Saturday, July 26, 2008

Impeachment Hearings in LA



I left Orange County around noon, putting up signs in support of the Kucinich/Conyers hearings in Washington DC. The hearings centered on the Bush administration's abuses of power, including sanctioning torture, lying the country into an unnecessary and illegal war, ignoring the Constitution they were sworn to uphold and illegally spying on the nation at large. Since Bush and Cheney's list of crimes did not include lying about a blowjob, they've gone largely ignored by the media.


These first signs were placed along the 405 north and southbound on my way to LA, all of them were still up at the end of the day and were seen by about one hundred thousand people.






These two signs (above and below) were placed in a not-very-well-sealed overpass by LAX. Although I didn't have a chance to check back on them, if they lasted through the day that would add another hundred thousand or so viewers to the total.







Although technically not a freeway, I put the above sign up on La Cienega just for the hell of it.

Heading east on the Santa Monica freeway I saw this sign (above) still up after four days. I attribute its duration to the fact it's relatively unobtrusive and also placed in a (sort of) sealed overpass. Although not very large, it's placement (and anomaly) make it difficult to miss and after four days on the Santa Monica, it was probably read close to half a million times. It took me less than ten minutes to make and cost about a nickel.

To compliment it I put up this sign a quarter mile or so later. As it's on a working overpass I figured it'd come down within an hour or two, but it was still up four hours later. I put the sign below up on the Pasadena Freeway, along with a few more on the 5 and the 101.

I finished off the day by putting up "Peace" signs like the one below on my way back. By hitting five major freeways I figure I reached close to a million people yesterday. That's a million people who saw political protest on freeways where otherwise they would've seen none.

Imagine if there were more of us. Not a lot, just a few... dedicated to using the First Amendment for all it's worth and reaching out to as many people as they could. Imagine if we had that... It wouldn't even matter that we had a spineless congress and a lapdog press: the sheer power of free speech by the people would've ruled the day and this war would've been over before it began. The people who founded this country knew this and that's why they gave us the right to full and unfettered free political speech: the right to say pretty much whatever we want whenever we want to as many people as we can.

We need to start taking them up on it.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love seeing the signs posted over freeways and along the sides of heavily traveled streets.They lift my spirits every time I see them. I look for them every day. Happily I am seeing more everyday. Keep it up.

Anonymous said...

Oh my goodness! I don't expect you to post this, but I thought of you when I read it! This article probably gets you all hard! From the NY Times....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/world/middleeast/26censor.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Freewayblogger said...

No. That article, or rather the story behind it, prompted me to publish this:

http://freewayblogger.blogspot.com/2008/07/gas-pump-blogging.html

I'd been sitting on it for awhile and figured what the hell, why censor myself when that seems to be the government's job.

By the way, there's a perfectly good reason they won't let you see pictures of dead people: young republicans, (the only people besides the abject poor who would sign up for Bush's war,) are absolute and utter cowards. Famous for it, actually. Just look at their leaders: Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Hannity, Limbaugh, Feith, Addington, Libby... Utter cringing craven cowards, all of them. Jesus, even your holiest of holies, Ronald Reagan, skipped service.

Jesus it'll be nice when you people are gone. The whole damn species will heave a sigh of relief.

Unknown said...

Wow! Good for you doing all this!

I wish more people were doing the same.

I do think many people WANT impeachment, but the media won't cover it, or war protests, etc.

Excellent that you are doing this!

;-)

Thank you.

Cappy

RubyGlare said...

Our laws demand it, I agree, impeach. I commend you for your efforts, you're letting us know we're not alone, more of us agree than we realized.

Anonymous said...

There are more people who think like me than think like you.... thank God.

Freewayblogger said...

I don't know about that anonymous, I think you're dramatically overestimating the number of lonely racist pedophiles out there.

Anonymous said...

I saw your signs going home on the 101. Good job!