Progress Report: Wow.

So far almost two hundred people from across the country have joined in to the Cities Project. That's a lot. I'll give it another week or so and then I'll start mailing you the addresses I have from my mailing lists and then, well... let's see what happens. All together there's over two thousand of us now, so things could start to get interesting.

If you'd like to be a part of this, send me an e-mail with your city and state in the subject line. freewayblogger@yahoo.com

"They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom,
trying to change the system from within.
I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them.
First, we take Manhattan... then we take Berlin."
-Leonard Cohen

More Bay Area Postings

Here are some of the signs I placed in the Bay Area last week.
I'll be doing Southern California again next.

Organizing City by City

"I'm guided by a signal in the heavens.
I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin.
I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons...
First, we take Manhattan... then we take Berlin."
-Leonard Cohen

I'm organizing us into groups city by city now.
If you'd like to join in, write to me with your city
and state in the subject line.

freewayblogger@yahoo.com

Lookout San Francisco: There's Two of Us Now

Somebody got themselves an overhead projector...
And they know how to use it.

http://ptcruiser292.blogspot.com/2006/02/freewayblogging-gets-upgrade.html

Arsenal of Democracy: A Pickup Truck Full of Signs

My modus operandi is to paint a whole bunch of signs, stick them in the back of my truck along with bungees, tape, hammer, nails etc. and then hit the road. In the throes of a serious freewayblogging binge I can reach close to a million people in a day… more even. This isn’t because I’m particularly clever about it, although I’ve learned a few tricks along the way, it’s because the freeways are so damn crowded, and that very few people, whether official or civilian, are willing to go to the effort of taking them down.

For both painting and posting, you'll find that the learning curve for freewayblogging is an extraordinarily quick one: once you've done a dozen signs or so, the next fifty are a breeze.

Beachblogger: Our Man in San Diego

My first beachblog, done in front of webcam

Nice, Big Impeach: illuminated at night and up
for several days. I love it when that happens.




Dear Freewayblogger,
I got my start freewayblogging in November 2004 by waving a yard sign for the Democratic congressional candidate from a pedestrian overpass. It was fun. I would do it for a half hour or so during evening rush hour with a hundred cars a minute passing under me. Sometime last year I surfed by freewayblogger.com, joined the yahoo group and made my first beachblog. Since then I've done over a hundred blogs on San Diego beaches and freeways.

With politics and the media entirely dominated by corporate money, freewayblogging is grass roots activism at its purest. I don't want political leaders telling me what to think; we should be telling them what to think and do. I love the smell of blogging in the morning...
peace, Beachblogger

http://beachblogger.net/pics/index.php

Phoenix is the New Berkeley

The Baby in the Gym Bag

from http://www.freewayblogger.com

Warning: this is a sad and disturbing story.

Two years ago, Yves Eudes, a reporter for Le Monde, came to my house and interviewed me about freewayblogging. He was a younger man, in his thirties, good looking and somewhat reserved, almost shy, which for a reporter surprised me. As a political and war correspondent he'd been in Iraq three times since the invasion and I asked him what it was like. Specifically I wanted to know what he'd seen that he knew he would never forget. He told me this story, and I think about it whenever I feel like giving up.

"I was in Nasariyah and a couple came up to me on the street asking for help. They were carrying a large gym bag, an 'Adidas' bag, with their daughter inside. The city was in chaos, and they came up to me, I suppose, because I was a westerner and they thought I could help them. When I looked inside the bag there was a little girl, maybe two years old, with bandages around her head. There was a terrible smell and I thought to myself 'Okay, they have a dead girl...' The bandages were loose and soaked in fluid - it was a terrible wound, covering half her head. I guessed they'd gotten her to a hospital and they'd done what they could quickly and gave her back. It was the early days of the war and the hospitals were full. I couldn't believe it when I saw she was still alive."

"I took them to the Americans, and there was a woman soldier there, a big woman, who said there was nothing they could do... that it had to be a military casualty or something like that. I forget exactly. I want to say she was mean, but I don't know... more like she was just following her orders. She stood like this..." he said, and folded his arms across his chest.

"We went to a couple more soldiers, but it was the same. There was one young soldier who went for help, but then came back saying he couldn't do anything. I went with them for awhile longer, but it was obvious I was useless. Eventually they just went away."

We were sitting in my garage, surrounded by the tools of my trade: cardboard, paint, overhead projector. Outside it was a beautiful day: a warm, late afternoon in sunny southern California.

"It's hard to describe what they were like, the parents... they were beyond sad, beyond scared... they were doing the only thing they could do - looking for help - and I couldn't help feeling that I'd wasted their time. I don't know if I will ever forget their faces, or what it was like to see their little girl... but the thing I know I will never forget is the way they looked as they walked away, wandering the streets with their baby in that bag... just looking for someone who could help them."

Red State Road Trip

The intrepid souls who made this great movie http://www.redstateroadtrip.com sent me these pictures from L.A. We need more filmmakers like this.

Marin and Sonoma Counties

Repairing Signs

Repairing signs that have been torn up is usually pretty easy: black and white duct tape generally does the trick.









Signs that are really provokative, however, tend to get torn up beyond repair. The one below used to read "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.", which makes tearing it up kind of funny when you think about it.

From the East Coast

From a Suburban Mom

I saw the freeway blogging site sometime around the 2004 election, and while I thought it was a nifty idea, I didn't figure I was the sort of person to start doing such a thing. I'm a suburban mom with three kids, which means I’m damn busy, and people like me just don't rock the boat. But with outrage upon outrage pouring out of this hellhole administration, I
started getting so wound up that my anger needed an outlet. I needed to be able to do something that would help me break out of the feeling of helplessness that our government has inflicted upon millions of its citizens.

Eventually, I came to believe that one way for me to make a difference was to take a leaf from your book and make some signs. I live in a place where the traffic is fearsomely bad: daily gridlock. It seemed a shame to waste a resource like that…

My first signs were made with a party of other like-minded folk in the area. We got together one afternoon with a rented overhead projector and cardboard we'd all scavenged… we made a LOT of signs. I'm painfully shy and hate for people to look at me, so I thought hanging up signs amid our never ending traffic was going to be miserable (even after dark), but once I'd hung my first sign over a big interstate highway and circled around for a look, I was hooked. All anyone ever saw of me was my silhouette: after that, all they saw was my sign.

I was so proud of my first signs I spent the next day riding around and checking to see if they were still up. They all lasted at least a day, and one stayed up over a month. Since then I’ve hung more signs than I can remember. I keep a few in my minivan just in case an opportunity arises while I'm out running errands.

I’ve also started freewayblogging with my older kids, who are nine and ten. They love painting signs and going out on sorties in the dark of night. I get to teach them the importance of the right to free speech, the people who created this country and the things they stood for. I explain that in a democracy we have the right to hang up signs and other people have the right to take them down. And that we have the right to hang up more. Like nothing else, Freewayblogging teaches the essential spirit of the American Revolution: the importance of standing up for what you believe in as well as the importance of not getting caught.

I never would have thought of myself as a guerrilla. I drive a minivan, for Pete's sake. I'm a mother. But once I started hanging up signs, I didn't want to stop. I get an ego boost out
of seeing my work hung up there for thousands of people to see every day. I get a surge of energy and hopefulness from hanging signs that helps dispel the outrage fatigue. I love the delicious taste of revolution on a small scale, and the sense of adventure I get in scoping out places and hanging the signs. I love not feeling helpless and captive to this lousy administration. I love actively using my rights as a citizen of the United States. And I love the exercise. Really, it's everything a suburban housewife could ask for. There is no down side to freeway blogging: it's good for my kids, it's good for me, and it's good for our country.
Yours, A Suburban Mom

Obligatory Cheney-Shoots-Guy-In-The-Face Posting

On the other hand, if he hadn't gotten all those deferments, we'd probably all be speaking Vietnamese right now.


Here's a sign I put up outside a gun show in El Cajon last year. Quickly.

Banksy: Genius

http://www.banksy.co.uk/

San Francisco

Once you've done a city a couple times, become familiar with it and established a route, it's very easy to cover most of the major freeways in an hour or two.

Letter From Connecticut

Like most democrats, I was upset in the fall of 2000, feeling that the election had been stolen (it was). I felt uneasy, but thought "Well, at least George has some grownups to watch over him, Cheney, Rumsfeld, maybe it will be alright..." Then they tried to get rid of the Dept. of Education. Then they attacked the wrong country. Then they lied about it.

I got angry and would call my senator's office, but it was like talking into a vacuum. I wrote letters to the paper, but the limit is one letter a month, 300 words per letter. I was worried for my country, its democracy, and my 21 and 17 year old sons… Worried they’d get drafted into an unjust war for these men's bottom lines.

Somehow, I don’t remember how, I found the Freewayblogger. Finally there was something I could do! BUSH LIED went up right near my republican sister's house: she never knew who did it! "Get the Memo, a Buckfush production" followed: it stayed up in a busy intersection for over a week. We are proudest of that one. We made 10 WHY 2K? for therapy, the brush strokes allowing us to get our anger out in a constructive way. The state of the union saw 15 IMPEACH signs made in the living room and kept me from throwing things at the TV. To think the latest version of the Patriot Act prohibits protestors from carrying signs near an "Event of National Importance" makes me shiver... like we're living under Stalin. Last night we made “Go Scooter!”

If one sign niggles it's way into someone's head, or encourages someone to voice unspoken doubt about this administration, it will be worth it. We used to post signs at 2am, now we do it in broad daylight. Rarely do they come down before 72 hours have passed. Maybe, just maybe, we can get people with little nudges, to understand what is happening to our country, and how we must fight to fix it.

Yours, Connecticut

More Impeachment Photos

http://www.carlsheeler.com

Chicago


http://ptcruiser292.blogspot.com/

California's Scenic Highway 1

On scenic highways I'll put up signs just to take their picture then take them down. Those of you afraid to use the freeways should consider painting a sign and sending me a picture of it in front of a dramatic background.
In the cities I just stick the damn things anywhere.





The above were taken in and around Santa Cruz, California, about as liberal a town as you'll find in this country. I think the banks are closed on Wiccan holidays. People tell me I'm preaching to the converted by hitting places like Santa Cruz and Berkeley, which is partially true, but not entirely. When you put up a sign it says two things: 1) Whatever it says, and 2) that somebody felt they had the right to put a sign up.

I won't be preaching to the converted until this country is covered with signs.

Six-Letter-Word up for Nine Days

My cousin in LA called me to tell me that this sign stayed up beside the 405 for nine days, which is pretty amazing given that over 500,000 cars passed by it, at about eight miles per hour, every day. It's not that hard to get to, and when I put it up I didn't expect it to last more than an hour or two. That it would stay up for so long without anyone taking it down is, frankly, pretty damn weird, and one of the things that fascinates me about this artform.

On the other hand, nobody else bothered to put up any signs of their own either, which is the other thing that strikes me as odd about freewayblogging: if it's such an easy and effective way to express yourself, why aren't more people doing it?

Yesterday I got this picture in the mail. It was put up about 500 yards from where the Six-Letter-Word sign had been posted. The guy who did it said that even though the "Murder" sign was down, this one was still up:

If you live in LA and feel like saying something to a couple hundred thousand of your compatriots, I suggest using the 405 between Venice Boulevard and the Santa Monica Freeway.

Freewayblogs Held Hostage!

I recently received this photo along with the following:

"Dear Moonbats,

Thank you for the fun you've provided me with. It reminds me of the fun I had watching your boy Clinton play "Find the Weenie" with the office help.

Seriously, does your hatred of Bush override your self interest in not being turned into radioactive glass by 10th Century thugs? Think about it.

By the way kiddies, all the signs I removed are ILLEGAL and a hazzard to the travelling public.

Regards, Juggle"

To which I responded thus:

"Dear Fellow Patriot,

I salute you for taking the time and effort to take down those signs. Tens, even hundreds of thousands probably saw them before you and wanted to take them down but just kept driving. Believe me, we have far more in common with each other than we do with those who may sympathize with us politically and yet do nothing.

I rarely get to chat with the people who take down my signs, so indulge me here a bit if you will.

Why was the Clinton impeachment "fun" for you? I saw it as something of a dark chapter in this nation's history, both in the original offense and even moreso in its prosecution. Granted, it took someone like Clinton to do what he did in the Oval Office, but it took folks like the House Managers, and assumedly you, to make sure everyone in the world knew about it. In certain respects, the impeachment was more harmful to this nation than September 11th: at least then we were being attacked by our enemies.

Not being turned into glass is precisely why I'm doing what I'm doing. Your side needs to do a better job of convincing the rest of the world that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is an appropriate response to the events of September 11th. Even just finding some WMDs would help... hell, plant them if you have to. As it stands now though all we're doing is making enemies, and until you find a way of securing our borders entirely, more enemies is not something we can afford.

You're right when you say the signs are illegal... in North Korea. If political dissent really bothers you I suggest you move there. As for their presenting a "hazzard", anyone who can't simultaneously operate an automobile and read the word "Impeach" shouldn't be behind the wheel anyway.

The signs knew when they went out there that they were on a suicide mission. Do whatever you want with them: they'll never talk.

Yours Truly, The-Guy-Putting-Up-The-Signs"

Latest Swing Through Southern California

Florida, Rhode Island, Maryland, New York

Iraq: The Musical

Go Here: http://www.freewayblogger.com/iraqomo.swf

I'm pretty sure that this will be the song parody that ends the war.

Increase Your Duration!

Sepulveda Pass: 3 Weeks

Sepulveda Pass: 2 Months
Tejon Pass: 3 Weeks








Saw that these signs were still up on my latest swing through Southern California. Although there's an undeniably random factor in how long signs will stay up, here are some basic rules:

Smaller, obliquely placed signs will stay up far longer than large, spectacular ones. A sign need only be as big as it takes to get its message across.

The harder it is for the viewer to physically reach the sign, the longer it'll stay up.

These signs were placed on divided highways, visible only to those going in the opposite direction. To physically reach them would require miles of driving, both to get to the sign itself, and then to get back to the way you were originally going. Hanging them, however, required little more than pulling over and hammering in a couple of nails.

The ability to exploit these kinds of dynamics is one of the many things that makes this job so fun and interesting.