While surfing on the Internet, I came upon a site of a California activist who had a picture and some quotes that caught my attention. The picture was a dumpster full of cardboard and text written over the picture that said, “The contents of this dumpster and $20 worth of paint can reach one million people Tomorrow.” His latest posting was called “Arsenal of Democracy: Cardboard”. This local activist has put over 4,000 cardboard signs on the freeways of California and Western United States protesting the war in Iraq over the last four years. As I continue to Google, I find other sites and articles, pages and pages of titles that grab my attention, “Boulevard of Broken Cardboard”, “Cardboard protest: Greenpeace was using cut-outs to represent the whale quotas of Japan.” They continue, “He was repeatedly asked what he was doing. Was he protesting? He said nothing. Did a silent man and a piece of cardboard need a permit??? …”, “…Several demonstrators burned Chinese flags and defaced cardboard images of China,...”, “One student dragged a cardboard coffin containing shredded paper with the names of 2000 U.S. troops who have died in Iraq.” “The greatest risk is that Romania should keep on being a "cardboard democracy" having institutions apparently democratic but with no stability...”, “The Twin Towers of Democracy Cardboard Monument Project is involving the public in the creation of cardboard monuments to educate the public about the vital ...”. The articles go on and on.
One page that particularly stuck in my mind of the 895,000 search queries was a very simple instructional page from a US university that explained how to create signs for protesting. “….Lots of cardboard: Cardboard is a fairly common commodity….Discarded cardboard boxes may be found anywhere where people use or sell lots of stuff that comes in large cardboard boxes. Use your imagination (or buy some [boxes... or imagination])….”