You will not see Steven Wampler protesting in front of a Tesla dealership for #TeslaTakedown Saturdays, or at a sign-waving protest on an I-695 overpass. You may, however, spot the fruits of his labor at quite a few anti-Trump protests in the area.
The owner of Advantage Awards and Engraving, an Ellicott City store that sells everything from personalized engraved awards to sports display cases to wooden and PVC signs, has been providing free protest signs to people demonstrating against President Donald Trump’s administration. Wampler, a retired public school music teacher, leaves them in a cardboard box outside his store with the words “Free Protest Signs” written on it in black Sharpie marker for anyone to grab.
Wampler announced the first batch of signs on Advantage’s Facebook page on April 4, 2025, just ahead of the April 5 nationwide “Hands Off!” rallies. The rallies, spearheaded mostly by Indivisible, protested the Trump administration, Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (“DOGE”), and the GOP members of Congress enacting massive budget cuts and huge layoffs across federal agencies.
The free signs Wampler offered had messages like “A tariff is a sales tax imposed by Congress not the President,” “Hands off veterans benefits/Hands off Social Security/Hands off Medicaid,” and “There’s only one immigrant ruining America: Deport Musk” with an image of Elon Musk doing the Nazi one-armed salute.
“What motivated me is I’m as angry as anybody about this,” Wampler told Baltimore Fishbowl. “Angry because the tariffs are part of my big problem. They’re most of the stuff in my store, with the crystals and things like that come from China. And nobody in America is going to make them, because nobody’s going to make a factory like that. Nobody in China is going to move here.”
He described a medal that normally sold for $6 more than tripling in price because of tariffs Trump imposed.
“Can you imagine that, paying $21 for something that used to cost $6 because Trump’s upset about whatever it is he’s upset about this week?” Wampler asked. “So, I was really mad about that. I’m just mad about everything.”
Wampler told Fishbowl that he cannot stand at a protest or march because he has neuropathy in his feet, so this is his way of being part of the resistance despite being unable to participate in person.
“[T]hey’re doing my protesting for me,” Wampler said. “So, I give them the signs, and they go out there and protest and it makes me happy because I can’t go do it myself.”
He has continued to put batches of 10 to 20 signs out in front of his store throughout the months of April and May. Some in the most recent batch has Trump’s mugshot with the words “CONVICTED: DONALD J. TRUMP” in capital letters across the top. Others simply have the numbers “86 (in black) 47 (in red)”, a nod to James Comey’s recent Instagram post that caused a stir in GOP circles and even triggered Trump allies to launch an investigation into Comey for allegedly inciting violence against him. The term “86” is widely understood to mean “nix” or “get rid of” in the hospitality industry when an item is no longer available on the menu.
Wampler said he gets ideas for his signs from Facebook, Bluesky, his various news sources, and the signs he sees other people holding at the protests. He follows historians Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Snyder. He compared Snyder’s departing Yale University for Canada to teach at University of Toronto to Europe’s brain drain in the 1930s.
“You got to put this in perspective,” Wampler said. “In Europe, in 1929, ’30, ’31, all of their great people came to America, and good thing they did, you know? The musicians, the poets, Stravinsky came, and all those people in academia, which was good! We found a place for them. And that’s what they’re doing.”
As for his own contribution to the resistance, Wampler told Fishbowl he has put around $1,000 into the signs, because that’s how strongly he feels about it. On the one hand, he says as long as he can manage to put the money into it, he will keep doing it, because the signs keep disappearing. On the other hand, it is expensive, and his industry is entering its busy season, so time might become an issue. For now, however, he will continue printing up the signs.
“Wait till you see our Barack Obama Appreciation Day signs,” he said. “A bunch of pictures of Barack Obama, Barack Obama Appreciation Day. We haven’t even started them yet, but that’s our next new one. It’s going to be Barack Obama Appreciation Day on the 14th.”
That would be June 14, which also happens to be Trump’s birthday.
Advantage Awards and Engraving is located at 9051 Baltimore National Pike, Ste 1A,
Ellicott City, MD.
WOW. I’m in love with this! Excellent reporting on an excellent human.
Thanks, Mr. Wampler! More of us need to join the resistance:
“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hmm…so the fishbowl readers have absolutely no brains!