This project is about human interaction — how we choose to treat other people.
With thanks to Janice Jow, who suggested writing down and sharing the stories of The Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin Project.
This is the story of The Waitress.
My friend and I went out for brunch one Sunday. My friend is learning to drive (which is badass when you never planned to learn and didn’t especially want to, but you just got a job you like and they want you to drive). When we go out now, she drives at least part of the time, and we stop to eat.
We went to a diner, ate, caught up on what was going on in our lives, and laughed. I approached the register, making my way through the crowd.
The waitress who had pulled cash register duty was young, maybe mid-20s, with big, serious eyes and dark hair pulled into a ponytail, which is close to being the Universal Waitress Hairdo (I used to be a waitress, years ago, and almost all of the younger waitresses wore their hair that way. It’s a practical thing). She glanced at the Love Bead Safe Harbor pin on my blouse. “I really like that,” she said quietly.
She wasn’t familiar with Safe Harbor pins (most people I meet aren’t), but said she really liked the idea. I offered her a set of pins, holding out several types. I explained that one was Civil Rights and Social Justice, one was Women’s Rights, and the rainbow set was LGBTQI Rights. She bent closer and pointed to the rainbow set. “I’d like to have those, please.” Her voice was almost a whisper.
I get it. You have to be careful when you work with the public. Some people feel it is their bound duty to give you their unsolicited opinions about how you live your life (instead of, say, keeping their opinions to themselves and going about their own lives. Whenever people do that, I want to ask for all the details about their lives so I can pass judgement on them. I should get to have fun, too).
She took the pins, met my eyes, and said, “Thank you.”
My friend and I left the restaurant. Not everyone is in a position to bravely trumpet their beliefs everywhere they go. If putting food on the table, or paying for school, or other necessities of life depend on not offending people, your march is harder than that of someone who won’t lose much by standing up. Which means that standing up is all the more important for anyone who can, because then you’re standing up for yourself, and for someone not so fortunate.
She picked those pins, making her public commitment to the importance of people treating each other with true respect, in a time and place when it wasn’t easy for her to do that. Sometimes heroics are quiet, life-affirming acts taken by people for whom standing up at all is hard.
Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin set honoring “girl geeks” and “maker mamas!”
The big push is done (the large-scale pin giveaways) after three cities, but LBSHPP is far from over. Here’s what’s in the works (so far):
A free workshop at a charity in Sacramento. Date and time TBA, but probably in July;
Pins for Progress, a fundraiser. We’ll be offering sets of pins in our Etsy shop (which is under construction right now). You can buy a set of pins *and* make a donation to charity! Each pin set will be $10, with 25% being split between Opening Doors, a charity helping refugees resettle in their new homes, and Mustard Seed School, helping kids from homeless families. One note — we can ship up to 8 sets in one envelope for one shipping price ($5 in the USA, message for the shipping rates outside the US) and more in a box (message for shipping rate). Date TBA, but within the next few weeks;
A video showing how to make your own set of pins. Date TBA, probably by the end of the summer;
We’ll continue to carry a few sets with us, so if you meet us, ask for a set of pins!
In the first phase of the project, we gave away over 1,000 pins (wow… it became larger than I ever expected), but the project was largely self-funded, so we had to look at how we could continue. This way, we can keep helping others and spreading the word!
If you’re new to the Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin and you see one “in the wild,” on someone on the street, in a restaurant, at school, at work, or any of the places you might find cool people, you might wonder if there’s any significance to the color, or the charm hanging from the pin. The answer? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
The safety pin is what makes it a “safe harbor” pin. So no matter the color or decoration, it’s still a Safe Harbor Pin. The rest is about standing up for a special cause that is close to your heart. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about anything else, just that this particular cause is one you’re especially passionate about, or is especially relevant to your life, or in the lives of people you know.
The Women’s Rights Pin:
I’ve really never understood why some people think being a feminist is a bad thing. I keep hearing women say, “Oh, I’m not a feminist!,” as though to assure other people they aren’t dangerous, or contagious. One day, I engaged a young woman in conversation, just asking what it was about feminism she didn’t like. This was only a couple of years ago, mind you. She said something like, “Well, I like men!”
I nodded. “So do I, the nice ones, anyway.” I asked her if she thought people should be paid for doing the same work, about as well. “Sure!” But, I protested, men have to support families. Women don’t. “What?,” she protested. “There are a lot of women who have kids and aren’t married, you know.” Yes, I admitted, I suppose that’s true. But what about child care? Women should be home taking care of their kids, right? “Most women can’t,” she said. “They have to work.” And some might want to work, I added. “Right.” But it doesn’t matter much what child care you use or how expensive it is. She looked at me like I was nuts. I had to laugh. “You’re a feminist,” I told her.
She really didn’t know. You might think everyone knows this stuff by now, but a lot of people don’t. They don’t know that at its base, feminism is about women being treated not like men, but on an equal basis with men. That how you are treated and what your options are shouldn’t be determined by your gender, whether you are male or female, in your personal or your professional life. The only two jobs I can think of that are gender-specific are sperm donor and surrogate mother.
There are, however, problems that are either unique to one gender or the other, or far more common for one gender or the other. You are far, far more likely to be raped if you’re female, for example. Breast cancer can hit either sex but is more common in women. Ovarian cancer? Women, obviously. So while feminism is really for any reasonable person, there are a few “women’s issues.” Women still lag behind men in pay for the same jobs, and you can debate how much the disparity is, but that’s not the important issue. It’s that women are paid less, not how much less.
Health care? An issue for everyone, but there are certain things that strike women more. Lack of access to contraceptives. Prenatal care. Lack of access to screenings like pap smears and mammograms that can catch disease when it’s early and treatable. By the way… Planned Parenthood? Its most common services, by far, are health checks for women who either can’t afford or don’t have access to other sources of health care. So defunding Planned Parenthood sentences a lot of women with low incomes to illness and death.
Rape? Do I even need to spell this one out, with the slap-on-the-wrist trial of a college athlete who dragged an unconscious woman behind a dumpster and raped her fresh in our minds? Yep, “She was asking for it because she (went there at all/wore what she was wearing/danced/you name it)” is still alive and well. Women are being held accountable for men’s choices. If I said, “I bashed him on the head, but it’s his fault because he walked past me dressed (fill in the blank) and he had a head,” I’d be sent to jail so fast my own head would spin. But rape kits expire untested and judges give offensively mild sentences and the justification is always that the victim was responsible for the choices of her attacker.
Child care? Women still get tasked with the bulk of the responsibility for child care, but this is an issue everybody can rally around . For most women, not working isn’t an option. The family needs their income. So access to affordable, quality child care is an issue that hits women, men, children, employers, everyone. Remember, we will live in the world those kids run. We need them sane, healthy, educated and safe. Employers need those women on the job, not taking off work because they can’t find child care. Any man worth the name wants his kids safe and healthy. Even if you don’t have kids, you can get behind this one.
Childhood education and nutrition? Another “everybody in/everybody wins” issue. We will grow old in the world that these kids will grow up to run. And once they reach young adulthood, our economy will count on them being employable, and employed. Which means we all need those kids educated, healthy and ready to work. Think you don’t need to worry about this because you have no kids, or you have money so your kids are okay? What planet will you be living on where you don’t need other people to do things? When I’m older, I want to be surrounded by people who are educated, healthy, employed and don’t have any reason to clobber me and steal my purse.
There’s probably at least one issue on that list that you can get behind, which would make you… take a deep breath… a feminist.
That’s why we have a “Women’s Rights” pin. So women and men who really do like women (not just want them) can say that they believe a woman’s life is as valuable as a man’s, and women shouldn’t suffer or be penalized for being female. Sounds pretty “Well, duh, of course!,” but it’s still a problem.
Back when I was a Girl Scout, I volunteered to pull the wagon full of cookie boxes if the other girl would ring doorbells and ask people to buy cookies. I like people, but I’m an introvert, and shy. Talk to lots of strangers? I’d rather step in front of a bus.
There’s this feeling, and I’ve certainly had it, that we should wait to do things until we “feel like it.” It’s not yet the time, goes that thinking, until the motivation is stronger than any reluctance we might feel.
A good friend once listened patiently as I listed all the reasons I could think of not to start a project, including how unready and nervous I felt. When I ran out of excuses, she interrupted me before I could run through the list again and said, “You’re scared? So, do it scared.”
That seemed too simple. Surely the answer was more complicated. “If it’s important,” she told me, “then it’s important enough to do it. If it’s not important enough to do it, the fear doesn’t matter. How important is this to you?”
I proceeded and the project went, if not perfectly, very well. During the project, I was nervous, elated, scared, excited, all at once. After, I was very happy I’d done it. There are no guarantees — it might have gone down in flames — but I was proud of myself for tackling something I felt strongly about.
It’s hard to explain to an extrovert, and more people are extroverts than introverts, how big a deal it is for an introvert, and a shy person, to talk to almost 600 people, even though 91% of them were receptive, everything from mildly pleased to very enthusiastic. There is not one person I met through this project who I am not glad I met. I got to meet almost 500 intelligent, openminded, caring people (and my assistant got to meet 20-30 others). If you are one of the people we gave Love Bead Safe Harbor Pins to, know that there are no words to say how happy I am that we met, or grateful I am that you listened to me, considered what I said, and decided to make your public commitment to the dignity of all human beings, even those you might not understand or approve of.
But it never did get easier, approaching strangers. Every time, I had to nerve myself to speak to people. Each encounter, I did it scared. I’m so glad I didn’t wait until I felt like it.
If there’s something you want to do, or create, and it’s important to you, don’t wait until you “feel like it.” If it’s really important to you, get moving, even if just the initial planning stage that will eventually bring your idea to fruition. Pat was right, all those years ago. If you need to do it, do it scared.
The basic idea behind the Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin Project
In November of 2016, I found myself increasingly distressed by the tone of civic life, not just in America, but around the world. There was a new level of just plain, low-down meanness. Name calling, threats… it seemed as though humanity, as a species, was bent on finding out what’s lower than living in the gutter.
I heard from people who were being threatened, or attacked, for some perceived difference. Some way they were perceived as being strange, or not fitting in. It’s not like the abusers were taking time to get to know people and then finding them objectionable. No, this was surface stuff. A way of dressing, the sound of a voice, skin color. Based on just that, the attackers decided they knew who those people were and what that meant.
About that time, I found out about the “Safe Harbor” pin, a plain safety pin worn to signal that you are safe to approach, that you won’t abuse or attack someone else. The idea came from Great Britain. I began wearing a safety pin. It wasn’t something I thought through deeply. It just felt right.
Soon after, reports started surfacing of people who self-identified as “white supremacists” wearing plain safety pins, and a few people objected to the idea of the “safe harbor” pin. The first were, perhaps, trying to co-opt the safe harbor symbol and turn it. The second objected because, they said, wearing a safe harbor pin was (and I’m paraphrasing here), a way for white people to feel good about themselves without doing anything about the problems facing society.
To resist the co-opting of the symbol, I started decorating my pin, making it more flashy, not the sort of thing your average white supremacist would be comfortable with. I started beading my pins, either adopting color patterns already associated with certain causes (like the rainbow pin for LGBTQI rights), or assigning a meaning to a pattern (like the red and white pin showing a commitment to health care for all).
Before going on, let’s address the second issue, that the pin is “just” a symbol. No symbol, on its own, solves a problem, yet human beings seem to need them. We’re always creating symbols. It’s a shorthand for an idea, and using that symbol is a way to remind yourself that you are committed to it, and to tell others that you think it’s important. I have been told by people wearing Love Bead Safe Harbor Pins that when they have them on, it alters their interactions with other people. They’re more cognizant of the choices they make. That, I believe, is a good thing.
As I wore my pin, other people admired it and asked where they could get one. I started making extras, carrying them around and giving them to people who admired my pin. As I did, I explained briefly the significance of the pin and started using the term “radical respect” to explain the idea that we have the choice to treat other people, even people we disagree with, or don’t understand, or disapprove of, with respect. That we can respect our common humanity.
The more I talked to people, the clearer the idea became. Given a chance, would people choose to publicly avow a belief that all people should be treated with respect?
Looking at the conversations I was having, I realized that the pin was a means to talking about these ideas and making them conscious choices. If I simply approached someone and asked him to publicly declare his commitment to treating people with respect, most people would probably decline, if they even let me finish the thought. But I saw that offering that little keepsake, that beaded pin, gave people the opportunity to make a conscious choice. At a pin giveaway, here are the choices:
Make eye contact or don’t. If someone avoids eye contact, I let him walk by;
Talk to me or don’t. If I start to offer a pin and the person indicates he doesn’t want to talk, I let him pass;
Listen to me or don’t. A few people will cut me off mid-sentence and leave, or dispute the basic idea (the “yeah, but” reaction);
Accept a pin, or don’t. At this point, the pin has a meaning attached to it already (“Wearing it or keeping it where you can see it represents your belief that all people, even people you may disagree with, not understand, or disapprove of, should be treated with respect.”). To accept the set at this point is to accept the philosophy. Because you are offered the pin, and the philosophy, in a public place, acceptance is a public statement;
Choose a basic Safe Harbor Pin, or choose one with a secondary meaning (support for women’s rights, for example, or support for access to health care);
Wear the pin, or don’t. What you do with the pin is another point of choice. Those who strongly agree are most likely to wear the pin (sometimes putting it on at that moment);
Share the second pin on the card, or don’t. I’ve seen people do it right away, or state to whom they intend to give the second pin.
Via that little pin, people are given a way to make a conscious choice, affirm that choice, and even advocate for their belief.
While a couple of people contacted me online and volunteered to contribute to the cost of the materials for the pins, when I give away pins in person, I do not solicit donations, nor do I accept them. It’s important to me that it is free to the recipient. It is presented as a gift. If someone offers me money in person, I urge him to contribute that money to a cause or charity he supports.
In total, we gave away 510 sets of pins in three cities (or 1,020 pins).
Over and over, I’ve talked with people who get very energized and enthusiastic, far more than the offer of a free beaded safety pin can account for. Having talked to hundreds of people and watched them react, it seems to be the idea they get excited about, that we can consciously choose how to treat people, and that those choices say something about the people we decide to be. In a couple of minutes, they are presented with that information (by being presented with the chance to consciously choose), and a symbol of the decision they made.
I’ve had people say they like “having a name for it.” As one woman explained, “having a name for the idea makes it easier to talk about.” Another said that having the symbol helped her talk about the ideas behind it as she could show the pin and explain what it is as a way to start.
My mother used to say that people will rise to your expectations, or fall to them. Certainly that’s been my experience in this project. Given a simple keepsake as a symbol, many people will confirm for themselves and the people around them that they aspire to ask more of themselves.
Which is a very hopeful thing.
I’m grateful to have been present when they made that choice. To everyone who chose to take a set of pins, thank you for letting me be part of that moment. May you be blessed and may you enjoy the pride you justifiably feel. It seemed like a brief moment and a small thing, but it was big.
Secondary meaning came via the color pattern. Shown here: women’s rights, environmantalism, LGBTQI rights and Civil Rights & Social Justice.The “Access To Health Care” PinThe “LGBTQI Rights” PinThe “Women’s Rights” Pin
