With the BP oil spill dominating conversation in Washington and among talking heads, the people of the Gulf Coast are working to make sure their voices are heard, too, using a common post-disaster technique: the road-side sign. In Florida, Louisiana, and even New York, citizens have posted messages. Some feature pleas for assistance, others invective against BP or the government, or even just a strategically delivered splatter of paint. In towns that depend on oil for livelihoods, like Houma, La., it's a very different message—an impassioned defense of the deep-water drilling industry. Here are a few signs, starting from May 2, nearly two weeks after the explosion aboard Deepwater Horizon, and continuing as the crisis continued to evolve.