SOMEWHERE IN PENNSYLVANIA, WESTBOUND I-80: August 14, 2008.

The men emerged at the top of a steep, overgrown slope. Except for the black man they dragged with them, all wore uniforms and carried guns. One of them, a State Trooper, cradled an M-4 assault rifle, of the type issued to soldiers oversees. With the man’s hands cuffed behind him, the white men took turns pulling the black man face-first down the hill toward the highway below. The only other black man there, a great grizzly bear of a man, held the prisoner’s feet. The man in their custody had killed a colleague of theirs on the streets of Brooklyn, 100 miles to the east. Then the killer had fled here, to the Pocono Mountains. But he had left a trail, and he was pursued. At the bottom of the hill, he was thrown into the rear of a black Impala, a car and color favored by New York City detectives. He was driven to the judge, and sent back to New York for trial.

And I photographed it, on assignment for one of New York City’s daily tabloid newspapers.

Today, little more than a year later, I speed past this spot where it happened. The sky is dark and raindrops spatter the windshield of the pick-up truck I ride in with two strangers. Not total strangers, of course, but unfamiliar enough. One of the men, who I’ve come to know as “Clark,” is on a mission. He is young and ambitious and he is an artist. He moved to the City in January to go to school and paint graffiti. Not just any kind of graffiti, mind you, but serious high-minded, socially purposeful street art. Inspired by the iconic Robert Indiana LOVE sculpture, he turned the letters around and, keeping Indiana’s font, created VOTE. Using stencils, Clark has spray-painted VOTE all over New York City. He also has stickers and pins, and t-shirts too. Sometimes he sells these, sometimes he gives them away.

But, first and foremost, he is a mischievous kid with a can of spray-paint. So, with a week to go before the Democratic National Convention starts in Denver, Colorado, he has decided to drive cross-country. At points along the way, he intends to stop and paint VOTE murals on the sides of whatever structure may be handy. To accomplish his mission, Clark enlisted Dallas, a forty-one year-old Michigan native with a pick-up truck. I first met Dallas and his Chevy Silverado four months ago in Union Square. There, Clark covered the truck and its bed-cap with VOTE graffiti. It is in this truck that the three of us now ride, having set-out this afternoon from Brooklyn for a city 2000 miles to the west and a mile high in the sky.

Ride with us, won’t you?