Instead, you should pick out individuals, stare into their eyes and let them know you’re asking them directly for help. Or so I’ve been told: my only experience was in grade school in front of crowds that had gathered specifically to see me get attacked. From an early age, violence was always something used against me, so I’ve never been much of a fan. I practically attacked someone in public though - an absolute stranger - and I’m embarrassed to say it wasn’t even that long ago.
For most of the last decade I’ve been taking care of my mother as she went through the long, slow decline of cancer, dementia and death. I know that sounds depressing, but it wasn’t really. Most of the time we were actually quite happy, and for every bad day there were probably nine or ten good ones. The bad days were bad in the ways and for the reasons you can probably imagine: bad news and difficult decisions - everything seeming so large and important - literally a matter of life and death. But it’s not… not really. It’s really just death and a couple of stalling tactics.
I’m sure a lot of you are either caretakers yourselves or weighing the decision, and while we’ve all had or heard the horror stories, I wish I could tell you more about how beautiful those days were. Not out of any end-of-life stoicism or deep understanding but more for the opposite of all of that - days that were practically sacred for their normalcy. There were bits of horror of course, particularly towards the end, but finally, after taking trips to seven continents, about 70 different countries and 86 times around the sun, Mom passed away in August of 2016. She went quietly in her home in the country that she served and loved and was finally about to elect its very first female President.
I’d like to write more about those days, but it’s not the time. What I want to say is that most of my last decade has been spent with old people - mostly women in their eighties - my mom, her sisters and her remaining friends. Apart from the news of the day, much of their conversation revolved around aches and pains, test results and medications. While the subject of death was unavoidable, it was only treated seriously when it actually happened or was absolutely imminent. Otherwise it was treated as the same abstraction it is for any of us. Despite being some of the most well-educated and philosophically curious people I’ve ever known, the prospect of actually dying seemed ultimately just as strange and incomprehensible to them as it is to anyone.
The real fear was falling and spending the rest of their lives bedridden. It was a shadow that hung over everything and nobody ever joked about it. After a certain point the only things that really matter are mobility and being able to take care of yourself. Towards the end the playing field starts leveling out again, and social constructs like fame, wealth, and education become almost meaningless compared to simple mobility. If you live long enough you may actually find yourself in a world where things like race, religion and nationality all become irrelevant: all that matters is simply being able to think clearly, walk and wipe your own ass. When I was a child, an old person slowly hobbling around in public was sort of a pathetic figure - someone to feel sorry for - when I could be bothered to think about them at all. Knowing what I do now though, I see them as the exactly the opposite: they’re the bravest, most heroic people I see all day.
After 50 years or so you think you pretty much know yourself, generally what you’re capable of and how you tend to react, and you figure there probably aren’t a whole lot of surprises left - no big ones anyway. But then one day you’re putting money in a parking meter and watching a woman with a cane cringe as a kid on a skateboard comes towards her on the sidewalk. He gives her as much room as he can going by and you share a sigh of relief with her. But a few seconds later, with the whole sidewalk to himself, he decides to do some some trick where flips the board under his feet and fucks it up like it seems they always do. The board gets away from him and even though it doesn’t go near the woman you’re suddenly filled with a white-hot rage and before you even know what’s happening you’re all over this kid, ripping the skate out of his hands and screaming like a madman about people never being able to walk again.
I’ll never forget the fear in that poor kid’s eyes. And really who could blame him? You fuck up one Ollie and WHAM! Suddenly some man mountain ranting about old ladies’ ankles is about to kill you with your own skateboard. The look in his face actually sobered me up, and as much as I want to hurl thing as hard and far as I could, I ended up just shoving the skate back at him, saying something angry and backing off. I might’ve even apologized: I’d like to think I did. I mean Jesus… the poor bastard was probably no more than 15.
It was the utter senselessness of it that made me snap - the thought of that woman spending the rest of her life in bed because of some shitty little skateboard trick…
A month or so ago I was responding to an e-mail that was fairly typical for the ones I receive - an older woman who wants to hang a sign but is scared about getting in trouble with the police and losing her job with the school district and thinks it’s probably better to do it at night. And I’m writing back saying it’s nothing to worry about, it just takes seconds, easiest thing in the world etc. etc. and knowing somehow she’s not going to listen to me. If she does it at all it’s going to be at night. And I don’t know where she lives, so it’s probably rainy or snowy and I’m picturing some frightened old woman clutching her sign in the dark on some stairs somewhere surrounded by concrete and wet steel and I begin to hate myself almost as much as I hated that kid.
And I scrapped the letter and instead I wrote one I’d never written before telling her simply not to do it. Instead I asked her what she wanted the sign to say and I’d do it and send her a picture. The last thing in the world I want is for some old woman to become bedridden for life for the equivalent of a shitty little skateboard trick. She wrote back saying she wanted a sign that said “Protect Mueller.”
I’ve been pushing signposting as a means of protest for close to twenty years now and here on Daily Kos for the last five. And while I’ve gotten all sorts of love and recs and positive comments, the number of actual signs it’s generated has been less than what I’d put up on an average day and I just can’t help thinking I’m doing something wrong.
I’ve spent years trying to figure out why something so easy, necessary and widely accepted as worthwhile hasn’t caught on and come up with a variety of fascinating theories I’ll bore you with later, but at least one of them may be the mistake of appealing to the crowd. So y’all can breathe a little easier for the time being: go ahead and recycle that cardboard and put those paintbrushes down. You’re off the hook… for now.
I’ve picked up four working recruits from Twitter, but as far as I know am still the only freewayblogging Kossack, so scanning this crowd of supportive but reluctant admirers, my gaze rests on you, the veterans.
I have several reasons for this choice. 1) You’ve already proven yourselves willing to dedicate yourselves to serving this country, and I’m willing to bet it wasn’t to make it safe for the sort of quasi-fascist crap we’re seeing now. All I’m asking you to do is put in a couple of extra hours to try and make sure the years you’ve already given don’t end up being wasted.
2) You understand the nature of war, and if freewayblogging can be compared to anything at all, it’s war. But it’s the best kind of war there is - the kind with absolutely no violence. And you’re the supreme commander. Your signs are your troops and their mission is to win hearts and minds. You deploy them strategically, using traffic patterns, the lay of the land and line-of-sight dynamics. Your enemy is those who would take them down and you foil them with physics, speed, stealth and the ability to strike over and over at the times and places of your choosing.
You try to reach as many people as you can as quickly as you can while expending the least amount of effort possible. You hide in plain sight, reconnoiter, scan fence lines and perimeters for gaps and vulnerabilities. Unlike in the service however, you’re entirely in charge: you define your mission and proceed or abort at will. You drive and walk and sometimes climb, you’re constantly alert to opportunities, and you almost never have to wait.
You’ll be paid nothing but the knowledge that you’re fighting for your country. The only trophies you’ll get will be photographs. Thousands of people will both love and hate you but nobody will know who you are. Working in broad daylight I’ve hung close to 7,400 signs since December of 2000 and have never been arrested. I’ve been caught in the act approximately fifteen times, resulting in about a dozen polite conversations with police and three less-than-polite ones with angry civilians. You have to admit that’s pretty good for a guy with no formal military training.
Should you be stopped and questioned by law enforcement you can do what I do and politely take down the sign as they ask. Or you can stand up for your First Amendment rights and explain that while you’d like to comply you’re duty bound to follow orders from further on up the chain of command: General George Washington, which is in fact, literally what you’re doing.
Obviously this doesn’t apply to those of you who are physically unable to do it, think it’s silly, or are fine with the direction our country is heading. But for the rest of you, help me out here okay? I can’t keep doing this all by myself, and I can’t stand the thought of responding to something like Mueller getting fired with another giant march that’s gone the next day. It’s just tragic to keep letting things go the way we have been without putting up more of a fight, particularly when we have so many trained fighters, and especially — trust me on this - when the fighting is so much fucking fun.