More About the Visalia Quaker Billboards
Click here to see the billboards
Once I found this remarkable project, I naturally wanted to know more about it.
Here is what David Chandler, a Visalian who knows, had to say:
Question: What's the history of this billboard? How/when/by whom did it get started?
Response from David Chandler:
Hi Chuck,
[The Clerk] forwarded your message to me since I'm on the outreach committee and
have been involved with the last several incarnations of the billboard. I have
been a member of the meeting for the last four years, but the billboard goes
back to the early 1980's. The meeting house is on land donated by Bill and Beth
Lovett on a corner of Quaker Oaks, a Christmas tree farm. I called Bill this
evening to find out the history of the billboard.
He said they bought the farm in 1979 and there was an old billboard
in a slightly different location. A group from a nearby town put up a sign
protesting the Vietnam War. After that they built the current billboard
and have cycled many different messages over the years.
At Christmas time each year they take down the meeting's message and
put up their Christmas tree farm advertisement, and occasionally we let other
groups post messages, but the rest of the time it's for the meeting's use.
Question: When it began (or since), have you faced objections of the
"Friends don't
proselytize" sort about it? If so, how were these resolved?
Response: We've had no flak that I know about. I don't think we're
proselytizing. We are
trying to let people who might be interesting know we exist, and at times we use
the billboard to speak out on issues. The new board we have just prepared and
have yet to mount is one quoting A.J. Muste: "There is no way to peace. Peace
is the way." I had seen that saying used in a number of contexts recently and
didn't know the source. I looked it up on the web and found quite a treasure of
information about Muste's life and work. When we get it up later this week and
I'll photograph it and put it on our site. (Ed. Note: It's now up!)
Question: How much does this billboard cost the meeting, if anything?
Response: It doesn't cost us anything apart from the work to design
and mount it.
Question: How well does the billboard "work"? Do you have any
indication that it is
widely noticed by passersby? Is there any evidence that it has brought
seekers to your meeting? New members?
Response: I think the billboard is probably our primary way of being
known locally. I
make it a point to ask visitors how they found out about us and a majority refer
to the billboard.
. . .We live in an area where flag waving is rampant and anything left of the John
Birch
society is interpreted by some people as Communist. There are
progressive-minded people around but they are mostly in hiding. My
personal hope is that by being a visible presence they will be empowered to
become visible too.
A Postscript:
Since you're interested in outreach issues, you might also be interested in
another outreach project we do: we recently asked to be on the rotation for the
Pastor's Column in the local paper. They put us in the rotation, but then they
rejected our first column as too political
(http://www.quaker.org/visalia/subpages/DeathPenalty.html). The next time we
submitted a set of queries on the response to terrorism and they printed it!
Thanks to David Chandler and the Visible Visalians!
Another Postscript: Where the heck is Visalia? (About halfway between San Francisco and LA, out in the Central Valley.)