Signs Posted In 2020

“Not all battles are fought for victory - some are fought to tell the world there was someone on the battlefield.”

 - Ravish Kumar

1st Amendment protected signs placed by freeways in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond & San Francisco.

"The most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen." — Louis Brandeis

“If kids got raped by clowns as often as kids get raped by preachers it would be against the law to take your kid to the circus.” - Dan Savage

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”  - Alice Walker

"When small men begin to cast big shadows... the Sun is about to set.” - Lin Yutang

"If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy." -Marquis de Lafayette

“If our nation is ever taken over it will be taken over from within.” - James Madison

 

"You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump. You just don't."—Fran Leibowitz

Signs Posted Since 2003 - 8,270

Arrests - 0

Catching Up: 2019

“The Republican Party has become the most dangerous organization in world history.”
—Noam Chomsky

These were put up in LA and the San Francisco Bay Area in late December, 2019. Although a lot has happened since then, I can't say much has changed. If anything, the Republican party's gotten worse, and all these signs are just as true now as they were then. Depending on your criteria, they've tried to illegally seize power 4 or 5 times since losing the election in November  2020.

Donald Trump is far from being the first person to claim he won an election he lost, nor the first to make the claim with absolutely no evidence to back it up. I do believe however, that he may be the first person in history to lose an election and claim victory with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, who honestly thought it would just be given to him on the strength of his say so. Perhaps historians could prove me wrong on this, but I believe Donald Trump has cultivated a sense of entitlement unequaled by any historical figure going all the way back before Rome, the Greek City-States, the dynasties of Persia and Egypt, the Minoans, Assyrians, Babylon... all the way back to the very Dawn of Civilization.

110 Freeway, Downtown LA. Sign slipped through gap in fence to the left.

Oakland

El Segundo

Midtown LA

Larkspur

Santa Rosa

Encino

Santa Monica

Signs Posted - 8,249

Arrests - 0

Sarah And Renee Called Each Other Thelma And Louise

 

never really deciding or caring which one was which - it was their friendship that was important. They’d been friends for over twenty years, working together as attorneys for the same county and rising slowly through the ranks to eventually become judges. They were both smart, professional women who’d fought the sorts of battles that women still fight today, but back in the 60’s and 70’s when there were a lot fewer on the front lines. Along with their careers they bonded over the problems of raising children, getting them into college, and dealing with husbands who either strayed, moved out or died.  All of their children were smart and eventually made it through college, and most had found good careers, stable marriages, mortgages and children.

But along with the stable ones, they each had one gypsy child, whom they’d decided early on should never meet, fearing these free spirits would fall in love, get married and never be able to support themselves. I know it sounds a little ridiculous and was probably one of those conspiracies that began as a joke but was maintained over the years more out of habit than serious intent. Whatever the case, I never knew Mom’s friend Sarah had a daughter named Rachel until I was thirty-five years old, when I paid a surprise visit to my Mom just before they were arriving to take her out to dinner.
I probably don’t even need to tell you what happens next.

The first time I ever saw the woman who would become my wife she was wearing a sun dress and walking through my mom’s front gate just behind her mother. Her hair was light brown and fell in waves and curls around her shoulders and down her back. She was too far off to make out much more than that, so while technically it might not have been love at first sight, but by second or third sight I was probably hers for the asking. I’d just flown in from Manila after six months traveling around Southeast Asia and the Pacific, so I was filled with stories, giddy with jet lag and happy as hell to be back. And thanks to sunshine and intestinal parasites, I was not only tan, but thinner than I’d been in years.

I wish I could remember more from that first dinner together because it must’ve been hilarious: Rachel and I amiably chatting away while our mothers looked on helplessly as the attraction they’d spent so many years trying to prevent began to blossom in front of their eyes. What was obvious to them though was hardly even suspected by us, and the laughter, soft smiles and lingering glances that were their worst nightmare we probably regarded as casual flirtation at most. We had no idea that we were not only falling in love but that it would eventually lead to our getting married and having a child together, let alone that this entire chain of events had not only been predicted but actively conspired against for at least a dozen years by our dinner companions who were normally quite talkative but that night seemed strangely quiet.

There’s a romantic notion that the end of things can be seen in their beginnings - that the seeds of death are present at the birth and that you can determine the way something will end by looking for clues hidden in its beginning. While I love this as a concept - as some metaphysical abstraction or literary device - it’s hard to believe that real life is quite so poetic. But that said, let me tell you about the exact moment I knew Rachel and I would become lovers.

It was the morning after our dinner and Rachel called asking if she’d left her purse in my mom’s car. She had so I told her not to worry, followed by a predictable and relatively innocuous remark about “that old trick…” playfully implying that she’d left her purse behind on purpose. She said “Oh my God, what an ego!” with the kind of mild exasperation appropriate to that level of banter: a sort of verbal eye-rolling that would’ve seemed perfectly normal except that somehow it wasn’t. There was something about the way she said it - just the slightest blush of genuine embarrassment, probably undetectable to most but unmistakable to me, that let me know instantly and with absolute certainty that she was mine. That was the beginning of what would be far and away the happiest years of my life.“Oh my God what an ego…” Those were the words that began our romantic relationship, so it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what was responsible for its end.