{"id":8129,"date":"2019-02-12T13:18:38","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T18:18:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idavox.com\/?p=8129"},"modified":"2019-02-12T13:18:43","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T18:18:43","slug":"meet-fellow-worker-gritty-the-anti-fascist-mascot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idavox.com\/index.php\/2019\/02\/12\/meet-fellow-worker-gritty-the-anti-fascist-mascot\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Fellow Worker Gritty, the Anti-Fascist Mascot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here’s where we announce that after fourteen years, One People’s Project HQ soon will be moving out of Philadelphia, PA and back to our old stomping grounds of New Brunswick, NJ. We will still have a chapter in the City of Antifa Love, and we especially are happy we did and will continue to do our part to cause the fash some grief while there. And given how the Gritty phenom just took off, we know we are leaving it in some very capable hands!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Truthout<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By now you have probably heard about Gritty, the mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team who has become nothing less than a phenomenon since debuting last September. Gritty has quickly become an\u00a0NHL all-star<\/a>\u00a0and symbol of everything Philly, but there is much more to the orange, wide-eyed monster. Look no further than a\u00a0resolution introduced<\/a>\u00a0by members of the Philadelphia City Council:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gritty has been described as a 7-foot tall orange hellion, a fuzzy eldritch horror, a ghastly empty-eyed Muppet with a Delco beard, a cross of Snuffleupagus and Oscar the Grouch, a deranged orange lunatic, an acid trip of a mascot, a shaggy orange Wookiee-esque grotesquerie, a non-binary leftist icon, an orange menace, a raging id, and an antihero. He has been characterized as huggable but also potentially insurrectionary, ridiculous, horrifying, unsettling, and absurd\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNon-binary leftist icon?\u201d Absolutely. While the official Flyers\u2019 Gritty has\u00a0dodged questions<\/a>\u00a0about politics, the magic of memes has made it clear that \u201cGritty is antifa,\u201d and no amount of\u00a0grumbling at the Wall Street Journal<\/a>\u00a0is going to change that. As the anarchist writers with the CrimethInc. Collective recently\u00a0noted<\/a>, \u201cOn the level of meme warfare, the anti-fascist Gritty supplanted the alt-right Pepe the Frog as the most recognizable politicized cartoon character. This is a hard-won victory \u2014 if a weird one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To learn more, Truthout interviewed Fellow Worker Gritty, a well-known Gritty incarnation and Twitter personality who has become a mascot for anti-fascists and Wobblies everywhere. While Fellow Worker Gritty has put out less than 375 tweets as of this writing, their\u00a0account<\/a>\u00a0has gained nearly 15,000 followers in a matter of months. Fellow Worker Gritty tweets plenty of funny memes, for sure, but the account also fundraises for activist causes and sends call-outs for actions. As we learned, Fellow Worker Gritty is not just a meme or a worker. They are a cultural critic, organizer and an icon haunting the dreams of fascists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

@EyesOfGritty<\/a> @FellowGritty<\/a>
So be good for goodness' sake. pic.twitter.com\/9ef3zWrAyM<\/a><\/p>— Antifa International (@antifaintl) December 24, 2018<\/a><\/blockquote>\n