Wikileaks freedom train pulls into Osage Street Station: Kenny Be's Sign Language

Wikitag wikimarks a wikiengine in west WikiDenver.

The graffiti painted on the train engine in the photograph above is not remarkable for its quality, but for its incredible timeliness. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is Google trending across the world as this is being written, and yet some brash news junkie found the time to sum up the story in long hand on low-tech equipment...

The train-engine tribute to the Internet activist and beleaguered rape suspect was sitting idle in the train yard north of the Denver Union Pacific Locomotive Facility adjacent to RTD's Osage Street light rail station on West 10th Avenue. I do not know how long the train engine has sat in the train yard. I don't know anything about Union Pacific train schedules, maintenance routines or route information.

For all I know the graffiti could have been painted on the engine while the train was stopped in London, England -- on the day of Assange's arrest last week -- to unload its daily delivery of coal from Wyoming. But looking at my globe and calendar, that seems unlikely, even though the graffiti does prove in some way that the world is getting smaller every day. I would like to think that the graffiti is the work of a South Lincoln Project tagger who feels a kinship in the universal struggle for free speech.

The Osage Street station is right outside the front door of the Buckhorn Exchange and serves the South Lincoln Park neighborhood. A ten year project to scrape and replace the neighborhood housing began in September, and the photo below shows work is full swing.