from the Ashville Citizen-Times

‘Highway blogging’ Legality Debated:

Interstate demonstrators claim protected speech; city cites safety.

ASHEVILLE — An increasingly popular type of political demonstration in Asheville has raised new questions about where the right to free speech ends and police power to protect motorists’ safety begins.
In growing numbers, demonstrators are using bridges over interstates and aiming messages at high volumes of traffic below...

full story here.

State of Disunion

It was three o'clock this afternoon. I panicked for a moment when I realized that the President was about to deliver his final State of Union address and I had no act of defiance planned out yet. I had to move fast. I couldn't let this moment go by without doing something to state my opposition to Bush and all he represents. I decided that in my own private way, I would deliver a very public personal response to this pathetic and criminal administration and the vast damage it has done to this nation and around the world. 'Disunion' or the termination or destruction of union, seemed to be a far more appropriate description than any other word to what is going on around the country.

In a flash I typed up STATE OF DISUNION into my Adobe Illustrator program. Sized it to a 36inch tall by 96inch wide PDF file and e-mailed the graphic to my local FEDEX/Kinkos. They printed it and within the hour, I had two massive banner messages ready tod go ($24). I took the outputs to a local HomeDepot and purchased cheap 48 inch bungee cords, 2 inch masking tape and a 4 x 8 foot piece of 1/2 inch rigid foam insulation ($7.00). I taped the message to both sides of the panel and headed to my local freeway pedestrian overcrossing and 'free speech' platform over the Golden State Freeway at Los Feliz Blvd. in Los Angeles.

It was almost 6pm by the time I reached the overcrossing. The sun was setting over Southern California as the President's blather began ringing across the nation and world. It took an instant to post my message on the inside of the cyclone fencing, right below a light on the bridge -- Immediately thousand of motorists plying through Monday night rush-hour were exposed to personal act of defiance. And in it's own way -- this message stands out like few others to help 'implicate' all of us into some form of action in the face of the enormous catastrophe that this nation has allowed to happen.

We must act and not just complain about the Democrats and their lack of 'spine'. For nearly eight years the media has made every effort to marginalize dissent and rendering it 'invisible' to the mainstream. The government (both democrats and republicans) are acting against the will of the people and managing the debate like never before. Mainstream media is complicit in this charade as the Constitution is being subverted. Our Congress is the in the process of granting immunity to those in the telecom industry who knowingly enabled criminal government surveillance of fellow Americans. We cannot as citizens allow this to happen without a real and vital response whether in small personal ways or as part of a transformative movement that arcs toward justice.

-Robert Corsini

MLK Sighted in Florida

I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing mankind is sleeping through a great revolution. President Kennedy said on one occasion, "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." The world must hear this. I pray to God that America will hear this before it is too late, because today we’re fighting a war.


Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism. It is the active outpouring of one's whole being into the being of another.


World peace through nonviolent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew. Nonviolence is a good starting point. Those of us who believe in this method can be voices of reason, sanity, and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred, and emotion. We can very well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built.


The ultimate test of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and moments of convenience, but where he stands in moments of challenge and moments of controversy.

Phoenix, Santa Barbara

Red Alert

Torture on Trial

MLK in FLA

Dear Freewayblogger,
I'm planning on bringing it to the streets Monday for MLK Jr day. I've taken a quote from his Vietnam speech: "...the greatest purveyor of violence in the world - my own county ...I cannot be silent." I'm using an image of Dr. King from the "True leaders work for peace" collection and plan on leaving signs around heavy shopping traffic areas - malls, movies, fast food drive thru's, ATMs, shopping carts, and anywhere else I can find a spot to hang them...


Thanks for doing all you do. One of these days I'm going to work up the courage to join you on the freeways, but until then I'll just stick with everyplace else...



Peace, and Happy Martin Luther King Day,
Tampa/St.Petersburg

Southern California

"The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech." -Anthony Kennedy

"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." -Alan Kay


"More obscene than anything is inertia." -Henry Miller

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." - George Bernard Shaw

"The only good martyr is a dead one." -Scarlet P.

"I've seen the future, brother... it is murder." --Leonard Cohen

from Santa Barbara

Minnesota/California

How to Send a Christmas Card to 14 Million People

1. Come up with a message. Keep it short.

2. Using an overhead projecter, trace your message repeatedly onto large, lightly colored surfaces: cardboard painted white works perfectly.

3. Paint in the lettering, cut apart the signs and put them in your car.

4. Drive around a couple of major metropolitan areas putting signs up by freeways.

Note from Coleen Rowley

While plenty of peace groups may have FBI agents in their midst, I doubt they're as proud of theirs as we are of ours. Coleen Rowley, freewayblogger, FBI agent and one of Time Magazine's Persons of the Year for 2002, sends us this summary of her recent meeting with the Minnesota Highway Patrol:

"Our meeting today with three commanders of the Minnesota Highway Patrol, facilitated by ACLU Attorney Teresa Nelson went just great! The three commanders acknowledged our rights under Minnesota law to display banners from pedestrian overpasses as long as we do not block pedestrian traffic; affix the banners to the fencing; or drop any item off into the traffic below from an overpass. We advised we do none of these things and that it has been our policy to accommodate public safety by canceling the bannering when driving conditions are not good (i.e. when it snows).

Even better, the Highway Patrol is going to ensure that all their officers and dispatchers are reminded of this policy allowing us to exercise our first amendment rights without any further harassment."

Holy Crap!

"'Theocracy' has always been the synonym for a bleak and narrow, if not a fierce and blood-stained tyranny." -William Archer

"They tried to make me go to Catholic school, too. I lasted a very short time. When the penguin came after me with a ruler, I was out of there." -Frank Zappa

"Once a person admits to not believing in God, this raises the question of whether or not that person believes in America." - Boy Scouts of America, press release

"Anybody who believes in hell is praying to a sadist." -Scarlet P.

"Yet she increased her whorings, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt and lusted after her paramours whose members were like those of donkeys and whose emissions was like that of stallions." -Ezekial 23


"All Bibles are man-made." -Thomas Edison