NEXT HUMAN BANNER
Saturday, April 18th, 11:30 am - 1:00 pm
Stairwell 17 -- Ocean Beach, SF, CA
Arrive by 11:30 am to be in place for filming at 12:00 pm
More Details and Register here
Dear Ever-Growing Human Banner Community,
The trickiest part of organizing a banner is guessing what size crowd to prepare for. Your registration is a huge gift to us.
If you can come, please register.
Items Below:
1. Ring found at Ocean Beach
2. Zelle Address corrected
3. “Questions for Brad”
4. Origin story of April 18th Earth Day banner
* * *
1. WOMAN’S RING found in sand at last banner
Call Ernie at 415-742-4178 for details.
2. YOUR ZELLE GIFT BOUNCED BACK?
Sorry about that. Bad address. This should work now:
Thank you.
3. “Questions for Brad"
ON A FERRY across the Bay yesterday, I ran into my old friend Sidney.
(Our first banner — January 6, 2007 — 1,000 people lying down,
Ocean Beach, San Francisco, CA — Photo: John Montgomery)
Sidney attended the very first banner (January 2007, photo above) plus dozens more, including the one just nine days in our rearview (photo below).
7,000 patriots on Ocean Beach, San Francisco, CA, March 28, 2026
(PHOTO: Inti Fernandez)
"TRUMP MUST GO NOW" was our 36th banner over the past 20 years. Also, our 13th banner over the past 13 months. 7000 attendees. By every measure, our biggest banner ever.
I told Sidney that I’ve been struggling to write an email — this email — to our new 9,000-person email list, with 2,600 emails added in the last week alone!
A year ago, my co-organizer, Travis Van Brasch, and I were working from my personal list of 600 people. I felt as though I knew everyone on that list — and (illogically, impossibly) felt I knew everyone who came to the beach, and that they knew me and also knew all about these banners.
But the explosive growth of the past year has stretched the entire Human Banner-SF team almost beyond our limits — mine for sure — and I hardly know how or what to communicate to everyone anymore.
Sydney: “I’ve been rotating the flag with Travis this whole year, but last Saturday was my first time standing in a letter. All the folks around me were first-timers, and most thought these events had sprung up just recently, had no idea this was our twentieth year. How’d they start? Who are all these volunteers? Is there really a helicopter coming? Who pays for this? How can I help? How do I get involved?”
In the past, a few interviewers have sent me questions online, and I liked that. The format works for me. Being asked specific questions by actual people frees up my mind and my typing fingers.
So...
If you are new to human banners or are simply curious about how things work over here, please send an email to info@humanbanner-sf.com with ‘Question(s) for Brad’ in the subject line.
I’ll do my very best to answer in a future email blast.
* * *
4. Origin story of “Energy From Heaven”
[People on our team have asked me this question, and I imagine many others have been wondering: "How did this ENERGY FROM HEAVEN banner come about?"]
THE ROOTS of this banner stretch back to the early 1990s. Back then, the San Francisco Chronicle ran guest columns from freelancers, and they ran maybe a dozen columns I wrote about people who’d ridden in the backseat of my taxi.
The Chronicle also ran columns by the author Suzy Parker, and when Suzy and I discovered that we lived a mile apart, we started having coffees together.
* * *
In 1996, at age 45, I became a parent.
For years, I drove my cab on weekends and spent my weekdays as the at-home parent. My daily strategy: Have as much fun with our daughter as possible.
Lots of ferry rides around the Bay. Countless trips to the redwoods behind Oakland. Libraries. Zoos. Beaches. Neighborhood playgrounds. (I remember one bold five-year-old girl at the slides in Piedmont Park putting her hands on her hips and looking up at me: “So, are you the father or the grandfather?”)
Often, I found myself hiding silently under “The Troll Bridge” alongside the Bear Valley Trail at Point Reyes, listening for quiet giggles from up above. Once, my daughter and I walked (with a couple of assists from public transport) from our home in Oakland, through San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge, to spend the night in a Sausalito inn. The next morning, we ate pancakes and then spent all day (mostly) walking a different route back home.
* * *
Any parent can read right between those lines. Child-care is hard, hard work. Every day. All day. No getting around it. Ask your mom. Ask your dad.
I used to ache for the two or three times each year when Grandma would come to town and free me up to go camping. Alone. By My Self, thank you. With Nobody Else Around.
In 2004, when our daughter was seven, Grandma planned a visit three months ahead, and I immediately planned a five-day trip to the 1,000 backwoods acres of Harbin Hot Springs. I fantasized daily about the two-hour drive through Napa Valley, over the mountains, up the four-mile canyon leading into Harbin. Alone. No child gear in the car, just me, a rambling man again, with five days stretching ahead, plenty of time to ease into all my Big Thoughts…
At Harbin, I would pitch my tent beside a burbling stream. Alone! I would soak in the hot/warm/cold pools. Nap. Read books. Scribble page after page in my journal. Get a massage, maybe get another. Lie under the stars, relive my decades of world travel and zero responsibilities, and recalibrate my place in the Universe...
I counted down the months, the final weeks. Three days before Grandma’s arrival, my tent, sleeping bag, and air mattress stood in formation by the front door.
* * *
The evening before my getaway. 6:30 pm. A phone call:
“Brad, it’s Suzy Parker. Total long shot, but a friend of mine named Andrew Boyd is in town from New York. He’s a writer and activist, like you. He’s heard about Harbin and is looking for a ride up there tomorrow morning. You should meet Andrew no matter what, but... ARE YOU by some crazy chance going up there tomorrow morning?”
I try to hide my devastation with a lie. “Suzy, we’re eating dinner. I’ll have to call you back…”
Some fundamental part of me screams at all my other parts: “NO WAY! What kind of dumb-ass joke is THIS! Should I invent another lie? Or just tell her the truth: I oh-so-desperately want to be alone!”
Ten minutes later: “Where should I pick him up, Suzy?”
* * *
In the car the first thing Andrew says: “I’m sorry, I’m expecting some calls and I’m going to have to take them along our way.”
I only remember the first two, but they’re enough.
Time Magazine badly wanting Andrew’s thoughts on the Left’s resistance to GW Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
Next, the University of Michigan calling to discuss logistics for an organizing seminar they have hired Andrew to give a few weeks hence.
For two hours I eavesdrop, riveted… This dude in my passenger seat! The real deal! National level…
* * *
[October 13, 2012, 1,000 people — Photo: John Montgomery]
Over the past 22 years, Andrew, hands-on, has helped me organize at least two human banners. He fit a trip to San Francisco into his busy schedule to attend one of them. Before our “DUMP CITIZENS UNITED” banner, Andrew corralled ten progressive groups (Common Cause, Courage Campaign, Public Citizen, Green Party, others…) into being co-sponsors and sending invite announcements to their closely-guarded email lists.
Andrew is a decade younger than I am. He knows so many people that getting a hold of him is difficult, but when we do connect, our phone calls are raucous and full of laughter. He swears that next time we’re together, he’s going to sit my geezer butt down and teach me some basic phone and computer skills that I lack.
We’ve hiked and shared meals at Pt Reyes together. Years ago, when Andrew was writing his third book – Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution – he invited me to write a chapter on “human banners.” (Andrew coined that term, and it stuck. He also chopped my chapter into such pieces that I barely recognized it in print – and I know he will snort when he reads that.)
* * *
In early January, a phone call from Andrew:
“A group of colleagues, including Bill McKibben...”
Me: “The climate writer in the New Yorker and founder of 350! ‘The guy saying 'Energy from Heaven or energy from Hell – that is our choice.’ THAT Bill McKibben?”
Andrew: “Yep, that Bill. We’re working together on a messaging campaign in the run-up to Earth Day this year. We’ve teamed up with the interfaith coalition GreenFaith, and we’re hoping you guys’ll put on a human banner on Ocean Beach on April 18, the Saturday before Earth Day. The next day, Sunday, we’re aiming to have 100 climate sermons delivered from 100 pulpits nationwide. We’d love to have your banner as artwork to help the news media tell this important climate story around Earth Day, just three days later.”
I tell Andrew I’ll try to steer my core group in that direction.
And here we are.
* * *
If you can join us, please register here.
Warmly,
Brad Newsham, Central Organizer
For the Human Banner-SF Team
humanbanner-sf.com
(Slash Oil – Finale – “Hands Across the Sand”
Ocean Beach – 450 people - photo: John Montgomery)