Confessions of a Freeway Overpass Banner Toting Mitsubishi
Boycotting Writer
I admit it: I got up before dawn to drive downtown and stand
for an hour on an overpass above the freeway holding a banner
that read "MITSUBISHI DESTROYS RAINFORESTS... THE WORD IS GETTING
AROUND." Something pushed me to get up out of my warm and cozy
bed on a beautiful clear December morning -- maybe the feeling
that one tiny effort to make a statement was worth a thousand
mornings sleeping in.
I drove southbound on the Hollywood freeway as a veil of
orange lifted over the city. The rows of tall thin palm trees
waved unsteadily after the heavy rains and the snow-capped peaks
of the San Gabriels shone in the distance like the smile of a
newborn.
I met Dan, Curtis, Jane and Michelle at the top of the
fourth street overpass. Dan and I unfurled one of the banners and
went to stand over the northbound traffic. The others went down
to the sixth street overpass. As we stood there, braced against
the crisp morning cold, I tried to read the expressions on some
of the drivers' faces. Some looked up at us and probably thought:
"there are two crazies holding a banner above the freeway." Some
of the drivers honked and waved, some held their thumbs up as if
say, 'yea, you won't catch me standing out there in this cold
holding a banner, but I respect your committment and we need to
do something to save the rainforests.' A few gave us the third
finger salute as if to berate us for bothering with the
rainforests when there are a hundred and one thousand other
problems closer to home. Cars, insular cubicles moving at
lightening speed passed graffitti-strewn walls and the blur of
another corner homeless asking for work, should be equipped with
special kinds of horns so drivers can communicate to one another.
Horns that mean "right on, brother," horns that mean 'you guys
are losers,' horns that mean 'I agree,' or 'I disagree.' Horns as
voices to let us out of the isolation of this fast-moving machine
and connect us back to the world.
The sun rose between the glittering steel and glass canyon
of the bastions of the corporate world: ARCO, The Pacific Stock
Exchange, AT&T, Pacific Bell, Union Bank, First Interstate,
Security Pacific while we puny humans on a freeway overpass,
dwarfed by these giants, denounced one of their own, a Japanese
keiretsu, or 'affiliate.'
A black man in a Santa's cap meandered up to me, a huge grin
on his face.
"At first I thought you two were crazy to stand up here with
a banner, ain't nobody going to see that anyway," he said, still
grinning. His plaid pants were worn and dirty and his green parka
had patches. "Tell me, why do we need to save the rainforests?"
He asked me matter of factly. I was about to try an answer but he
interrupted me. "We got an ozone problem, we got indigenous
peoples losing their homes. That's why we got to save the
rainforests." He started to walk up the street. "I may be a
homeless man, but I ain't stupid. You keep doing what you're
doing, 'cause we need all the help we can get. God bless you."
A few people walked by us without a glance, others had a
morning smile, and some leaned over to ask "What's written on
your banner?" I said that it wasn't just the two of us out here
on a whim, it was a whole organized 'action' of banners all over
the country this morning for a couple of hours to tell people
about a big foreign company that is destroying rainforests in
many parts of the world. One of the pedestrians thanked us. "You
told me something I didn't know this morning."
Although the sun was coming up, the air was still cold. I
thought about warm tropical places and suddenly had the image of
a small group of barely-clad Penan standing in front of a
roadblock protecting their homeland from the bulldozers in one of
the highland provinces of Sarawak near the border of Kalimantan
in Borneo where Mitubishi owns thirty percent of a Malaysian
company that logs, transports and sells the timber. How remote
they are from this freeway and people on their way to plushly
carpeted offices on thirtieth floors. And yet I hold them in my
consciousness at the same time I watch these cars whiz by below
me. They are not mutually exclusive, they coexist in the world,
and they affect one another, as distant as they may seem.
The banner toting gang on the sixth street ramp was asked to
leave by a policeman within a half an hour with the excuse that
the banner was distracting to the cars and could cause an
accident. But the policeman added that he was sympathetic to the
cause. We knew it was only a matter of time before they noticed
Dan and me a few bridges away. Still, it took the police another
thirty minutes to get to us, and he didn't seem as friendly as
the first group had suggested. "I told your group you had to
leave," he said. "We never got that message," we replied
innocently, wondering how much it was worth arguing. No matter
that billboards with naked women selling ridiculous products are
more distracting that one banner on a freeway bypass. As we
rolled up the banner the policeman asked us our names. I
deliberated a moment then gave him my real name. I hope he uses
it to start a new list for freeway-bypass, banner-toting,
Mitsubishi-boycotting writers.
Send in your "confessions!"
Margaret Trumbull (MTRUMBULL)