Turtle Island West Hangs Out Over Highway 80 in Berkeley - Earth Day, 2024
Five intrepid souls from our pod met at 7 AM on Monday, April 22 to welcome in the day, string up a banner, and wave to the “passers-under” in our celebration of Earth Day 2024. The air was crisp, if somewhat exhaust-filled, but the jokes were flowing and the banner mongers hammed it up for the bleary-eyed commuters. One intrepid participant counted over 800 “honks of support” in our 2-hour stint, so if we take this data and conflate it with our seat-o-the-pants estimate that we got one honk for every 10 cars or trucks underneath (+/-)… we were probably seen by around 8000 vehicles! 8000 early morning, half asleep drivers who’s minds were drifting just enough that we could inject our messaging directly into their subconscious! Of course we got more than a few one-finger salutes as well, and one old lady in a giant Mercedes who gave us the “thumbs down.” Just removing her car from the road would probably reduce global warming by 0.1 degrees alone.
An interesting side note - Tesla drivers were surprisingly passive to our message. No thumbs up, no honks… very little reaction at all. We speculated that these drivers may have been watching Netflix on their giant monitors, or maybe just trying their best to scroll through control screens to find the damn recirc button. Could also be that Elon has beamed control messaging from car-to-brain that invokes “robot mode.” Hard to say.
Afterwards the crew enjoyed breakfast together and a few of the group extended the mission by posting flyers for Scientist Rebellion on the U.C. Berkeley campus. Hopefully we will get a few scientific students to check us out.
A little movie of our shenanigans can be seen here:
https://youtu.be/ZmpXG9smmRQ?si=mfF4SkMlA0kUHvUd
