Queen of the Scum - Louise Michel “Women’s” Teeshirt

The Queen of the Scum collection takes back the slanderous name given to one of the founders of Anarcho-Feminism, Louise Michel but the reactionary french press. She was a teacher, a poet, a revolutionary, and an anti-imperialist who is largely forgotten as a footnote of history.

Queen of the Scum

They called her the Queen of the Scum because she was a leader of the common people seeking social equality. She sat alongside men on revolutionary committees as an equal and the liberal journalists of the era took every opportunity to discredit her Michel was a revolutionary, figuratively and literally.

She manned the barricades alongside a brigade of women during the last stand of the Paris Commune. After her capture, she dared the forces of Versaille to kill her and they instead sent her to a penal colony in New Caledonia. Where she fought alongside the indigenous population in the 1878 Kanak revolt. 

Sent to prison three times for political speech and action, Michel spent her later years on speaking tours in discussing capitalism, women's rights and the authoritarian state.

She is still celebrated in France as the 19th century Joan of Arch or "The Red Virgin" but we choose to embrace The Queen of the Scum to remind ourselves of the media's role in slandering woman who chooses to use their voice to speak out against the apparatus of power which oppresses more than just educated white women.

100% cotton, ringspun, and vaguely threatening.