This is the only photo I took at GlobalAware's booth at Sunday's Word on the Street. (I have blurred the children's faces.) While I was checking out the booth, there were a few children looking at the displays and rifling through the bins of buttons. I could not take photos without the children being shown and, whenever possible, I avoid showing children in my photos and videos.
It was a lot less crowded two weeks earlier at GlobalAware's booth at the Junction Arts Festival and I was able to take several photos of their buttons and postcards then. I think it's safe to say that their inventory did not undergo a drastic change between September 12th and September 27th. (See the posts below for those photos.)
The GlobalAware rep that I spoke to on September 12th said their buttons are made by members and sold to raise money so they can give lectures to schoolchildren. They have to raise their own money to do that, he explained, because although children are interested in politics, society does not want to educate them on the subject because then they would challenge "the system".
He pointed out that children were drawn to their button displays and, indeed, at both events I saw children avidly reading the buttons' messages.
When I remarked on the political nature of the buttons (I was taken aback to see them at a supposed local arts festival), he said that all of their products were political because their organization's aim was to oppose "the system".
If you click on the photo, you might be able to read their sign, which reads, "Make Affluence History." That definitely sounds anti-capitalist to me.
So we see that, in addition to allowing Islam to be proselytized by an Islamic group, The Word on the Street enabled GlobalAware to demonize Israel and promote anti-capitalism.
More to come.
