Tales of the Freewayblogger: August 2007

Bay Bridge Closure

The Bay Bridge will be closed throughout Labor Day Weekend.
These are some of the signs I'll be putting up on the 80, 580, 280, 880 and 101.

For me this is like the Superbowl. Shutting down the Bay Bridge, particularly over Labor Day weekend, will result in hundreds of miles of some of the most spectacular traffic jams the Bay Area has ever known. Might as well make use of it.

Today's Signs (without flags)

FB - 1469

USA - 1306

Today's Signs (with flags)

"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt

"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." -Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence." - Aristotle

" A man does what he must—in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures—and that is the basis of all human morality." -John F. Kennedy

"The best politics is right action." -Mahatma Gandhi

FB - 1455
USA - 1306

If I Lived in Asheville...

I'd be dead by now.

FB - 1446

USA - 1306

Updates/Backlog

Here are some updates on the freewayblogging cases in Illinois and Ohio. I don't know if my example will be brought up in either case, but I sort of hope it is. The problem with making political signposting illegal, apart from being utterly unconstitutional and, indeed, a knife plunged into the very heart of everything this country's supposed to stand for, is that it's practically unenforceable.

With thousands of miles of roadside at your disposal, you pick the time, place, and manner of posting. Following my methods, the act itself takes less than ten seconds. Up until then you're just a person carrying a folded piece of cardboard, after that you're just a person walking away.

Corny as it sounds, the greatest weapon a freewayblogger has in their arsenal is faith in America. I can do what I do with no fear of getting caught because, simply, I don't fear getting caught. I was taught that this was a country where expressing my political beliefs as effectively as I can is not only my right, in times of crisis it's my responsibility, and I'd be glad, even honored, to defend that view in court.

But not until I absolutely have to.

FB - 1438

USA - 1306

(Signs posted since January 1st.)

Washington State

FB - 1426

USA - 1306

East Bay/Coming Soon

FB - 1426

USA - 1298

Sonoma/Mendelssohn Violin Concerto

Listen carefully about 50 seconds in. This transition from the cadenza to the recapitulation of the 1st movement of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto is one of those perfect moments in music. Once the bow starts arcing across the strings I get a chill in the back of my skull that starts spreading down through my body as the orchestra comes in. Every time.

Click here to hear the 1st movement from the beginning, as played by Anna Nicole Smith with the NBC Radio Symphony.

FB - 1414

USA - 1298

I-880 Oakland

I really like this picture. I like the kid, the Caltrans truck and the fact that the sign above them has stayed up for over three days now, seen by damn near everybody travelling south on the 880 through Oakland: the better part of 100,000 people per day. (880/High Street)

I have no idea how many people actually saw it, how much it mattered to them, or what, if anything, it accomplishes. But I do know this, it was damn easy to pull off. All I had to do was paint the sign, walk onto the overpass, and place it in between the handrail and the fencing. Because of that, a couple hundred thousand people saw protest where they otherwise would've seen nothing.

I used a different overpass for the northbound traffic:

I like putting small signs on really large overpasses. Everybody still reads them, but there's far less incentive to take them down. It's one thing to go out of your way to get rid of some great big in-your-face banner, and quite another to do the same for a tiny bit of cardboard. Either way, the message gets out.

This sign has also been up for three days.

Beethoven's 7th Symphony

If the words "Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, Second Movement" don't mean anything to you, please listen.

If you already know the piece, I'd love to hear about the effect it had on you when you first heard it. I got turned on to it when I was fifteen: played it over and over again for a week and a half and walked around in a deep, blue somnambulent daze. Damn near drove my roomate crazy.

It took me about as long to make these signs as it does to listen to the whole symphony.

More Bay Area Signage

"If those in charge of our society — politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television — can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves." ~ Howard Zinn

"What can be said at all can be said clearly." ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." ~ Abraham Lincoln

"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common." ~ John Locke

"Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough." ~ William Saroyan

"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker

FB - 1405

USA - 1298

8/22 Painting & Posting

These are the signs I painted today.

These are the signs I posted.

(I thought this was a bust, but he just kept on driving.)

FB - 1393
USA - 1298

More from Around the Bay

"Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have." - James Baldwin

"Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children." - Khalil Gibran

"The battle of the sexes will never be won as long as we keep sleeping with the enemy." - Emo Phillips

"Going to church no more makes you a Christian than standing in a garage makes you a car." - Garrison Keillor

"The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others." - Dag Hammarskjöld

FB - 1382
USA - 1298

San Fernando Valley

FB - 1367

USA - 1298

KGO Interview/Around the Bay

Interview with Mark Matthews, KGO TV

FB - 1367

USA - 1291

Fathers 4 Justice in NY

http://www.fathers-4-justice.org

FB - 1357

USA - 1291

24 Hours in Berkeley

Passing through Berkeley the other day I was surprised to see these signs, placed above and around Interstate 80, still up from the day before. According to Caltrans' 2005 figures, they were passed by 284,000 vehicles. (Scroll down to "80: Powell St./University Ave./Gilman St.)

FB - 1357
USA - 1284

Letter to Kent Ohio Law Director

Dear Mr. Silver,

As an American citizen, I must take issue with your decision to change the charges against Kevin Egler, the man who placed an "Impeach Bush" sign in a public park, from "Unlawful Advertising" to "Littering". Lacking any commercial motivation, I can see why the initial charge of "advertising" had to be dropped, but to call Mr. Egler's sign "litter" is nothing less than a slap in the face to everything this country is supposed to stand for. You can call it litter if you want, but it's "litter" that's not only protected by the First Amendment, but damn well bought and paid for by every drop of blood that's ever been shed for this country all the way back to the footprints in the snows of Valley Forge.

I strongly suggest you call it something else.

Consider charging Mr. Egler with something along the lines of "creating a visual distraction" or otherwise interfering with a driver's ability to concentrate on the road. That way all you'll need to do is take down every billboard, advertisement, corporate logo and non-essential visual distraction from every roadway within your jurisdiction and I believe you'll have a fine case.

As an alternative, may I suggest you spend some time trying to get into the mind of the perpetrator and figure out their motive. It's obvious that Mr. Egler, like so many of us, is dissatisfied with the current administration and its policies. Unlike the rest of us, who remain relatively silent, he chose to exercise his first amendment rights and voice his dissatisfaction by using public property to express his opinion to as many of his fellow citizens as he could.

In some countries this is a crime punishable by death. Here in America though, such actions are not only protected by the Laws of the Land, but to at least some of us, they're demanded by them.

When the Founding Fathers gave the citizens of this nation the right to full and unfettered free political speech, they didn't do it as some sort of nicety or window dressing, they did it for a reason, and at least part of that reason was to allow any one of us to speak out as loud as we could against those things they felt were a threat to this nation. When you consider how this administration has bankrupted our nation, caused thousands of needless deaths, alienated our friends and multiplied our enemies, I think you might consider changing the charges against Mr. Egler from "littering" to "Fulfilling One's Obligations as a Citizen."

The crime taking place right now in Kent, Ohio isn't the guy putting up signs on public property because he wants the president impeached. The crime is everybody who wants the president impeached and isn't putting up signs on public property.

Yours Truly, An American Citizen

Some Bay Area Postings

"Any country that allows me to run my mouth off the way that I do deserves to be saved." - Bill Maher

"A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." -Hermann Goring

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning." - Albert Einstein

"A pre-emptive war in 'defense' of freedom would surely destroy freedom, because one simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian, because one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend." -J. William Fulbright

"I believe there is something out there watching over us – unfortunately it's the government." -Woody Allen

"I've had a hell of a lot of fun and I've enjoyed every minute of it." -Erroll Flynn (last words)

FB - 1350

USA - 1284

Take to the Hills

Before I became the Freewayblogger I used to collect clothing and drive it up to villages in the Sierra Madres: probably the best job I ever had. The concept was simple: collect warm, useful clothing, pack it as tightly as I could into boxes, then drive across the desert and up into the Sierra Madres and leave a few boxes at each little church, or chapelito, I came to. Each trip took about five days, covered 2,000 miles and resulted in a couple hundred very poor people being a little better off than they were before. It took about three years, but with the generous help of Paul and Nell Newman, I was able to get clothing, medical and school supplies to damn near everybody living in the northwest Sierra Madres.

Life in the Sierra Madres is radically different from ours, mostly because there's no electricity. That means there's no TV, no computers, internet or videogames. The only media is a couple of staticky AM stations at night, so the importance of celebrities, globalization or the war in Iraq are mostly lost on them. Paris Hilton means as much to the people of the Sierra Madre as she does to you or me - the only difference is they don't have to hear about her every day.

What they have for entertainment instead of media is each other: family, friends and neighbors, huddled in tiny communities surrounded by thousands of miles of some of the most beautiful land on the continent. They eat meals together, talk with each other and play with their kids. Not because they "should" but because they have to: that's all there is to do. Anyone who's spent any time in communities without electricity will know what I mean when I say that the only thing more amazing than what technology's given to us is what it's taken away.

Like Freewayblogging, Take to the Hills was highly adventurous, involved a lot of driving and operated in a grey area of the law. Since I didn't have any of the necessary permits to import clothing, I'd have to either bribe or talk my way through Mexican customs. If I was sent back, I simply waited a few hours and tried again. I always managed to get through.

The roads into and through the Sierra Madres are some of the most beautiful, isolated and frightening I've ever driven, comprised equally of desert, cloudforest and jungle. At night the sky was filled with stars - thousands of them - and there were times when I'd stare up at them knowing I was the only human being around for miles and miles in any direction. If the night was dark enough I could see the stars rise above the horizon - actually see them move and almost feel the turning of the earth... watching the big wheels turn.

It's customary at such times to think about one's place in the grand scheme of things, to re-evaluate the path you're on, where it's leading and if it's right. I was spared a lot of that. I was taking warm clothes from rich people who didn't need them and delivering them directly to poor people who did. It didn't really leave much room for soul-searching.

I'm bringing this up now because for the past few days I've found myself feeling like something terrible is about to happen: that the macabre farce that's been the Cheney Administration has finally reached the bitter end of the second act, where everything seems to be at its worst with no hope in sight. I know something's going to happen because something has to happen... simply because things just can't keep going on like this.

As any film student can tell you, everything that takes place at the beginning of a film will come back in the end, and with that in mind I've found myself thinking more and more about where I was when this whole thing started. How about you?

Alaska, San Diego, Phoenix

FB - 1339
USA - 1284

Update from Ohio

Here's a great story about Kevin, our man in Ohio in the Plain Dealer, also being covered in USA Today:

I got a call from Kevin last night. At the start of the pretrial hearing the judge offered to reduce the fine from $125 to $25 if he'd plead guilty to "Disorderly Conduct" - take it or leave it and he had to decide on the spot. He refused.

The fact-pattern of the case is this: Ohio man places yard sign that reads "Impeach Bush" in a public garden, is stopped by Kent police officer who feels Ohio man is breaking the law, though can't find a specific statute. After taking Ohio man's information, he lets him go.

At six in the morning, Police Officer shows up at Kevin's door, says he's guilty of "Advertising on Public Property", apparently unaware of the difference between Free Speech and advertising. (Hint: "Free Speech" refers to speaking out politically in accordance with one's obligations as a citizen, also known as "Patriotism". "Advertising" means selling stuff.)

The judge dropped the advertising charge immediately, opting instead for "Disorderly Conduct". If Kevin had plead guilty, it would've cost him twenty-five bucks and that would've been it. By not pleading guilty the state's threatened to raise the charge to Littering, punishable by $500 and six months in jail.

Using public property for the free expression of political grievances isn't "littering" or "disorderly conduct" any more than it's "advertising." It's his Right as a Citizen and, in fact, his Duty. By refusing to back down on this, Kevin's not only fighting for you and me, but everything this country's supposed to stand for.

If the charges against Kevin aren't entirely dismissed he and his attorney, Bob Fitrakis, have vowed to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. If that happens we'll need to set up a legal defense fund, which I hope you'll all contribute to.

I'll keep you posted.

-Scarlet P. (4,985 signs and counting...)

More Photos from the Southland

"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." -Leonard Cohen

"When the government fears the people, that is liberty. When the people fear the government, that is tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson

"I'm not saying this is legal for everyone... just me." -Scarlet P.

"I think we're past that point in human evoluton where there's such a thing as winning wars." -Sean Penn

"Come along now Smithers, those orphans aren't going to evict themselves..." - Montgomery Burns

FB - 1339
USA - 1245

LA/Film Quotes

"When the second plane hit the tower, his chief of staff entered the classroom and told Mr. Bush the nation is under attack. Not knowing what to do, with no one telling him what to do, and with no secret service rushing in to take him to safety, Mr. Bush just sat there, and continued to read 'My Pet Goat' with the children. Nearly seven minutes passed with nobody doing anything." -Farenheit 9/11

"Danger always strikes when everything seems fine." -The Seven Samurai

"I'm on my way. I've passed the point of no return Beth. You know when that is? That's the point in a journey where it's longer to go back to the beginning than it is to continue to the end." -Falling Down

"People say that if you don't love America, then get the hell out. Well, I love America." -Born on the Fourth of July

"Now I see it clearly. My whole life is pointed in one direction. I see that now. There never has been any choice for me." -Taxi Driver

"Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary." -Dead Poets Society

"They live, we sleep." -They Live

FB - 1329
USA - 1245

Now Appearing/Coming Soon

I went into something of a painting frenzy over the weekend, painting the signs shown here in about nine hours for a total cost of about six dollars.

One of the purposes of this project is to see how many people one person can reach, and signs are staying up so long now, that number's becoming astronomical.

Over the next few days I'm going to try and step up the pace a bit, concentrating on major population centers in California. Right now there's at least half a dozen cases against people around the country for holding or displaying anti-war signs - not just on freeways, but even in places like parks, gardens and in one case, even on their own porch.

I don't know how useful my example might be in their defense, but it will seem a little unfair if people get punished for putting up one sign when some hippie in California gets to put up thousands of them.

Orange County

"What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?" -Vincent Van Gogh

"Chess is a matter of delicate judgment, knowing when to punch and how to duck." -Bobby Fischer

"The best mind-altering drug is truth." -Jane Wagner

"There is no greater folly in this world than for a man to despair." -Miguel de Cervantes

"You may just think I am a red Jew son-of-a-bitch, but I'm keeping Thomas Jefferson alive." -I.F. Stone

FB - 1319

USA - 1245

How to Reach San Diego

Start your journey here.
Drive in back and place a sign on the fence shown below. Mere feet from traffic, it requires miles of driving to actually reach. It will be seen by approximately ten thousand people for every hour it stays up.

Head south on the 5 for a couple of miles and exit at Kettner, head south until you see the pedestrian bridge entrance on your left.

This is a good placement for southbound traffic.

This side gets the northbound. Proceed downtown.

There's a series of overpasses criss-crossing the 5, all requiring no more than a four foot walk from your car. Leave a couple signs between the railing and chainlink, making sure there's no gap at the bottom.

This overpass by City College is good for really large signs. Close, convenient parking at the entrance.

Head north on the 163 through Balboa Park, then make your first exit after turning east on the 8. Follow it around until you pass Bally's fitness and keep following the parking lot back to the trailhead. You should see this pallet somewhere back there, and the above sign probably torn into pieces. Use binder clips/hammer and nails to attach sign to the pallet, lean against post facing due east - should be visible by both north and southbound lanes.

The parking lot in the office building beside Bally's is surrounded by eucalyptus trees: use them. (note how bungee cord eliminates need for using nails...)

Get back on the 8 east and then head south on the 15. You'll find a whole assortment of overpasses with handy bars-against-fencing placement opportunities (no bungees required, just slides right in!) On your way out hit the 805 and voila! You've reached a good percentage of San Diego drivers in the space of two or three hours. Congratulations!

FB - 1310
USA - 1245

Some USA/OpEd

From OpEd News...

(Guess which one's me...)

FB - 1298

USA - 1245

Pictures from Los Angeles

"I move around a lot. Not because I'm looking for anything really... mostly 'cuz of how bad things get when I stay." -Five Easy Pieces

"At home if you kill someone they arrest you, here they'll give you a gun and show you what to do." - The Meaning of Life

"Never hate your enemies. It clouds your judgement." -The Godfather

"Jesus... you guys do nothin' but complain about how you can't stand it in this place here and then you haven't got the guts just to walk out."-One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

"I'm just an ordinary guy with nothing to lose." -American Beauty

FB - 1298

USA - 1237

America On Trial

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/02/2942/

While there have been a couple of incidents of people holding signs being hassled by cops, this is the first case that I know of where the right to post a political sign on public property is being called into question: and yes, it is Our Man in Ohio.

The law is quite specific on the difference between "advertising", which is commercial speech, and political speech, and it's amazing the case wasn't thrown out immediately on the strength of that. Kevin's defense should be that as a citizen of this country, using public property to speak out against this administration is not only his right, it's his duty. We'll see how it goes.

Berkeley Flashback

I like putting up anti war signs in Berkeley. It has a kind of nostalgic feel to it.

FB - 1290
USA - 1237

Goodbye San Francisco...

I had a great life back in San Francisco during the 90's. I had a great job tending bar, a wealth of friends and a veritable spicerack of lovers. (There are advantages to being straight in a gay town.) I also had a great apartment two blocks from the beach with an utterly amazing ocean view for - get this - $350 a month. And there was plenty of parking.

I lived there for six years - the longest I'd ever stayed in one place since childhood.

One night I had a dream that a tsunami had come and destroyed the place: everything I'd owned and accumulated was gone. The dream itself wasn't long, nor with any narrative besides staring at the ruins of the apartment. Unlike the grief we see on TV when people have "lost everything", I found myself filled with a sudden, overwhelming sense of sheer freedom: I could go now... anywhere I wanted.

I'm not one who normally puts a whole lot of psychological or philosophical weight into dreams, but after that night it became practically unbearable to stay where I was. So I quit my job, gave notice to my landlord, sold all my furniture and flew to Asia.