe bet unless a company advertises the shit out of the fact that they are not (ie American Apparel…facing bankruptcy).
The disconnect between Levis the ad and Levis the business lies in the Capitalist system – as does the story of the rise and fall of Braddock, PA. Levis, a for-profit, capitalist corporation, supports and idealizes the work of non-profit, non-capitalist driven community initiatives. This scenario does not necessitate insincerity. Though it makes sense that, in addition to a community center and a very public tribute, Levis would have to take steps forward to come to a full reconciliation of what they like (American work) and what they do (hire abroad). I wonder if this is possible economically for them. I would love to see in this campaign the ad driving the product instead of the other way around.

LOL.
You guys want Levi’s to hire American workers? Then pay $200 for jeans. You cannot have it all. I feel for both sides of the debate, but seriously, the costs of protectionist labor policies are, well, pricey products.

From Mark Vallen’s Art For Change Blog:
The spectacle of Levi Strauss & Co. as a benevolent, socially responsible, and altruistic “corporate citizen” reminds me of a talk given by radical Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek. His 2009 lecture, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, examines how charitable giving has become “the basic constituent” of today’s capitalist economy. Žižek contends that “In today’s capitalism, more and more, the tendency is to bring the two dimensions (charity and commerce) together in one and the same cluster, so that when you buy something – your anti-consumerist duty to do something for others, for the environment, and so on, is already included into it. If you think I’m exaggerating you have them around the corner, walk into any Starbucks Coffee, and you will see how they explicitly tell you, I quote their campaign; ‘It’s not just what you are buying – it’s what you are buying into.’ (….) You don’t just buy a coffee, you buy – in the very consumerist act – you buy your redemption from being only a consumerist.”
http://art-for-a-change.com/blog/2010/08/levi-artists-lay-down-your-brushes.html#respond

Although I have not spent much time in Braddock, I very recently visited and these impressions are still fresh. I wrote this response on the long train-trip back to New York from Pittsburgh, so please excuse the length… Perhaps, my perspective as a free-lance marketing consultant for Levi’s will be constructive here and now. It is, at least in this thread, unique.
To be clear, nothing about any of this is simple. Taken broadly, we are talking about global Capitalism, identity politics and semiotic warfare. Even at a much smaller scale, this conversation is about corporate social responsibility, economic and environmental sustainability, collectivism, local politics, charity and notions of citizenship. I’ve spent the entirety of my short adult life trying to sort through all of this (as have many of you), and although I’ll still rally for revolution, I have also grown into some uncomfortable realities. I’m not interested in the false-binaries of certain radical poses… and although antagonism is my preferred philosophical rabbit-hole, I aspire to everyday alliances and collectivism – sometimes, even compromise (Gasp!). I am deeply committed to experimenting with existing structures, to subversive action alongside personal satisfaction, and to tenable change. I know that none of this is possible without a constant questioning, a self-reflexive criticality, and an optimistic, open heart.
For the last four years, I have consulted artists, activists, cultural institutions and non-profit organizations to help develop mutually beneficial partnerships with businesses and brands. This means, I help get them money for projects they can’t fund otherwise. I have worked for the last year on marketing initiatives related to the current Levi’s campaign. I was instrumental in developing the above-mentioned Levi’s Workshop program, which began with a two-month print studio in San Francisco and is continuing now with a public photography studio in New York City. The first time I came to Braddock was during the photo shoot for the much-bemoaned Levi’s advertisements (I didn’t need to be there, but I wanted to see what it was all about. And, I was interested in connecting with the people who ran Transformazium and those organizing Braddock Youth Projects.) My second visit to Braddock was this last weekend, on the occasion of the Library Pop! event at the Carnegie Library. I helped fund this event, with marketing dollars from Levi’s, and worked remotely to coordinate with the Neighborhood Print Studio and educators at the Warhol Museum.
I cannot speak on behalf of the Levi’s brand, but I would like to reflect personally on a few things related to Braddock and Levi’s intentions there:
The Braddock advertising campaign is deeply flawed. I agree with many of the comments above, and most precisely to Tonya Markiewicz whose analysis is much more efficient than mine would be. I would even go further and air my discomfort with the way in which the rhetoric of a historic labor movement has been appropriated, along with a collage of Obama-style enthusiasm and depression era WPA reportage imagery. It has succeeded in further romancing poverty, simplifying the Marxian logic of labor, and distracting from the company’s own complicity in overseas outsourcing. (Cue: Naomi Klein scream and James Agee grave spin) That voice-over is mellow-dramatic and lame.
But taken in context, this is a reflection rather than a production of our present cultural reality. The global economic recession has made flannel and work uniforms popular, and Williamsburg was flooded in work-boots before The New York Times and NPR did stories highlighting Braddock. Levi’s perceived this and their ad agency in lily-Portland simply elaborated on it with their Ready to Work campaign and the Braddock, PA material. This is what advertisers do for brands: they create narratives that provoke aspiration/identification, thus producing comfort, familiarity, loyalty and even advocacy. In the grander scheme of things, this print/video imagery is nothing new. I agree that fighting the cultural norms reinforced by advertisers is an important and long-term war, but perhaps there are better battles in our short-term (“be stupid?”).
Rather than playing the adbuster drums and lamenting what is an otherwise uninteresting stunt (using “real” people instead of models, highlighting location rather than achieving some universal dis-location), it is much more interesting to look at what potentially distinguishes this campaign from others. In my mind, this is the fact that Levi’s has engaged in an extended dialogue with Braddock (more community stakeholders than participants in the campaign) and has made a substantial commitment to supplying both material and immaterial resources for the short and medium-term sustenance of this town. It should be noted that this is not really the same as the charity other companies may do with their foundational giving or parallel social responsibility programs. To gloss over this for the purpose of this forum: corporate foundations usually have large bureaucracies, they support non-profit organizations according to specific agendas linked to the board-member interests which only sometimes coincide with brand communications or corporate marketing agendas. Foundations are actually separate entities, and whatever dialogue exists between funder and recipient seldom reaches the desks of those driving business activity. In my experience, charity from a foundation-or even an individual donor-would rarely support the kind of projects the Levi’s money has enabled (a roof on a community center, discretionary funds for a public library, expanding a neighborhood farm) or would require sponsor attribution, sustained growth, regular reporting and a meted payment. As far as I know, Levi’s has made big-money donations with no such strings attached. These have been strategic decisions with the future growth and health of the town as a top priority. I would take issue with Shaun’s assertion that Levi’s has “thrown cash” at anything. Like most gifts, this has precipitated a complicated exchange involving both material and immaterial transfer and obligation (see Lewis Hyde for more on the erotic life of property).
Although Levi’s may be paving the way among mega-brands, they are part of an emerging trend among brand marketers to engage the public in social interactions around civic activity and creative cultural production. If you haven’t noticed, check out recent efforts by Pepsi (Pepsi Refresh) and countless smaller brands that engage and support non-commercial cultural producers such as artists and activists (Intel, RVCA, Toyota, etc.). While traditional advertising relies on disruption: an ad before entertainment, a commercial break in the middle of your TV show or a billboard jarring the horizon. Product placement (a TV character drinking Pepsi and showing off their Levi’s), celebrity seeding (giving expensive clothes to the few people who can afford them), product-centered media properties (a music video quietly paid for by Mountain Dew), and event marketing (a free concert in celebration of a new mobile phone) have blurred these lines, but they ultimately rely on soft deception and invasive commodification. To the savvy consumer (or to the anti-consumer), even these more sophisticated tactics are transparent and ultimately offensive. And everyone is increasingly aware of these maneuvers: the tactics of hype and networking, the insider games between editorial content producers and advertisers, the co-option of otherwise emancipatory technologies, and so forth.
So, we find ourselves at a late capitalist convergence point that Zizek, among others, has elaborated on. (referenced above and commonly reposted online http://is.gd/fwryG ) Bizarrely, it seems the best way to position a corporate brand is to align it with anti-consumerist impulses of charity, community, and even good old-fashioned resistance. (Again, nothing entirely new as people have been selling punk/DIY for decades). Zizek focuses on charity and cites Starbucks and the “communities” they have created around their coffee-shops, and more recently, with fair-trade promotions and an aura of global do-goodery. But, Zizek has been selectively appropriated by Mark Vallen. Watch the lecture in its entirety here:
Evil does not reside in the fact that charity and commerce have drawn ever closer together. Instead, his is a wide–spread condemnation of charity as a by-product of Capitalism. He doesn’t have beef with charity in theory, it is instead his intention to draw attention to the way it works in society: a few who make all the money placate the masses with charitable deeds. Again, this is nothing new and is especially evident in the system of libraries built by Andrew Carnegie, starting with the Braddock library.
In that same lecture, Zizek claims that if you look deep into yourself, you will admit that buying organic apples (or coffee for that matter) is really a show of egotist consumption. “You don’t really believe that the apples are any better than the GMO apples, but you like buying into everything that the apple stands for (mother earth, etc.).” He also damns all charitable giving as a tool for perpetuating the system that enables the very ills charity combats (poverty, etc.). He points out that “the worst slave-owners are those that are kind to their slaves, and thus prevent the core of the system being realized.” These kind slave-owners don’t sow the dissent that would otherwise lead to uprising and possibly emancipation. It’s an important provocation and one that I have wrestled with: “Perhaps by facilitating community resources and funding creative production on behalf of a brand, I am masking the destructive tendencies of a global corporation and contributing to its domination.” Indeed, I may be a valuable cog in the wheel of this latest marketing trend which simply riffs on the politics I aspire to, mimes the communities I work with, and rips off the artists I love – all in the name of “charity.”
And for the most part, I wouldn’t disagree that this is a possibility. But, I would argue that this popular “appetite” for sustainable economic, social and environmental change is not going away anytime soon. I believe we are facing an opportunity to fundamentally change the way corporations communicate, and hold them ever-more accountable to their manufactured public image. If brands are willing to give away millions of dollars, I think they should be encouraged to do so sincerely, as engaged patrons. If marketing is going to parade as art and activism, then artists and activists should be given some agency and supported in their own pursuits. If environmental and social change are going to be brand platforms, then we should not only demand to see results, but we are obliged to help shape those initiatives.
It is much more complicated than this. It is all still an experiment, of sorts – a time for testing boundaries. But I think it’s too risky not to try to engage. Money alone doesn’t solve anything, but brand patronage can be a powerful force. Then again, I prefer organic apples because I think they taste better, and I like to drink my coffee without the sour of slave labor… Zizek is a great philosopher, and an important radical thinker, but he is not the authority I would invoke if I was committed to the hard day-to-day work of community building, job creation, and attracting investment.
A few questions I ask myself regularly, that you might reflect on:
Is it possible for a business entity to be an agent for positive social change?
If changing the internal logic of large corporations required your active and sincere collaboration, would you work with them?
On what scale do you want to see social change? Who has the power to make those changes?
If you can’t destroy Capitalism overnight, will you settle for incremental improvements over time?
Although I am currently employed by Levi’s, I am not their agent. I am, however, provisionally convinced that Levi’s (as an organization led by individuals and obliged to certain economic realities) is genuinely interested in leveraging their resources on behalf of causes that are both righteous and marketable. Their motivations are multi-part and increasingly transparent, and this work is aimed at achieving a type of symbiosis. In light of the Braddock campaign and the Levi’s Workshops program, it is fair to say that there is still a ways to go. But, this seems to me a step in the right direction and an important indicator of the potential for future opportunities. What if every clothing company was compelled to share their annual patronage platform along with their seasonal fashions? What if BP was actually committed to “Better Petroleum” instead of a simple wash of (re)branding and business as usual?
I would never suggest that corporations replace the other engines of cultural production: private institutions, state institutions, non-profit organizations, DIY/community-based orgs, etc. But I would also challenge anyone to claim that these organizational systems are without their flaws, similarly bound to economic realities and often compromised by their asynchronous moving parts. Lets throw corporate patronage into the mix, and see what we can do with their uncommon resources.
with respect,
adam katz
independent curator and consultant
brand marketing consultant for levi’s workshops