Ashley Callan / Castleton Spartan

Close up of Sam Green's free Bernie tattoo on her leg.

Would you get a tattoo to demonstrate your political views? That’s just what Castleton’s Amy Miller-Bremel, CHANGE Initiative Coordinator, and Sam Green, video broadcast technician, did.

On Feb. 5, Miller-Bremel and Green visited Artistic Ink in Winooski, and each got a tattoo of Bernie Sanders on their calves.

Ashley Callan / Castleton Spartan

Castleton's video broadcast technition Sam Green shows off
her new Bernie tattoo. Artist Ink in Winooski is booked into the
end of March doing free Bernie tattoos.

“I’ve always been a really political person and really passionate about politics. I followed Bernie when I lived in the Midwest five years ago and I believed in what he stood for even when we lived there,” Miller-Bremel said.

The decision was also a political act for Green.

“It came up in my Faceboook news feed. One of the local news places was covering it. I played the video and it came to the part where it showed the design and I was like “Oh, I actually like it, it’s a good design. So, I posted it online and was like who’s in? I was like, seriously who wants to go do this?” said Green.

Tyre Duvernay, of Artistic Ink, began giving out free Bernie tattoos a couple weeks before the New Hampshire caucus.

“Some idiot in New Hampshire was giving free Donald Trump tattoos and I couldn’t have that, and they were ugly too. They were giving out Trump faces and “making America great again”,

I was insulted by the whole thing and figured I’d stand up for my candidate,” Duvernay said.

The tattoo design is an adaptation of Dave Barron’s simple Bernie icon and depicts an outline of the politician’s eccentric hair and glasses.

For Green, the media response has been greater than expected. Before the appointment Duvernay called Green to let her know a news crew would be there. Green and Miller-Bremel were both interviewed by the Channel 5 news.

After getting the tattoo, Green posted photos on Facebook. There was an outpouring of responses and shares of the Channel 5 news clip.

“I had to turn my Facebook notifications off just to go to sleep. I had something like 200 notifications in like 24 hours,” said Green.

Green and Miller-Bremel were not the first to receive the tattoos, nor will they be the last. Artistic Ink has completed over 100 of the free tattoos and has at least one booked every day until the end of March.

“I’m more like annoyed. It’s consuming my life. We have at least one to do every day. It got pretty bad so we had to start scheduling them out,” said Duvernay.