Portland OR, Day 2

"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." -Benjamin Franklin

(All signs posted in Portland, January 10th)

"The Americans will always do the right thing... After they've exhausted all the alternatives." -Winston Churchill

"Behind every great fortune there is a crime." -Honore de Balzac

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -Thomas Paine

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress." -Mark Twain

"Just be thankful you're not getting all the government you're paying for. " -Will Rogers

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." -Martin Luther King Jr.

"Freedom is from within." -Frank Lloyd Wright

"The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it."

-Abbie Hoffman

Portland OR

"It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way not his way." -Mark Rothko

All signs posted in Portland on January 9th.

Quotations by Portlanders.

"The only sane policy for the world is that of abolishing war."

-Linus Pauling

"Getting fired is the best thing that could happen to any of us. That way, we'd quit treading water and do something with our lives."

-Chuck Palahniuk

"The only reason they come to see me is that I know that life is great — and they know I know it." -Clark Gable

"When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities." -Matt Groening

"A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over." -Joe Hill

"What's to gain by silence?" -Ursula K. Le Guin

"That's All Folks!" -Mel Blanc (epitaph)

Bay Area/George Bernard Shaw

"You see things as they are and ask Why? I dream things as they never were and ask, Why not?"

(Signs placed on I-80 and US 101 in Alameda, Marin and Sonoma counties.

Quotations by George Bernard Shaw )

"If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do."

"There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it."

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."

"The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier."

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."

"In heaven an angel is nobody in particular."

"Do not try to live for ever. You will not succeed."

LA/Road Trip

Santa Monica Freeway Eastbound

(All signs posted in Los Angeles on January 4th.)

San Diego Freeway Southbound

The building behind this sign, near LAX, represents the latest trend in outdoor advertising: covering entire buildings with vinyl and making billboards seven or eight stories tall. This is why I don't pay much attention to arguments that my humble scraps of cardboard are a dangerous distraction to drivers.

Ventura Freeway Eastbound

Santa Monica Freeway Westbound

Pasadena Freeway - both directions

San Diego Freeway Northbound

This is what you need to hang cardboard signs just about anywhere: bungee cords, duct tape, hammer, nails, binder clips, spring clamps, wire coat hangars and a safety vest. Around freeways, a safety vest is like a backstage pass: you instantly look like you belong. Even when you're putting up signs, people think you're taking them down.

Signs are made using cardboard, duct tape, white and black paint and an overhead projector. Print your message on to a transparency, shine it onto the cardboard (painted white), trace the letters and fill them in. It costs practically nothing and, once you've got the hang of it, takes a lot less time than you'd think: maybe five to ten minutes per sign, large or small.

With fifty or sixty signs packed into my Prius, I'll be heading north along the I-5 corridor: first to the Bay Area and then, maybe, Portland and Seattle: there's some great posting spots up there. I figure as long as I keep hanging signs and people keep seeing them, eventually some of you are bound to catch on.

Ventura Freeway Eastbound (above and below)

So long as money continues to control, and practically monopolize our political dialogue, things will continue to get worse. But if you've got something to say and you're not a PAC, media outlet or corporation, this is how to do it.

Pasadena Freeway (both directions)

Hollywood Freeway Northbound

Corporations Are Not People/Orange County

These signs, and a lot more, have become almost permanent fixtures along the 5/405 corridor in Orange County, California - a hotbed, to paraphrase Abbie Hoffman - of social rest.

Maintaining at least five lanes of heavy traffic in each direction, Interstates 5 and 405 host hundreds of thousands of drivers per day in Orange County. Of course there's no telling how many of them keep up with Supreme Court rulings or know about the Citizen's United decision, but I figure that those who don't simply have their commutes made a little more surreal, or assume that someone's merely stating the obvious. In this respect, even the most uninformed drivers have a clearer sense of jurisprudence than Scalia, Thomas, etc.

I paint my messages in different sizes to adapt to a variety of posting spots. The signs above took about two and a half hours to make and cost... practically nothing. The cardboard was free out of dumpsters and I used probably no more than 47 cents worth of paint and duct tape for the lot. The bicycle on the far left will give you an idea of the scale.

Montana (Yes, Montana) Fights Back

Because of the layout and infrastructure, OC postings are best kept to the sides of the freeways, a vast and easily accessible no-man's-land of fencing and iceplant. This rule holds true pretty much across the board: the signs that are read the most are the ones that stay up the longest. Smaller signs placed along the peripheries of freeways will stay up for days, weeks or even months compared to overpass postings.

"I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one of them." -Sign at Occupy Wall Street

Wisconsin's Overpass Light Brigade

Overpass Light Brigade

Final Push for Recall Signatures

Very cool pictures from Madison and Racine from the Overpass Light Brigade, using pedestrian bridges to spread the word and gather signatures.

How to make an LED lightboard, and here's how to make traditional cardboard and paint glow in the dark.

Short video from OLB