Freeway Blogger's Self-Made Billboard Movement

One way to publicize grassroots political action is to give a trendy new name to your work. This is the strategy of the fellow who calls himself the "Freeway Blogger":
http://www.freewayblogger.com/. Rather than post to the internet he posts signs on the side of the road with clever statements like "War President? My Pet Goat"; "Rumsfailed"; and "Nobody Died When Clinton Lied."

There's nothing really twenty-first century about the Freeway Blogger's media. Activists have put paint on old bedsheets since time immemorial and the messages have gone up along the nation's highways just as long. One can imagine the first patriots scrawling "Go Home Brits" onto an old cloth hung in a tree outside Concord. Yours truly has modified a few highway signs in his day and wheatepaste political messages in what we might call "sensitive" places (the less said the better).

But what is new is the Freeway Blogger's use of the internet to highlight his work and organize it into a campaign. A sign on your local interstate isn't as exciting as a campaign of signs or a movement of sign-makers. So the Freeway Blogger has called for a National Freeway Free Speech Day on October 13. It's a day for all of us to grap our paint, posterboard, photocopies (and yes: bedsheets) in an coordinated effort to reach America's drivers. The Freeway Blogger does have a website and has gotten 770 people in 190 cities across 45 states to join him in "freeway blogging" on October 13.