Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify the location of the billboard.
Rush hour commuters northbound on one of the area’s most heavily traveled corridors on Tuesday were greeted with a stark political message funded by one Boulder woman who has run out of patience with what she sees as empty words offered in the face of a public safety crisis.
In stark white letters on black background, the message posted by Colo. 93 points out that more Americans (1.4 million) have died in gun violence since 1970 than in all wars fought in U.S. history (1.3 million), and ends with the plea, “stop the thoughts and prayers.”
At the cost of about $3,000 for the first month, the grim note perched just south of the Boulder-Jefferson county line is sponsored by Lindasue Smollen, a divorce and criminal defense lawyer who lives in Boulder and is paying for it out of her own pocket.
The billboard is based on data gleaned from a piece by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, which was subsequently verified by PunditFact, a project of the Tampa Bay Times and the Poynter Institute.
“We’ve become absolutely numb to mass shootings. It is the new normal,” Smollen said Tuesday, the first full day the message was in place. “We no longer stop and be horrified on mass shootings. And after Las Vegas, I just simply could not believe that nothing, nothing, was done.”
She was referring to the Oct. 1, 2017 massacre in which 58 people were killed and hundreds injured after a man opened fire on outdoor concertgoers from his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Resort.
“This is certainly a public health disease that we refuse to acknowledge,” she said in an interview. “The terrorism is among us, and it’s called the NRA, and their support of automatic weapons. It’s just unconscionable. Automatic weapons were illegal in this county for 10 years. Why not now?”
Noting the prevalence of weapons such as AR 15 and AK 47 rifles having been used in mass shootings, she said they are not used for hunting, but are instead “weapons of mass destruction.”
Ending with “stop the thoughts and prayers,” she said, is a plea for a departure from what she sees as empty rhetoric.
In an email, she wrote, “Not just the president, but every politician that says ‘our thoughts and prayers’ to the family. That is not leadership, that is a coward that refuses to address an epidemic. We have limits on First Amendment speech, why not limits on Second Amendment ‘rights?'”
Louisville resident Shane DeRolf, who is founder and CEO of Big Word Club, a digital learning program that teaches children vocabulary, has known Smollen since they met at a fundraiser following the Fourmile Fire in 2010. He first heard her mention the idea for the billboard at a dinner party roughly a month ago.
“She’s an incredible human being, and passionate,” DeRolf said. “She has a deep compassion for people, and she cares deeply about injustice, which is probably exemplified in this particular action. It’s pretty incredible that she funded this by herself, because she believes in it.”
DeRolf is among those who have applauded her on social media this week for following through.
“Lindasue funded the first month on her own. It would be great if we could build a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to keep the billboard up for months/years …” he wrote on her Facebook page.
DeRolf said he would love to see people come together to give the message a longer run.
“It’s great that she got it started, but if it’s a message that the community gets behind, to take a little bit from a lot of people, that message can go on. That’s sort of the talk right now.”
Smollen, who also is open to the idea of modifying the message month to month in order to maximize its effectiveness, noted that some people she’s connected with on Facebook have asked if they can share her message on social media.
“I said, just know that you’re sharing to like-minded people on Facebook. I wanted to throw the net a little bit wider. To share a post on Facebook doesn’t make a change. They’re not the people that I need to preach to, that I need to tell something to.”
Charlie Brennan: 303-473-1327, brennanc@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/chasbrennan
