Democracy on a Rear Bumper

by Glenn Reed, contributor

I used to think that motor vehicles plastered with bumper stickers were a bit obnoxious. They seemed a case of wearing your politics on your sleeve. They seemed too in your face.

These days, I long for a little more of that in-your-face attitude. Bumper stickers on vehicles now seem almost as rare as NGO (non-governmental organizations) invitations to trade organization meetings. People just don’t seem to want any blemishes on the polished, sterile clean veneers of their new SUV’s, Beamers or Volvos. A bumper sticker would tarnish the image, add a ripple to the illusion.

“Let those burned out old hippies in their sputtering VW buses plaster the backs of their vehicles with ‘Visualize Whirled Peas’ an ‘Free Tibet’ messages!” people seem to be saying. “I don’t need wear my politics on my sleeve, or plastered above my tailpipe so that the person tailgating me on I-5 can either sing my praises or give me the finger.”

I can recall poking fun at vehicles that literally seemed to be taped together with political messages across their bumpers, tailgates, back windows, hubcaps, dipsticks and fan belts. These people seemed a bit fanatical and I imagined them returning to home-schooled kids, tofu burgers, wood stoves and organic farm beds. Maybe I agreed with them on a lot of issues and shared most of their values, but I was just too shy to announce it all to the world whenever I hopped into my Chevy Impala, AMC Gremlin (you can laugh now), Nissan Sentra, then Toyota Corolla. Still I was always motivated enough politically so that one bumper sticker would do. That seemed reasonable.

So, for a couple of decades I followed this rule. Just as I participated in one protest a year. Or volunteered for a couple of campaign events. Playing it safe on the border of being a true activist.

I remember the first bumper sticker I ever attached to the rear end of one of my cars read “No Uranium Mining in Vermont.” Believe it or not, a West German company in the late 1970’s was exploring for this mineral in my home state’s pristine Green Mountains, and the prospect of polluting tailings galvanized many Vermonters to action.

I think that my next bumper sticker was in support of John Anderson in 1980. Yes, even then I was bucking the two-party system. Then there was a gap until 1984 when I stuck on a Mondale/Ferraro sticker, as I succumbed to the (much) lesser than two evils argument. I’m still discouraged by the response of a gas station attendant in Somerville, Massachusetts who asked me, “What if something happens to Mondale? You don’t think that a woman can run the country, do you?”

Next, during the moral wasteland of the Reagan years my fuel-efficient Sentra sported a “Stop Military Aid to El Salvador” message. Unfortunately, it didn’t even elicit a middle finger in highly conservative New Hampshire, where I was living at the time. Few Americans, enjoying the fruits of the Republicans’ military spending binge, cared much for the massacres of campesinos (and clergy) in Central America or covert actions against the Sandinistas.

Following my move back to the billboard-banning, progressive state of Vermont, I then announced my support, in 1990 and 1992, for the nation’s only Socialist Congressman—Bernie Sanders. When I came to Seattle in 1994, I was still proud of my “Bernie” sticker and eager to explain it to any West Coaster ignorant of the leftward drift of Vermont politics. Here, in 1996, as a result of Clinton’s steady drift to the right (read DOMA, Welfare Reform, NAFTA, etc.), I first placed a “Ralph Nader for President” message on my car, feeling secure with the polls that gave Bill Lew…. um, Clinton a 10 to 15 point lead over Bob Viagra… er, Dole.

Then the WTO meeting came to Seattle and something in me cracked. The one bumper sticker rule went the way of free speech on the streets.

First I proudly put on my Nader/LaDuke sticker. I note that, like many Nader supporters in the Seattle area, I continue to proudly sport this sign of my support for someone who’s done far more for the people than both Republican and Democratic presidential tickets combined. Nader stickers remain active long after the Dems have yanked off the Gore stickers and the Repubs have checked with their accountants about the number of zeros in their Bush tax-cut windfall for the rich.

I quickly followed my Nader sticker with a “Dump Slade” one about a month before the 2000 election. As disgust with the politicized Supreme Court took hold, soon after their hypocritical Bush v. Gore decision, I marched down to Left Bank Books and purchased a bumper sticker that reads “Ambition: The Desire to Tread on Others” along with a book about the abuses of the American auto industry. During the anti-FTAA rally at the border in April, I finally put on my union (SEIU) bumper sticker, and in response to the media’s shamefully biased coverage of that event (as well as any events related to corporatization and “free” trade), I recently purchased a bumper sticker in a Port Townsend book shop that says “The Media Are Only as Liberal as the Conservative Businesses That Own Them.”

So that’s five and counting. And the way King Dubya’s reign is panning out you may not be able to detect the color of my car by 2004 for the array of bumper stickers.

So now I’m actively “in your face” and maybe, to some, quite obnoxious, but what the hell? Not wear my politics on my sleeve? That’s a luxury none of us have time for anymore. The more bumper stickers, pins, balloons, banners, beach blankets and pencil sharpeners that make this clear, the better for democracy.

Bring on the whirled peas!