There was a time, earlier this year, when the Harris-Walz camo hat was the hottest fashion accessory out there.
The campaign’s initial release of 3,000 hats—a riff on the “Midwest Princess” hat sold by pop superstar Chappell Roan—sold out in just 30 minutes, reaching more than $1 million in sales in the first 24 hours. There was a waitlist, there were paparazzi photos of celebrities wearing it. Bootlegs appeared all over Etsy and Amazon.
Watching the hubbub around the simple camo and blaze orange ball cap gave Jane and Andy Shannon, the husband-wife co-owners of Bench Pressed letterpress shop in Minneapolis’s Seward neighborhood, an idea.
“It made me think of what we really want from a candidate. What we really want to have our politicians say and do for their constituents,” Jane tells Racket. “We want a ceasefire [in Gaza]. We want an arms embargo [on Israel]. We want to stop seeing innocent people dead and dying daily.”
(Also, Chappell Roan is her three year old's favorite artist.)
So, Bench Pressed decided to make a Midwest Princess riff of their own—this one with all-caps lettering spelling out CEASEFIRE—and donate a portion of the proceeds to Doctors Without Borders.
Bon Iver might not be wearing this version onstage, but every leftist in Minneapolis-St. Paul shared Bench Pressed’s Instagram post announcing the hat or later posted pictures of themselves wearing one. Its fans include staffers for Rep. Ilhan Omar, who have worn them in photos, and Elianne Farhat, executive director of political advocacy org Take Action Minnesota.
The first run of 100 hats, released on September 6, sold out in 10 days, and a second drop followed a few weeks later. To date, the print shop has donated a total of $1,873 to Doctors Without Borders from hat sales. (You can find a full donation breakdown of the Bench Pressed donation model here; essentially, after the cost of the item, the shop gets half of the profits and half are donated.)
There’s been no real backlash to the hats, according to Jane—they’re in a “sweet spot” where the politics of the shop are well-known to their 18,000+ Instagram followers, and it didn’t go quite viral enough for trolls to show up.
“I won't lie and say that I'm always 100% confident that we're always safe at the shop because of our political or social issues that we support,” she says. “But without being too cheesy about it, isn't that what we're supposed to do? To say something even if your voice is wavering? To get into trouble, good trouble?”
Bench Pressed’s other 2024 election-adjacent merch included "mind your own damn business" T-shirts and lawn signs reading "look out for your neighbors, stop being weird.” Jane, who voted undecided in the primary and for Harris/Walz in the November 5 election, says she’s “not delusional” that there are perfect candidates.
“My belief is that I can both support a candidate and push them towards the things that are important to my local community and our global community as well,” she explains. It’s why proceeds from those items were directed to Prairie Abortion Fund and Native American Community Clinic rather than the Harris-Walz campaign.
The postmortem on the Democrats’ decisive loss is ongoing, but early signs suggest there are lots of voters like the Bench Pressed duo out there who wanted to see more than ceasefire lip-service from the Harris campaign while the White House funneled money to Israel. “The Trump campaign’s research found that up-for-grabs voters were about six times as likely as other battleground-state voters to be motivated by their views of Israel’s war in Gaza,” the New York Times reported in the days ahead of the election.
There have been lots of observations like this one, from Al Jazeera reporter Ali Harb: “I spoke to dozens of Arab Americans in Michigan. Nearly every one of them - including lifelong Dems - mentioned Kamala Harris's embrace of the Cheneys with a mix of disgust and bewilderment. Campaigning with Liz Cheney did have an impact, just not the effect Dems hoped for.”
“I think that the past 13 months have been so intense for so many people,” Jane says. “I have to remind myself that it should not be normal to see dead and/or dying people everyday live-streamed through my phone. It should not be normal to see so many in our community actively need support and to see billions of dollars of our tax dollars go to arms for another nation.”
“We are living through an absolutely insane time,” she continues, “and if a silly little hat helps you feel better and raise money for a good cause, I'm all for it.”
