Think Small

Sydney Operahouse: March 2003

Two protesters managed this feat on the eve of the war in 2003. While certainly a bold and visually effective effort, it ended up costing our plucky adventurers well over a hundred thousand dollars for the clean-up, though they did manage to raise it through a grassroots effort:

http://www.sydneyoperahousenowarcleanupfund.org/index.html

I'm featuring it here not as something to be emulated so much as avoided. I think it's become a mistaken assumption of the left that guerrilla signposting needs to be big and dramatic in order to have an effect. It doesn't: all it needs to be is read. The problem with large, spectacular signs is that they tend to come down quickly but also that they give the impression that guerrilla signage needs to be dramatic: something to be carried out by teams of commandos at four in the morning. This is simply wrong.

As you begin forming groups (and we're close to 200 cities now...) try to avoid the big, bold signs, at least at first, in favor of the quick and easy. Better to get ten small but readable signs on four or five different freeways than just one large one. At its heart, freewayblogging is a numbers game: an attempt to get your message in front of as many different eyeballs as cheaply and easily as possible. We're engaged in an information war, and if our government and media are lying, it's our duty as citizens to report the truth as we see it to as many of our fellow citizens as we can. The longer a sign stays up, the more people will read it.

Before investing a lot time and effort in a massive signposting, try this first:

http://freewayblogger.blogspot.com/2005/12/as-easy-as-it-gets.html

All it takes is cardboard, duct tape and about twenty minutes.