A powerful symbol of civility: the safety pin

I have started wearing a large safety pin on my lapel or tie.

In the days since the election, the simple safety pin has become a symbol of support for those who might not feel safe going about their daily lives. The pin is a silent message to marginalized people that the wearer represents safety — that here is an American who will not harass or assault them simply for being who they are, someone who will listen to them voice their fears.

That such a symbol is needed in my town, my state, my country, in 2016 is appalling to me. I grew up in a time when overt racism was widely accepted, with separate accommodations for whites and blacks, and when lynchings were not uncommon. As I reached maturity, the civil rights movement had kicked in, and such behavior became less acceptable and less common. Four decades later, with an African American twice elected as president, it seemed America had turned the corner on race relations, the problem of police shootings of black males being a glaring exception.

But today it seems much of that progress has been eroded. Since the election on Nov. 8, numerous reports of racist attacks have been reported around the country. An African American woman told to sit in the back of a city bus. Muslim women assaulted while wearing hijabs and being called vile names. Middle-school students chanting “Build that wall!” and “Deport them!” to their Hispanic classmates. Even kindergartners shunning children of a different race or ethnicity than their own. Graffiti of swastikas and Nazi slogans spray-painted on public surfaces.

I didn’t speak up back in my young-adult days. I didn’t march with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., or join Freedom Rides, or help black people register to vote. I did speak out against racism to family members and wrote strong condemnations of racist policies and behavior in my newspaper column for 30 years. Like most of my Silent Generation cohort, I am not a demonstrative person. Born just before and just after the start of World War II, we grew up learning and reading about the atrocities that were committed against Jews, gays, ethnic East Europeans — anyone who did not fit a nationalist stereotype of racial purity.

From that period, one article in particular stuck with me — and it came back to mind this week as I learned about the safety pin. It is by Martin Niemoller, a German Protestant minister who wound up in concentration camps for resisting Hitler’s policies. This is what Niemoller wrote:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out ...

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out ...

Because I was not a Trade Unionist

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out ...

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.

So, my safety pin means that I will not remain silent if I witness public harassment of minorities. I will publicly challenge the harasser as a bully and defend the subject of his or her attack. If I witness children harassing other children, I will first intervene to get them to stop, and then I will seek out their teachers or adult supervisors and report the behavior. I will not cower in shame while bullies of any political stripe abuse fellow human beings because of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or religious convictions.

I hope others will join me in taking such a stand. This is not a political action; there is no partisan context whatsoever. It is simply a defense of civil behavior, of a standard of conduct that Americans have enshrined in their Constitution and that has been respected and practiced by most Americans for over two centuries.

If I haven’t convinced you, consider this truism, offered by the Irish statesman/philosopher Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

This story was originally published November 22, 2016 at 4:50 PM with the headline "A powerful symbol of civility: the safety pin."