By Melanie Lyon
On June 16th, Voices for Life conducted our first ever overpass outreach in Indianapolis. The goal of the outreach is to both share the pro-life message with passerby and provide an easy first outreach opportunity for new activists.
Our first step in conducting overpass outreach is to identify a bridge location. We look for bridges that have a nice safe sidewalk for our team, and, of course, lots of traffic.
I asked Boone County Right to Life board president, Jeremy Garst, for a recommendation. He suggested a pedestrian bridge in northern Indianapolis over I-65. He had previously done outreach there with Created Equal during their “Project Overpass” campaign.
We recruited a couple other friends to join us including the Students for Life Regional Coordinator, Olivia Murrey. Jeremy even invited a Knight of Columbus who biked all the way from Fishers to help us!
When we arrived at the meet-up spot, we had to walk through an extremely overgrown alleyway to get to the bridge. We joked this would keep us safe from angry pro-choice people – occasionally people will walk up to overpasses to yell at activists.
It was rather disconcerting when we walked onto the actual bridge; it shook gently under our feet with the heavy traffic down below. We quickly found our “sea legs” and began to zip tie the two banners to the chain link fence over the bridge.
We recently created a new black banner with Voices for Life branding that says, “Abortion is Violence.” For the traffic on the other side, we used a Pro-life Action League banner that reads “Abortion Takes a Human Life.”
Jeremy carefully positioned the banners, so the full message could be seen between the bars on the fence.
It was so loud on the bridge with the traffic we had to shout to communicate. I said we should teach sign language in the future to save our vocal cords. Thankfully, not much talking is necessary for this work.
We divided up so there was at least one person on each side of the two banners. I instructed everyone to wave at traffic. It’s one thing to read a message off a banner as you drive by. It’s significantly more engaging to read a message + see someone waving and smiling at you.
The response was overwhelmingly positive. We had tons of people beep and wave as they passed by. I only saw two people give us the finger on my side of the bridge.
The most engaging response we received was a young man driving a very full car hauler who pulled over under the overpass, so he could read the banner. He then found himself in quite the predicament because traffic was so heavy, he couldn’t pull out. We did our best to direct him, but it was nearly 15 minutes before he could safely leave. If only everyone was that committed to reading our messaging!
Halfway through the outreach, it began to rain. The chain link over the bridge provided some cover, but we were all drenched by the end. Thankfully, our banners are pretty weatherproof, so our message stood strong despite the downpour.
After about an hour and a half, we cut the banners down from the bridge, and huddled up to pray. We prayed that the Lord would move the hearts of all the pro-choice people we saw to conversion and move the pro-life people to action. We may never know who saw our message that day, but we trust God does.
As outreaches go, this was simple and successful. Email me at melanie@voicesforlife.com to join our next one!
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