This is the last thing I check on my way out of my apartment. Near the door, it’s where I keep my keys, and as you can see, it has a bunch of pinback buttons in it, currently topical or universally applicable. Thus, I am reminded to grab one and affix it to whatever I happen to be wearing.
I have made a habit of this over the last year or so, because I found my button-wearing went through long erratic cycles, last peaking in the first couple years of the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
There are several important reasons that we should accessorize our duds with a button or two. First, it reminds us who we are, what we are about, where we stand in the world. Second, it reminds neighbors, friends, coworkers, fellow students who we are and what we are about.
You will find it starts many discussions. One guy I’d chatted with once in a while as I grabbed a bite, a Moroccan immigrant named Aziz who runs a gyro cart on 116th and Frederick Douglass, noticed my Palestine Will Win button (from the mid-’70s) during Gaza last summer and we now talk politics whenever I fall by, all sorts of politics.
Third, it does propaganda for the people’s struggles among people you don’t know. This has two aspects, really. For folks who don’t think about political and social issues much, we button-wearers are a living reminder that there is a different way to be in the world.
For those who already share some of our views, it’s a statement of solidarity: “You aren’t alone.” Think about it. Doesn’t it do your heart good when you catch sight of someone wearing a button that says “99%” or “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot”?
We sure seem to be in a period of upsurge, with Gaza, the Climate March and especially the ongoing eruption triggered by the people of Ferguson, MO. Button wearing looks to be lagging behind the overall level of struggle, so I hope this article, and the Button Up! feature that it inaugurates, will make a contribution, however small, to rectifying that!
[This is reposted from the Freedom Road Socialist Organization website, where I've been asked to write and curate an occasional feature on political buttons (or pins, if you prefer), current and historic. I'll try and repost the more interesting ones here in the People's Republic of Orange, especially now that I've figured out how to put images in.]