I know the answer because I live in Freeport, Maine. Now full time, but thirty years ago I was only a "summer complaint" when something extraordinary happened.
McDonald's, in order to get its proposed new restaurant in a town with a couple of million visitors to outlet stores and LL Bean each year was forced to reach an almost unprecedented settlement. For town approval, it agreed not install any golden arches or otherwise damage the historic building that it wished to convert.
Freeport's McDonald's today thanks, in part, to some T shirts
Photo: Kunstlercast
Photo: Kunstlercast
There were plenty of adults who got involved in this battle, but this was also one of the few activist struggles in history that can be fairly attributed to the efforts of elementary and middle schoolers - who took to wearing T shirts that read: "Stop the Big Mac Attack." Everywhere you see an attractive McDonald's without golden arches, you can thank Freeport grade schoolers.
In reviewing the reaction to the first presidential debate, it was clear that tweeters and others were far fonder of the Big Bird - threatened by Romney's budget plans - than of either candidate or the moderator and it occurred to me that Obama could still pull this one out with kids' T shirts that read something like:
