Rally Sign

You might have heard about the recent Supreme Court decisions concerning Hobby Lobby and abortion clinic buffer zones and if you're anything like me, you're outraged. You might also be attending rallies and shouting "Two, four, six, eight! The church and state don't ovulate!" in crowded public areas.

SFNOW and the wonderful CodePink ladies (along with other organizations in the Bay Area) organized a rally a few weeks ago on Powell Street. If any of you have ever been to San Francisco's Powell Street and trolley turn-around, you know how crowded it is.

Rachael and I wanted some really epic signage to bring with us to the rally (along with our t-shirts, remember from last week?), so we brainstormed some slogans and finally decided on "Get Your Religion Out of My Uterus" because it's extremely relevant to the Hobby Lobby case.

Using some butcher paper and the font I used on mom's quilt last year, Rachael, my brother and I cut out letters from neon paper and drafted some larger, uppercase letters too.

We made "Out" big and bold to make it pop, make it more forceful. You know? Get it OUT!

Gluing down letters

Ta-da! There it is!

I found some black PVC pipes in my basement which we used to support the sign. The ends were folded over the pipes a couple times and attached with 49-ers duct tape (gotta gave some team spirit, right?). 

The finished product!

The height of the sign was perfect, but we forgot to cut wind slits! We had a couple scares and thought our sign was gonna rip right off the poles. 

We also picked up some stickers that went on our sign, too. You can't read them in the picture, but they say "Abortion Providers are Heroes" and "Abortion on Demand and Without Apology." I also got a "Imagine Create a World Without Rape" sticker that now lives in my binder. Best part of these rallies are definitely the stickers :)

The sign worked so well at the rally! Rachael (holding the other end of our sign) borrowed one of my family's many radical/slightly inappropriate t-shirts and Cam (the girl with the blue hair to the left of me) also came with some signs she made. Her slogans were fantastic: "After all, your medical decisions should be between you, your doctor, your boss and the Supreme Court" and "Not having sex deprives a child of life. By Anti-Choice logic, abstinence is child murder." She's so sassy :)

Next up, maybe a fabric one? With sewn on letters? And wind slits. Definitely wind slits.

-Taft W-K

What's on your Radical Agenda?

My friend gave me this awesome, amazing, super thoughtful and very me shirt for Christmas last year:

It's really so perfect. 

Unfortunately, it was this really strange racerback tank that did not cover the chest area very well. 

And at the same time, I realized that my softest and best black tee shirt was stretching in the chest area to the point where it was see through. Yeah. It's a problem. 

See? Thank the goddess my mom noticed at breakfast, else I might've walked around like that all day. 

The two shirts were too good to give away, so I went "Hmmmm....what if we could solve two boobage problems...at the same time?" 

And immediately got to work. (Also, it was pride weekend here in SF and I needed something to wear in addition to my rainbow socks.)

At five minutes in we were here: 

Graphic cut and ready. 

Eight minutes in we were here: 

Nine minutes in, my brother asked what was on my radical feminist agenda, which I answered with "Paid maternity leave."

Ten minutes in, he was trying to argue it with me. 

14 minutes in, he walked out of the room, as he couldn't argue very well why we shouldn't have paid maternity leave. (Score one for gender equality!)

Now that I had the dining room to myself, I started hand stitching the graphic onto the black tee. 

Like so. I found some awesome pink thread that went with the font fabulously. 

And here's the final product at the Pride Parade! (It gets a little overshadowed by the feather boa, but eh. A feather boa that awesome deserves the attention.)

(That's my friend, Cam. Check back in a couple weeks, I made an epic costume for her that I'll be posting about!)

I went to another event later in the week, which prompted more radical paraphenalia....here's a little sneak peak ;)

So I'm wondering readers...what's on your radical agenda?

-Taft W-K