Billboard Alteration Salutes U.S. Military in Iraq
Billboard alteration by the “California Department of Corrections”; April 17, 2006
Press Release from the CDC:
As a private institution dedicated to protecting California from the state’s most criminal advertising, the California Department of Corrections salutes the private security firms who have provided invaluable assistance to our colleagues in the U.S. military.
The advertisement is currently at liberty and it seems to have successfully readjusted to public life. However, the billboard will remain under surveillance by department staff to prevent recidivism and any potential lapse into its prior criminal behavior.
The California Department of Corrections is a private institution dedicated to the protection of the public through the alteration, rehabilitation and improvement of California’s most criminal advertising. Initiated in 1994, the department is operated by individuals who feel that California’s correctional facilities have been insufficiently managing the state’s most criminal elements.
For additional information on department programs and operations, please visit the CDC website at www.geocities.com/billboardcorrections or email the Office of Communications at cdc [at] revolutionist.com
(The Geocities site is down. See more from the hard-to-find CDC below the fold)
(from adiosbarbie.com)
The anonymous folks calling themselves the California Department of Corrections are responsible for this brilliant billboard modification. This prolific and highly skilled band of anticonsumerist havoc-wreakers have an impressive and ever-growing oeuvre that includes “Freshness First. Farmworkers last. Lucky you’re middle class,” which appeared outside a store in the Lucky supermarket chain during last summer’s flap over working conditions for strawberry pickers, and a Maxwell House ad turned police brutality protest.
Some groups affilitated with Billboard Liberation Front:
- Abrupt, Adbusters, The Cacophony Society, The California Department of Corrections, Pedro Carvajal, Freeway Blooger, Guerrilla Girls, The Lesbian Avengers of San Francisco, The Outdoor Advertising Association of America, Inc., Reverand Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, ®<sup>TM</sup>ark, Joey Skaggs, Slumber, Inc., Target Market, Tobacco Control Activism Guide #3, Urbanize
- Is it legal? No.
- Is it property damage? Yes and no. Sometimes Billboard Liberation Front does not alter existing billboards, but puts up billboards that are a take on familiar advertisements in empty spaces.
- Is it justified? I found the top example at Discourse.net, the blog of professor of law Michael Froomkin, brother of Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post.
“If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”
With great best regards to The Highway Blogger!
some of you will remember last year billboard alteration of advertisements for iPods in NYC…. again it was Abu Grhraib hooded and wired prisoner on a box(“the Vietnam”)
If you find more examples of California Department of Corrections, please post them here.
I remember an article about a similar group a year or two ago. The name “Billboard Liberation Front” doesn’t sound familiar, but whoever they were they had the same goal. This group insisted that they did nothing to physically harm the underlying advertising. Everything they added to the billboard was capable of being removed later — after the repurposed board had made its point and the good people at your local billboard monopoly discovered the act and took steps to undo the deed.
Seems to me this would tend to reduce any potential charges against the hard-core freeway bloggers from some kind of theft or property damage to trespassing and possibly whatever laws apply to graffiti (although, again, since it’s ephemeral and not intended to be permanent, it would be hard to say).
The DoJ has lots of creative folks — I’m sure this kind of thing isn’t too hard for them to subsume under the “T” word.
Thanks for the smile, Suskind!
That’s the beauty of the War on Terra™, you can call anything you want “terror” and lock the perpetrator up.
Anybody but the real terrorists, that is, since the ones who are perpetrating the real terror are in charge of making the definitions.
¥??ronicity – I was just reading about the Rev. Billy and “liberated billboards” in Ted Nace’s book, Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy. Thanks for the visuals and the info that there are continued actions.
The first two words were: Ah synchronicity!
On my computer they didn’t come out right – the written equivalent to “speaking in tongues?”