Behind the Button

Yesterday, as I was sitting in Mark's Cafe in Van Pelt Library, someone who looked to be a Penn undergrad pointed to one of the buttons on my sweatshirt and said he'd be very interested in learning how I came to be wearing it. So I told him.

A number of years ago, I read in the paper about a city employee who claimed to be intimidated as a Jew by a Palestinian flag that someone had posted on an office bulletin board. I thought: if that person feels intimidated, it's clear they're misinformed about the flag's meaning. I recalled the historic position of the Palestinian movement -- one state for all its people -- and considered that a symbol clearly expressing this idea couldn't be misinterpreted as exclusionary and menacing. And the idea of a flag to symbolize a pluralist state reminded me of post-apartheid South Africa, where this was done by melding the apartheid-era flag with that of the ANC.

So I thought: I can do something analogous for Palestine by melding the Palestinian and Israeli flags. And I did so. (Subsequently I posted stickers of it in various places, and on one occasion gave a copy to someone I met at an event for artists at Underground Arts.) So, when I read a couple weeks ago how the Palestine Writes Literature Festival was under attack, I had the idea of showing my solidarity with it by turning the flag into a badge that I could wear on my clothes.

The young man thanked me for taking the trouble to explain this history to him, and said he thought the button is really cool. I do too!

The other button shows a profile picture of Omega Kitten Hydra, the youth liberation advocate who makes videos about children's rights with whom I'm mutuals.