IdeaJones

Tag: love beads

  • Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin Weekend Is Here!

    814 chances to choose radical respect!

    If you’re going to be within driving distance of San Francisco this weekend (June 2-4), and you’d like a free Safe Harbor pin (to show that you support treating everyone with respect), you can celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love and get yourself a free Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin.

    We started out planning to distribute 250 sets of pins (each card has 2 pins on it, so that’s 500 pins). We just finished packing up to make the trek, and we’re coming with 407 sets! 814 pins that promote “radical respect,” the idea that we can choose to treat everyone, even people we don’t understand, or with whom we disagree, with respect. We can recognize our common humanity.

    After this, we’ll try to carry a few spare sets with us (because, as other people who’ve gotten pins and worn them can tell you, it’s a conversation starter), but this is the last big pin giveaway we have planned. We’ll put a few in our Etsy shop with part of the money going to charities (like Opening Doors, helping refugees resettle, or Mustard Seed School, helping kids from homeless families), but this last distribution in San Francisco marks the end of the project.

    We have a couple of “pop up” sites that won’t be announced until just before they start, and one we can announce now. Here’s the schedule — for updates, like the pop-ups, check our Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/Ideajones/

    Friday, June 2:

    2-3 pm: Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, 558 Clayton Street, San Francisco, CA

    558 Clayton Street, San Francisco

    3-4 pm : Pop-up (location TBA, check our Facebook page) — we’ll announce it here when it’s time

    Saturday, June 3:

    10-11 am: Pop-up (location TBA, check our Facebook page) — we’ll announce it here when it’s time

    noon – 1 pm: SCRAP, 801 Toland Street, San Francisco

    A note about times — it’ll start at the listed time, and I’ll be there until I run out of pins. So far, they’ve gone quickly (I’ve given out more than 100 in 15 minutes). So if you really would like to get your hands on a set, best to be there as close to the start time as you can.

    If you know anyone in the Bay Area who might like a set of pins, please share this. Hope we see you soon! #safeharbor

  • Field Guide To Love Bead Safe Harbor Pins: The LGBTQI Pin

     

    Because we’re all human and valuable.

    A Field Guide To The Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin (kind of like a bird watcher’s guide to birds).

    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.

    A (very) simplified guide to the LGBTQI acronym.

    The LGBTQI Rights Pin:

    I’m such a fossil, I didn’t know what the “Q” and “I” were until a friend explained it to me (and I did a bit of research of my own). In case you don’t know, here’s a very basic breakdown of “LGBTQI:”

    The most important thing to know about this issue:  It’s none of my (or your) business who neighbors/ coworkers/ random people we encounter conduct their sex lives.  If you find out someone is doing something illegal, call the cops. Otherwise, it falls under “ANOYB,” or “Ain’t None Of Your Business.” People have the right to conduct their lives as they see best, in safety, and be treated with respect, whether we understand or approve of their personal choices or not.

    So wearing an LGBTQI pin doesn’t mean you approve of someone else’s life, because the point is, you don’t have to in order to believe that person deserves to be treated with respect, and his or her civil rights respected. Think of it as “radical good manners.”

    This is the rainbow pin. The type and finish of the beads may vary, but the rainbow color pattern makes this pin an LGBTQI pin.

    For me, the sex lives of other people fall under “things I don’t have to have an opinion about.” If I’m not being asked to participate or watch, it doesn’t concern me. So I really don’t have any opinion about whether people “should” or “should not” be, say, homosexual. “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” I’m too busy trying to get my own stuff straight. Other people are human and I respect their humanity and right to live without feeling threatened or abused, and I don’t need to suss their private lives because it’s not my job to judge the “worthiness” of my fellow human beings. I don’t have any “gay friends.” I have friends who are gay (or somewhere in the LGBTQI spectrum), but we don’t talk about their sex lives, or mine. It’s not relevant. It’s simply a fact about that person, about on the level of height and eye color.

    You can wear the LGBTQI pin and be fully supportive of, indifferent to, or somewhere in between, on any of the many ways human beings experience or express their gender or sexuality. You can even feel uncomfortable with all of this and wear the pin. Wearing this pin says “I believe in the rights of human beings to be treated with respect,” and a recognition that those who don’t conform to what is expected based on the gender they “seem” to be face an uphill battle in this world, and can use allies.

    The peace symbol charm on this pin signifies your feeling that people, regardless of what they look like or what they do with their personal lives, should be free to live in safety without fear of being attacked, bullied or discriminated against.

     

     

  • A Field Guide To Love Bead Safe Harbor Pins: The Civil Rights & Social Justice Pin

    A Field Guide To Love Bead Safe Harbor Pins: The Civil Rights & Social Justice Pin

    Why this color? What does this charm mean?

    A Field Guide To The Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin (kind of like a bird watcher’s guide to birds)

    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. First up:

    The Civil Rights and Social Justice Pin

    Equality before the law and human rights.

    This pin will be iridescent black (the individual beads shine with a lustrous finish like the colors of the rainbow, so in this case, a black bead that has a shiny finish that shifts in the light, like light playing on water). It looks kind of like very dark steel. The color signifies the strength and durability of steel, like the strength and durability people have to show fighting for freedom and justice. (I know, “Oooooh, deeeep!” But it’s true).

    Mine have a peace symbol charm, or a heart. The peace symbol is a charm I use on most of my Love Bead Pins. In addition to the usual meaning of the peace symbol, on the Civil Rights Pin, the peace symbol also honors those who, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, use nonviolent means to fight for their causes. That is probably the hardest route to take, to not lower yourself to the level of those who oppose you and hold to your principles in the face of opposition or even danger.

     

     

    Save

    Save

  • The Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin Project

    The Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin Project

    The schedule for the 500 Safe Harbors pin event is coming together (more on that in a second). But just in case you’re new to the Safe Harbor movement…

    Safe Harbor is an idea that came to us from Great Britain (as did scones, which are wonderful, and tea, also great). People started wearing plain safety pins to signal that they were safe to approach, wouldn’t harm or be abusive toward you… that they were “safe harbors” in the social sea. I started wearing one after friends reported they or people they knew had been abused or threatened. They signal your commitment to treating people with respect and courtesy.

    Then reports started of white supremacists wearing plain safety pins. So I, and others, started decorating our pins, taking back the symbol. After quite a few conversations where I was asked to explain Safe Harbor, and ended up giving up the pin I was wearing, I began carrying a few in my purse wherever I went. If asked about my pin, I’d explain the idea of Safe Harbor and offer the person a pin. I put them on old business cards in little gift bags to tell the recipient “this is a gift, a bit of my time given to you.” Thus they became “love beads” as well, an idea that came out of the 60s, hand-beaded jewelry given to express friendship and good wishes.

    On a vacation, we met a young man who asked if I understood the significance of wearing a safety pin. I told him I did, and had made that pin, and offered him one of his own. Later, he showed me the hat he wears when he’s off work, with my pin front and center. He asked to hug me and said he was going to tell his friends about this. I determined to make more pins and give them away, spreading the idea of Safe Harbor.

    I made 100 pins and went out to give them away, no small task for an introvert. I was prepared for it to take hours, or even to come home with many of the pins. They were gone in 15 minutes.

    Now, I’m getting ready to try to distribute 500 pins in one weekend. You never know how people will respond, so I’m mentally prepared to come home with some of the pins. Talking to at least 500 strangers in one weekend sounds like trying to climb Mt. Everest with one foot in a cast (did I mention I’m an introvert?), but it’s happening.  Here’s why:

    At least 500 times, I’ll be spreading the idea of Safe Harbor. Tossing my pebble in the water and hoping some of the pebbles create ripples that spread. That people will consider, even if for a moment, that we have options in any interaction with others. We have the option of treating other people with respect and courtesy, even people we disagree with, or don’t like. If we don’t choose that option, it’s a choice to do whatever we do instead, because we could have chosen respect. People will have a choice of how to treat me, whether they accept the pin and hurry on, don’t accept the pin and hurry on, argue with me, talk to me, whatever. At least 500 times, I’ll be offering them an opportunity to stop for a moment and choose.

    When I give pins away, I do not solicit, nor do I accept, donations. People can choose to go online and sponsor a set of pins to be given away (and get a set for themselves), but in person, it’s a gift, from me, or from me and the person sponsoring that set of pins, given and accepted freely. I don’t ask where the recipient is from, what their politics are, who they sleep with, or what they believe. I only ask if they would like a free Safe Harbor pin. This is an apolitical movement.

    It’s simple, really. I’m advocating for what my mother would have called “simple decency and good manners.” She was a real fan of good manners.  As a work of art, it’s about choice, and consciousness. That we choose how we behave and react. Mom used to say that how you treat someone says a lot about who you are and who you want to be, far more than it says about the other person. This will be 500 little nudges, 500 opportunities for people to choose who they will be.

    I’m doing my largest event yet in San Francisco to mark the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love. Specifically, I’m honoring the people who came together to help the kids who arrived in San Francisco with no money, nowhere to sleep,  no support system. Crowds of them descended on San Francisco in 1967, and the city wasn’t prepared for an influx of unemployed, broke kids. So people in San Francisco organized food, clothing, health care, help finding shelter, etc. That, to me, is the real beauty of the Summer of Love.

    Here’s the schedule so far. This event will be in San Francisco, CA on the weekend of June 2-4, 2017:

    Friday, June 2, 1-2 pm : Haight Ashbury Free Clinic,  558 Clayton Street. Celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, they help many of the poorest San Franciscans. I’ll be out on the street for one hour, giving away pins. Feel free to stop by, get a pin and say hello!

    Friday, June 2, 2:30-3:30 pm… meeting up with some tour groups on a Summer of Love tour. Wish I could say where, but the Parks Commission has asked that I not advertise. But if you see me, come on over!

    Saturday, June 3, 10-11 am… oooh, another park appearance, can’t say where! Silly, I know, but those are the rules, so if you’re interested, check your favorite SF park and you might find me.

    Saturday, June 3, 1-4 pm:  SCRAP, 801 Toland Avenue. The incredible recycler offering materials at low cost for artists and teachers. I’m teaching a class, open to the public, $20 including materials, on how to make Safe Harbor Love Bead pins. People who take the class will also get a set of pins from me, and if you’re at SCRAP while I’m there, hit me up for a set of pins. http://www.scrap-sf.org/workshops/

    Sunday — this one is still being confirmed, but I’ll announce it as soon as it is.

    If you know anyone in San Francisco, or who will be in the Bay Area that weekend, please let them know they can come to one of these events, get a set of Safe Harbor pins, and participate in a work of performance art!

    Save

    Save

  • Why I Fly My Flag (Or Wear My Pin)

    Why I Fly My Flag (Or Wear My Pin)

    As you probably know, I make Safe Harbor pins and give them away. This has been an almost entirely positive experience. I have given them to young people, old people, people of every religion and none, of every color (it seems like I should say “and none” to balance the sentence, but truthfully, there are no colorless people. We’re all some shade of brown from pale tan to burnt umber). I’ve had people hug me, get teary-eyed, get excited… so it’s not the people getting or wearing the pins that are raising dust.

    Most people I’ve met while doing this get it. It’s meaningful for them. Still there are a handful of malcontents who say that the Safe Harbor pin is “just a badge of white guilt,” and meaningless. They’re frustrated, angry and scared, so they’re lashing out, and making a big mistake.

    No symbol, on its own, solves a problem. That isn’t what symbols do. To quote the Oxford Dictionary, a symbol is “a thing that represents or stands for something else, especially a material object representing something abstract.”  Safe Harbor pins are a symbol worn by people who want to act to solve the problems, as a reminder to themselves of their commitment, and a signal to others that they are not alone in the fight. That is the value. They offer a tiny bit of hope and unity in a divided, angry world. Humans have and create symbols because we need them.

    When you are low, or feeling threatened and beaten, a kind word is far from meaningless. Seeing someone sporting a rainbow Safe Harbor pin, or any Safe Harbor pin, is a reminder that there are people, people you don’t even know, may never meet, who want you to be safe and well. I know this because I’ve been told just that by people who saw me wearing one, people who were feeling marginalized, as though their human dignity and worth was being questioned.  Of course, there must be actions behind that symbol, and there are. People calling on their elected representatives to act, to make changes. People marching, people gathering to help those in need. They are part of a movement that is just finding its feet. They wear their safety pins with pride, and I am one of them.

    No one group is feeling more undervalued or disrespected. Point a direction and you are bound to hit someone who feels isolated and scared, for being female, for being gay, or transgendered, or an immigrant, or… There is good in reminding people that we share a common humanity, common concern for ourselves, our families and friends, our country, our world. That is what the Safe Harbor pin says. “We are both human and in this together.”

    I’ve given pins to people who cried, who were at a low point when a kind word meant a lot. And I won’t stop making them. I won’t stop handing them out. I’ve seen the good it does. Symbols matter. Statements matter. They are the flag behind which a movement marches, and without movement, there is no improvement.

    I am proud to wear my Safe Harbor pin, proud to give them out, to share encouragement and hope. It is my symbol, not of guilt, but of determination.