City kids are creating homemade election buttons, inspired by the presidential race – and vintage campaign paraphernalia on display at the Museum of the City of New York.
Children from the city’s Lower East Side Life Program Family Shelter recently attended a button-making workshop as part of the museum’s “Campaigning for President: New York and the American Election” exhibit.
‘Aaliyah for President’
The barrier-busting current election had already captured the kids’ imagination. Several used the workshops to make buttons promoting themselves for president. One girl used every color in the rainbow for her “Aaliyah for President” button.
Jonathan Tolentino, 7, with help from teaching artist Timothy Bellavia, a children’s book author and illustrator, made a tiger’s face with the words “The U.S. is Grrrt!” and three more buttons.
“This is for my mom, my dad, my brother,” he explained, pointing to his creations one by one, “and for me.”
“What’s the purpose of buttons?” Paula Zadigian, the museum’s community programs manager, asked the kids.
There was a puzzled silence.
“Like, represent?” a little girl asked uncertainly.
Zadigian explained the concept of campaigning for the public’s votes and led the kids to a glass case with hundreds of buttons from past campaigns.
Old-School Campaigning
They gazed in wonder at metal buttons made in 1789 to commemorate the first presidential inauguration. “That’s old,” one kid whispered.
They marveled over a plastic blue bowtie emblazoned with “Reagan/Bush” and puzzled over a pin with a strange-looking bird. Zadigian explained it was a quail.
“He’s using a symbol to represent himself,” she said of former vice president Dan Quayle, and encouraged the kids to think of symbols to represent themselves.
By way of example she pointed to a log cabin pin and asked, “What do we call that kind of little house?”
“Jail!” one boy responded.
She explained that William Henry Harrison used log cabins in 1836 to represent the old-fashioned values of his campaign.
The exhibit includes more than just buttons. Kids were delighted by colorful “I Like Ike” sunglasses and popcorn boxes, and baffled – then repelled – by a chamber pot from 1888 emblazoned with the Cleveland/Thurman logo.
Cardboard Candidates
They peered at a diorama made in 1937 of George Washington being sworn in near Wall Street. “He became president here in New York,” Zadigian said. “So New York has always been pretty central to the story.”
“That’s Hillary!” a girl shouted when the group rounded the corner and encountered life-size cut outs of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain.
Several kids were crestfallen and confused to learn Clinton was no longer running for president.
But when asked to pose for a group photo, the kids ignored Clinton and McCain and dashed to Obama. As they crowded around his cutout, one boy wrapped an arm around the cut out, resting his cheek against Obama’s leg.
After posing with the cardboard candidate, Na’Quan McElroy, 5, colored an American flag red and orange. He pulled the heavy handle of the machine that turned his drawing into a button and beamed when it was pinned to his brown Akademics hoodie.
