Amateur local activism

The Greater Wilmington Business Journal did a piece on us this week — actually the second of two they’ve done about Titan cement and its detractors (stoptitan.org).

This article, Amateur activism: Modern-day opposition movement uses strong graphics, online presence, focuses on the Stop Titan icon you see on more and more yard signs around town, and in full on the website. And on our efforts to organize dissent using the blog, the action alerts, and other web technologies.

Josh Spilker, the journalist who interviewed us a few weeks ago, said he was taken with the logo itself, which makes a logo-daddy proud. He may be the only one who took in its meaning. He quotes me as saying the “image is meant to [suggest] a wave crashing a smokestack…that the natural environment needs to surmount this artificial thing [that is] coming”. That was my intention, at any rate. Friends say the smokestack looks like a hockey puck, especially on the single-color yard signs.

Anyway, the Wilmington Business Journal has done a nice job following our efforts — alongside Titan’s, of course. One imagines the business journal being a little too laissez faire to talk to “coast huggers” like us. In the previous issue, which featured us alongside Titan, the Carolina Cement Compant, which is Titan, took out a full page ad in the back of the paper. They’re spending a lot of money trying to seem like good citizens. So I guess one point of the article — a point Spilker was making commendably — is that the web can level the playing field when you’re clashing with titans.