Banner Blogging: Taking it to the Streets

The Globe calls it Highway Blogging. Operation Over calls it effective. Yesterday the collective calling themselves Operation Over, working to stop a new BU biolab from opening its doors in Roxbury tossed bed sheet banners to display their message on 128 and the Mass Pike. They're looking to get their message out to a larger community, including the suburbs. Threatening situations like the spread of Ebola in the Hub – or even smallpox – has been the battle cry of the group. The Globe took to calling the road-banner activists "Highway Bloggers" without mention of the Operation Over initiative (fair - they only blogged about it on the tubes after the Globe's press time). Instead, the overpass-as-podium piece focused mainly on a Rhode Islander, a California resident, and a bit on Bruce MacDonald, a Cambridge lawyer. But we're not faulting them for the focus, they found a few folks who were willing to talk. The term "Highway Blogger" (or Freeway Blogger, as it was originally coined in California – land o' freeways), is a poor term. We're pretty sure that blog is a shortened version of 'web log' and the abbreviation and origin of the term has a handful of people laying claim to it – but it has nothing to do with banners on highways. That said it'd be really great if Mac Daniel would start blogging Starts & Stops by displaying slogan adorned bed sheets off overpasses…now, what rhymes with Amorello?

Activist POV image courtesy of Operation Over