Last Wednesday, I heard on the radio that Joe Biden would be speaking at a fundraiser at a restaurant that happens to be on my ride home. I knew that I was too late to register and that even if I knew ahead of time, wouldn't have had the money needed.
At a little after 4:00, I started the mountain road drive that winds narrowly up and then down the mountain. About halfway through, I would pass the restaurant where Joe Biden would be speaking.
As I came around the bend I suddenly saw a sea of black and white protest signs all pointed from one side of the road towards the restaurant on the other side. They were white with black lettering, and as the road is dangerous and winding, I wasn't able to read all of them and still maintain a steady hold on the steering wheel to avoid oncoming cars coming up the mountain.
I did see enough flashes to know these were anti-Obama signs. One said vote for Obama, he has only 145 days of experience. Another said something about a pastor. They looked very strange with no affiliation that I could see (for McCain) but just stark white with stark black lettering with anti-Obama messages. They were machine printed.
I was livid. First, this is Western Massachusetts and this sea of 30 to 40 signs doesn't represent what I see here every day. I can't drive anywhere without seeing Obama signs and can count on my one hand the number of McCain signs I have seen in the last 18 months. This sea of 30-40 signs didn't represent the place I live.
As I debated whether to turn around at the bottom of the mountain and go back up to yank all the signs out while cars whizzed by, my head started to calm as I realized that I hadn't seen more than one or two people there and that the signs had been planted in the ground. Planted in the ground? A protest without the people?
These weren't people protesting. This was some kind of export from someone with money who paid a couple people to go plant a bunch of generic looking signs. No visible direct connection to McCain so they could make them as nasty as they wanted. I wondered if the protesters were even from Massachusetts or whether they got paid to fly around with boxes of signs. We pay people to keep the fighting down in Iraq. Are they paying pretend protesters?
Well, I am a good citizen and since I didn't want anyone to get hurt turning their head to read all those signs on that dangerous stretch of road, I called the non-emergency line of the police to let them know that someone had planted a bunch of signs in the road and that cars were breaking suddenly and that I was worried about an accident. Yes, very worried about an accident on that dangerous road during rush hour. The officer asked if anyone was holding the signs and I told him that I only saw two people there with signs but the other ones had just been planted in the ground filling up the side of the road.
An hour later, I took my daughter to soccer practice and with my son in the car did a loop to see if anyone followed up. Yes, there were just two people now holding two signs each and the sea of exported signs had been taken down. My friend said that she watched the news and they only showed the two people holding the two signs each.
The smallest of victories, but I was happy to change what got placed on the news that night.