By Lisa Hix — Two black men walk into a coffee shop, ask to use the restroom, and are denied. They sit down at a table, and within two minutes, the store manager calls the police. The officers immediately arrest the men and lead them out of the store in handcuffs. It might sound like a scene from a civil-rights sit-in at a lunch counter the South in 1960, but if you've been following the news, you know it took place at a Philadelphia Starbucks in April 2018. The men, who had a business meeting at the...

Pushing Buttons: In Our Divided America, Political Pinbacks Give Anyone a Voice

By Hunter Oatman-Stanford — In this modern age of political polarization, we Americans increasingly surround ourselves with friends, neighbors, and news sources that reinforce our worldviews rather than challenge them. As we spend more of our days online, such divisions are heightened by algorithms that feed on our unchecked desire for affirmation, conveniently hiding opposing perspectives. But amid these isolating echo chambers, the success of political pinbacks offers a small beacon of hope—a quaintly analog way of...

Vicious Vintage Campaign Buttons

By Collectors Weekly Staff — Think current U.S. political campaigns are nasty? The attack-pinback has long been a tool of partisans and politicos. Today, President Obama finally produced his long-form birth certificate, rendering this button (above, right), and a central complaint of presumptive presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign, obsolete. In 1968, candidate Richard Nixon promised to bring the troops home from Viet Nam. Two years later, as the war escalated, anti-Nixon forces accused the president of...