Anti-Nazi buttons
Mar. 29th, 2017 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stardreamer posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
thisfinecrewI've been wearing a safety pin for several months now, but I was beginning to feel dissatisfied. It's subtle... maybe too subtle, unless you happen to hang around with a lot of activists. Then I read this article. And I decided that I was going to switch from wearing a safety pin to wearing an anti-Nazi button. Unlike the author of the article, I didn't have to sift thru vintage shops looking for one; I just typed "custom pin-back buttons" into Google and checked out the sources that popped up. I settled on this company, where I could order 100 1" buttons with the pin style I preferred for $.28 each, plus shipping and a $25 first-time setup fee (this drops to $5 for reorders). I found a good free-art image online and placed the order, and less than a week later I had my buttons. I've been wearing one ever since, but as I don't go out all that much, it was hard to tell if anyone noticed.
However, the reason I ordered 100 was to not just have one to wear, but more to give away. I keep a few in with my wallet change, a bag of 20 in my car, and at MidSouthCon I put a couple out on my table, visible but unobtrusive. Every time someone said, "I like your pin," I responded with, "Take one, they're free." I took 30 buttons to the con, and gave away 20 of them; I consider that a reasonable success. I noticed that most of the people who took one were young, but I also had one woman well into her 30s take one because she said she was Asatru and that community has been having an invasion of white supremacist neo-Nazis.
Overall, I'm pleased. This is something I can continue to do easily. Wearing the button serves the same purposes as the safety pin, only more unmistakably. Furthermore, it does something else -- it punctures the right-wing bubble by saying visibly, "This is someone who doesn't agree with you." And if having a couple on my table at cons costs me a few sales... first, I think it may gain me more, and second, I don't give a shit about anyone who wouldn't buy from me because I've declared myself to be a decent, civilized human being.
However, the reason I ordered 100 was to not just have one to wear, but more to give away. I keep a few in with my wallet change, a bag of 20 in my car, and at MidSouthCon I put a couple out on my table, visible but unobtrusive. Every time someone said, "I like your pin," I responded with, "Take one, they're free." I took 30 buttons to the con, and gave away 20 of them; I consider that a reasonable success. I noticed that most of the people who took one were young, but I also had one woman well into her 30s take one because she said she was Asatru and that community has been having an invasion of white supremacist neo-Nazis.
Overall, I'm pleased. This is something I can continue to do easily. Wearing the button serves the same purposes as the safety pin, only more unmistakably. Furthermore, it does something else -- it punctures the right-wing bubble by saying visibly, "This is someone who doesn't agree with you." And if having a couple on my table at cons costs me a few sales... first, I think it may gain me more, and second, I don't give a shit about anyone who wouldn't buy from me because I've declared myself to be a decent, civilized human being.
