Buttonmaking + Activism = Wicked!

Buttons!!! O_O

So after our pretty successful Meet’n Greet, that was held at Avant Garde Bar a couple weeks back we had our first activity/social function open to new interested parties. It was BUTTON MAKING!

If I sound a little bit too excited about it, IT'S because I am. I first volunteered to make RebELLEs Buttons for us to sell to fund raise for our little adventure to Winnipeg for the pan-Canadian conference. The first time around I made the buttons all wrong and It was kinda a sucky experince.I wasn’t a happy ReBELLE. After that I Encouraged our whole group (read: whined too much) to get involved and I can’t remember having a better Saturday afternoon. I was doing the button making all wrong. Crafting is about creating something new, wild and amazing.

Crafting has long been recognized (or so I’ve been told as I am not really the crafty type but more like the bull-in-the-china-shop type who isn’t really “allowed” around crafting) as a wonderful social activity. And it was, we sat around, creating beautiful deep/silly/sexual/political/thoughtful/radical/heart-felt/random buttons all the while (as we would say in Alberta) shooting the shyt feminist style (okay they don’t really say Feminist style all that often). You know..talking about life, the things that really matter to us and our world and what WE'RE gonna do to learn more, act out more and in general kick ass(es) as our manifesto lays out. (If you haven’t read IT you should check it!)**http://www.rebelles.org/en/manifesto

Which is exactly why I GOT so darn excited HAVING button making as an event for people interested in getting more involved in the rebELLEs.

Activism, feminism and politics are complicated to say the least but whatI like about all of them are the ideas, the beautiful people, the criticalreflection, a space to challenge yourself (on ideas, your own privilege)and arena to work together. Does button making do that? Well IT DOES when you have a room full of beautiful FEMINISTS, creative children,thought provoking magazines to tear down and build back up into buttons.

Lots of activist-y things and groups are about meeting and organizing(which is pretty important) but sometimes people just need to come together to make buttons and to shoot the shyt feminist style.

I had a really great time at this event getting to know people, felt some new crafty-satisfaction in creating counter-cultural radical art in the form of buttons. I hope others did too and will stick around to help the young feminist movement/ideas grow!

And last but not least the Ottawa rebELLES also want to thank the

University of Ottawa OPIRG for letting us use their space and buttonmaking machiney thingy.

-The Trish-Monster