My last two weekends, and petition update (long)
Posted by Lauren on September 19, 2001 at 21:17:46:
The last two weekends, I was at fairs and I took the Petition with meto get signatures. I put it on my table on a clipboard with the big
bold title words "Help keep Real Henna Legal!" and a short bit saying
that because of the damage done by adulterated henna, the FDA may
also ban pure henna, and it's essential to the religions of 10
million Americans. The bottom of the top page says that the names
and addresses collected will not be used by me for any reason except
to add to the petition, and they won't be added to any mailing list
unless they ask me personally. People are so careful about privacy,
I thought that might reassure. I liked the cover page idea, and it
seemed to work in that only one person actually read the petition,
but about fifteen asked, after reading the cover sheet, "So, what kid
of damage does the black stuff do?", which is a great conversational
lead-in. Under this I put the petition as written by CCJ (with
credit given) and then signature pages.
The first festival had about 10,000 people. I was sort of out of the
way, but I figure I hennaed a good hundred- hundred fifty people. I
told every darn one and their families about the petition and about
the dangers of black henna. Many were appropriately angry and/or
scared. Scared is better than scarred! One very cool thing that
happened was that a few women from Clairol came by and told me about
what that company was doing in an effort to get PPD out of their
products and educate all their employees and customers as to why.
They were quite happy ot sign! I got one little girl who had the
remains of a BH design- I could tell because the skin stain was gone
but the hairs were dyed dead black. I had just gotten through
telling her mom about all the awful things that happen when she sat
down and showed me. I felt terrible to scare her so badly, as she
hadn't had a reaction. I made sure she took my card and wrote down
the info here in case she gets a reaction later, as I understand
sometimes happens. Anyway, after doing so very many people, I only
had about 30 signatures for the petition. Weird. At least I
educated more than that.
Last weekend I went to a pagan gathering, just a small one with about
50 people, and I think I must have hennaed 30 of them. Yay! I got
to do a CCJ green man, which was great, and a CCJ gourd-and-vine
thing which I've always loved but never gotten to do before. A lady
came up and flipped through the books I have while I did someone
else, then sat down for her turn and held out both arms and
said "Have Fun. Traditional stuff, please." This is like crack to a
henna artist! So I got my feet back down on the ground after a
moment and said, "Okay, how bog a design do you want, or what's your
budget?" She held up a blank check and grinned. EEEEP! The gourd
at least was surprisingly dark orange on the inner forearm after less
than an hour and the paste had flaked off. I have high hopes. I
think everyone there signed the petition, and some listed their
families as well, which I thought was great. They asked me to come
to another event this weekend, which I may do if I have time.
Anyway, how many signatures do I need to send in the petition? 100?
200? I don't know how many more opportunities I'll have to gather
them this year.
Lauren
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