So I participated in a net neutrality protest today. But mostly I am not going to talk about the protest itself but rather the sign I made for it. :)
I hadn't gone to any of the other local protests because they always tended to be at noon, which is a little early for me. This one was at 5 PM though, so I went.
As mentioned, I made a sign beforehand. It said, "I EXPECT A DUMB PIPE". Ultimately though I ended up taking it down because, well, nobody really got it. Then it turned out someone had markers so I used the other site, writing "WE NEED A NEUTRAL NET" -- I would have come up with something better, but, given that I was writing on the back of the sign -- the side with the handle attached -- and doing this unplanned, I couldn't really write something that would take a lot of space.
(The best sign IMO was one saying "NEUTRAL INFRASTRUCTURE IS ESSENTIAL". I wish I'd thought of that.)
Honestly I would have been OK with the "dumb pipe" sign if it weren't for the fact that my sign was also larger than everyone else's, which I wasn't expecting. I'm OK with holding up a sign that not everyone gets, not so much if it's the largest sign there.
(Most of the signs were just medium-sized pieces of posterboard. Mine was a big foam board, that even had a handle -- also cut from a foam board and then taped to the sign. The handle took two attempts; the first one was too weak. I wanted it thin enough to grip, but that was too weak. So the second one was tapered. Arguably there were three attempts, the first being when I initially attempted to make the handle out of wood -- actually getting a big wooden board out of the shed and a saw from the closet -- before deciding, no, I definitely don't have the patience to go sawing up this wood...)
(Yes I may be focusing inordinately on the sign here but... how often do I actually, like, make physical things? Pretty rarely. So, y'know, I thought this was pretty neat, especially that I was able to make a pretty functional sign with a handle so easily.)
After about 50 minutes out in the cold I'd decided I couldn't really take the weather anymore and left. Handed off my sign to someone else though!
I'm not really sure we accomplished much of anything, but I think we did at least convince a few people to call their congresspeople.
So, yeah. That was the protest. And the sign.
I hadn't gone to any of the other local protests because they always tended to be at noon, which is a little early for me. This one was at 5 PM though, so I went.
As mentioned, I made a sign beforehand. It said, "I EXPECT A DUMB PIPE". Ultimately though I ended up taking it down because, well, nobody really got it. Then it turned out someone had markers so I used the other site, writing "WE NEED A NEUTRAL NET" -- I would have come up with something better, but, given that I was writing on the back of the sign -- the side with the handle attached -- and doing this unplanned, I couldn't really write something that would take a lot of space.
(The best sign IMO was one saying "NEUTRAL INFRASTRUCTURE IS ESSENTIAL". I wish I'd thought of that.)
Honestly I would have been OK with the "dumb pipe" sign if it weren't for the fact that my sign was also larger than everyone else's, which I wasn't expecting. I'm OK with holding up a sign that not everyone gets, not so much if it's the largest sign there.
(Most of the signs were just medium-sized pieces of posterboard. Mine was a big foam board, that even had a handle -- also cut from a foam board and then taped to the sign. The handle took two attempts; the first one was too weak. I wanted it thin enough to grip, but that was too weak. So the second one was tapered. Arguably there were three attempts, the first being when I initially attempted to make the handle out of wood -- actually getting a big wooden board out of the shed and a saw from the closet -- before deciding, no, I definitely don't have the patience to go sawing up this wood...)
(Yes I may be focusing inordinately on the sign here but... how often do I actually, like, make physical things? Pretty rarely. So, y'know, I thought this was pretty neat, especially that I was able to make a pretty functional sign with a handle so easily.)
After about 50 minutes out in the cold I'd decided I couldn't really take the weather anymore and left. Handed off my sign to someone else though!
I'm not really sure we accomplished much of anything, but I think we did at least convince a few people to call their congresspeople.
So, yeah. That was the protest. And the sign.
