The day a Good Sign found its people in D.C.

This trip started the way a lot of Good Sign history started: somebody said something, I felt the spark, and then I was already moving before a reasonable person would have finished making a plan.

A shop conversation becomes a road trip

I was in a little shop in historic downtown St. Augustine when an older shopkeeper and a college student started talking with me about the signs. They brought up Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert bringing the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear to Washington, D.C.

A few days later, I rented a car and pointed it north.

This was not a campaign. There was no hotel reservation, press list, sponsorship plan, or carefully laminated itinerary. I had signs, a very thin budget, and the feeling that the Good Sign belonged in that crowd.

The Facebook bat signal

I left Florida before I knew where I was sleeping. Somewhere on the drive I sent up what I still think of as the Facebook bat signal to Team Good Sign. A friend came through with a place to shower and attempt a little sleep before the rally.

The attempt was ambitious.

Sleep was futile

The condo was full of college-age people celebrating Halloween. There was a man in a homemade cage and a gorilla standing behind him, which—if you are trying to sleep before a pre-dawn rally—is not exactly a white-noise machine.

I showered, grabbed the signs, and headed for the National Mall.

Six hours early

I remember arriving around 4 a.m., roughly six hours before the main event. Dawn was still a long way off, but hundreds of people were already gathering near the stage. I spent those early hours doing what Good Sign has always done best: talking with strangers and handing out signs.

By daylight, the crowd had become something else entirely.

That was when I understood why I was there

The whole point of the rally was bringing awareness to the division in Washington and to the way media fear-mongering keeps feeding it. I remember the answer being presented as something as easy as your remote control—then the mic dropped and the stage went quiet.

That was when I knew why I had gone. The event itself was a good sign. It helped shape the movement into something more community- and connection-oriented: not just a message people could see, but a touchstone that could activate a community.

Then the sign entered the record

I did not go there expecting the media to notice. The sign was simply built to be seen, and in a crowd full of signs it still found its way through.

The surviving record is stronger than memory alone:

• The Independent’s November 1, 2010 report singled out “This is a good sign” among the rally’s placards.
• CNN Newsroom’s November 2 transcript includes the Good Sign in Jeanne Moos’s television roundup of rally signs.
• My archived Facebook post from November 4 says I had finally found one of the photographs that had been airing on CNN.
• In a 2021 EDM Identity interview, the trip from Florida, the 4 a.m. arrival, and the sign’s later appearance in CNN and UK Observer coverage entered the published record.

That does not mean every story I heard afterward can be independently proved today. It means the central thing is real and documented: Good Sign was there, the press noticed it, and the image traveled.

The part that mattered most

After about twelve hours on my feet, I was worn out. People were streaming away from the Mall. I kept handing out signs, stickers, and whatever encouragement I had left.

Then two women came riding toward me on bicycles. They told me they had seen me—or the Good Sign—on CNN while they were at a nearby museum and had come looking for it. I remember talking with them about what the sign meant and why I had made the trip.

That was the moment that put the pep back in my step.

Coverage is exciting. A person changing direction because a simple message reached them is the whole point.

Then back to the rental car

I eventually found food, had a few drinks, slept in the rental car, and drove back to Florida—back to the RV I was living in at the time.

No polished launch. No marketing budget. Just one enormous yellow sign making its way through a crowd, onto television, into a British newspaper, and then back down I-95.

One Good Sign went into the crowd. A community carried it farther than any one person could.

Why this story belongs here

Good Sign has always lived in the space between a joke and something completely sincere. It gets attention because it is funny and obvious. It lasts because people need the reminder.

The Rally to Restore Sanity was one of the first times I saw that happen at national scale. The archive is still giving the story back to me, photograph by photograph.