LONDONDERRY | People driving by St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Londonderry recently may have noticed a large, peculiar pink vehicle in the parking lot.
While a number of cars drove into the parking lot for a closer look and some even stopped and inquired about it, the Rev. Sarah Rockwell expressed surprise that the Pig Mobile didn't cause more people to ask what is was or what it was doing there.
"I would call it a qualified success," Rockwell said.
The eye-catching Pig Mobile was created by Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry's, and is being handed over to volunteers of the nonprofit PrioritiesNH organization to drive around the streets of New Hampshire to draw attention to their cause. PrioritiesNH is a project of Business Leaders for Sensibile Priorities, which was founded by Cohen. Its goal is to align government spending with taxpayers priorities.
The Pig Mobile consists of three bright pink piggy banks, creating a vehicle more than 20 feet long and 11 feet high. It has lights that wink on after dark. The largest pink pig is a reshaped Chevy van that represents the annual Pentagon spending of more than $500 billion. This second piggy is supposed to represent the roughly $40 billion the government spends on K-12 education. And behind that is an even smaller pig representing the approximately $10 billion spent on AIDS and world hunger.
Rockwell said she volunteered to drive the Pig Mobile because she thought it would provoke questions and provide an opportunity to discuss the issue of the federal budget.
"I decided to do this because I thought it would be fun and would invite questions. I hoped it would be a thought-provoking way to get people to start looking at and start asking questions about the federal budget. ... As a citizen and a person of faith I want to be aware of how our tax dollars are being spent, and I believe that PrioritiesNH has a reasonable approach to the federal spending issue."
Rockwell said Tad Robertson, a Londonderry high school senior who drove in the first day she had the vehicle parked at the church, was the most engaged young person she spoke with.
Rockwell said Robertson asked a number of questions about what the Pig Mobile represents, and he said he intended to go home and look at the PrioritiesNH Web site to learn more about this issue.
Even though the Pig Mobile didn't generate the level of inquiry Rockwell hoped for, she said it did catch people's eye. She found that the Pig Mobile amused children and provoked some discussion among her parishioners.
"I have to say there was more reaction in Manchester than in Derry and Londonderry," she said.
Rockwell was amused that some thought the Pig Mobile was connected to the Heifer Project the church supports.
"I am glad I did it because I got a chance to talk to the issues some," she said. "Those who asked about it really listened. But I was genuinely surprised that there weren't more questions and that there was an overall lack of in-depth reaction."
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