That didn’t require large numbers of people converging at the same time and place allowing thousands gathered peacefully to be labelled as violent by the actions of three or four deliberately sent provacateurs. That allowed us to address exactly the problems we want to address using our own words without having to tow some party line or be edited into oatmeal by broadcasters. That made use of our rights as citizens as granted to us directly by the people who founded this country precisely as they intended in the event the democracy they created should be facing exactly the kind of threat it’s facing now.
My heart leapt a bit when Jimmy Kimmel mentioned LA overpasses last week, since I’d just gotten back from doing these “Free Speech” signs over the Santa Monica, Santa Ana and Pasadena Freeways but he was talking about the Visibility Brigades. The Jimmy Kimmel Show contacted me way back in 2004 but I sadly had to tell them “No.” Mostly because they only wanted to know if I had Banksy’s phone number.
If only there was some way to peacefully protest that didn’t make us targets by telegraphing where we were going to be and when we were going to be there, where the size of our audience depended on our diligence, intelligence and imagination, not our bank accounts, and the impact we had depended on the words we chose. Where we could work entirely alone or with others entirely of our choosing. Where the content of our messages, their size and shape, time, place and manner of placement was entirely up to us.
Visibility Brigades are like unplugged versions of the Overpass Light Brigade whose members either included or directly inspired the Parisians carrying “NOT AFRAID” in the demonstration after the Charlie Hebdo massacre. That picture appeared on the front pages of possibly half the major newspapers in the world.
If only there was some way to peacefully protest that we could start doing right now, using tools and materials we already have. If only there was some way to peacefully protest that allowed us to take advantage of our skills as artists and graphic designers, or, lacking those, could be compensated for by a machine that worked with our computers and although once cost hundreds of dollars can now be bought for under thirty dollars. And if only that machine could not only create, in the course of its lifetime, signs that collectively would cost tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to have made professionally, but also, in about a week’s time, bestow us with the sort of signmaking talents and abilities that once would’ve taken years, thus giving us, for all intents and purposes, a fallback vocation as journeyman signmakers which will not only come in handy but possibly even keep us alive in the barter-based ad-hoc economy of feral capitalism that emerges during the desperate, hardscrabble years of neo-depression that grip the nation after the socio-financial collapse that inevitably occurs when a fascist takeover is orchestrated entirely by complete idiots and the citizens who saw it coming well in advance inexplicably chose to remain silent instead of using those rights guaranteed under the first amendment to use the commons to address their fellow citizens and say whatever they felt needed saying however and whenever they wanted to say it, as many times and to as many people as they felt was necessary in defense of their nation. Peacefully.
Certain not-at-all-cumbersome-and-altogether-perfectly-reasonable restrictions apply.
How To Make Large Signs Quickly And Easily
104 of the 154 signs I placed by freeways between LA and Seattle in September.
Below are pictures of the 13,892nd through 14,054th signs I’ve made, posted and photographed since 2003, interspersed with some inspirational words from others while I keep groping around for some of my own.
"We are not born for ourselves alone." - Cicero
“Somebody needs to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.”
- Jerry Garcia
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong,
is not only unpatriotic and servile but is morally treasonable to the American public.“
- Theodore Roosevelt
Top Right has two signs, the one in the background being about 3/4s of a mile away. Although it is a fairly large sign — about 12’ x 5’ — most of it’s visibility here is the effect of the zoom.
"Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you
equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.”
— Malcolm X
“I always wondered why somebody doesn’t do something about that.
Then I realized I was somebody.” - Lily Tomlin
“If our nation is ever taken over it will be taken over from within.”
- James Madison
"Sometimes the first duty of intelligent people is the
restatement of the obvious." - George Orwell
“You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor.
You can't be neutral.” —Desmond Tutu
“A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and
traitors are not victims, but accomplices” - George Orwell
“Democracy is not a spectator sport, it's a participatory event. If we don't
participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy.” - Michael Moore
“How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning
for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to
escape.” ― Christopher Hitchens
“It always seems impossible until it's done.” ― Nelson Mandela
"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of
history is the most important of all the lessons of
history." - Aldous Huxley
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
- Sun Tzu
“You are under no obligation to be the same person you
were five minutes ago.” - Alan Watts
“Nationalism does nothing but teach you to hate people
you never met, and to take pride in accomplishments you
had no part in.” - Doug Stanhope
“Not all battles are fought for victory - some are fought to tell the world there was someone on the battlefield.” - Ravish Kumar
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is cooperating with it.” - Martin Luther King Jr.
"Don't hate the media, become the media." - Jello Biafra
"Things do not happen. Things are made to happen."
- John F. Kennedy
“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”
- Robin Williams
“You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump. You just don’t.” — Fran Lebowitz
“The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.”
— Abbie Hoffman
