People Features
On the Road with Sean Penn and the Dirty Hands Caravan
By S.P. MacIntyre
May 15, 2008, 22:15 GMT

“What the fuck is Sean Penn doing on the main stage of Coachella?” he said.  I had wandered over from watching Metric perform on the Coachella Music and Arts Festival’s outdoor theater to find out this very thing: Why was Sean Penn slated 15 minutes on the main stage between Gogol Bordello and My Morning Jacket? 

To a lukewarm audience, Sean Penn described his dissatisfaction with the current political environment, his disappointment with certain policy positions of all the candidates (he listed their support of the death penalty in particular), and his anger with the world and environment older generations will be bequeathing to today’s youth. 

There was a reason he was proselytizing on this soap box, though: he went on to describe his plan to gather a large group of people on three buses (running on a bio-diesel mixture) and carry them across the southwestern states, doing volunteer work along the way, before ending up in the New Orleans Jazz Festival to continue spreading the message of volunteerism (spoiler: we never made it to the Jazz Festival).

I was curious and had no pressing responsibilities, so I signed up at a little kiosk next to the Virgin Megastore tent.

The next morning, on Monday, April 28, people gradually gathered around the Energy Factory Clock Tower at the entrance to the festival grounds.  A number of people had been camping that weekend already, but there was still a vast disparity in people’s preparedness.  Those that had not been camping were provided with tents and sleeping bags by two of the primary festival organizers who also gave a speech describing their support of Sean Penn’s activism and their excitement for this idea in general.  There were a number of speeches that morning, including a brief one by Sean Penn wherein he thanked a number of the people that were helping to organize this whole endeavor.

Before we departed, to the tune of The Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour” blaring from a nearby truck, the volunteers were invited to paint one of the buses.  People for the most part painted your standard hippy-bus-crossing-the-country material: peace signs; flowers; messages like “New Orleans or Bust” and “When we talk about peace, we’re really talking about war”; and assorted smatterings of regional flavor (“Boston” written next to a large green shamrock). 

On the front of the bus, though, someone spray-painted the words “Eat Pussy” and “Billy.”  Billy, I later learned, was not even on the caravan: he merely showed up to drop a friend off and express certain proclivities of his in large painted letters on the front of a bus. 

This, however, inspired the first in what would be many sit-downs and lectures that would occur throughout the trip.  Doug Goodman, the tour manager for the trip, told us, essentially, that people couldn’t be doing stuff like this, that we already looked like a bunch of crazies and stuff like that would draw a great deal of negative media attention, a thing we were already very susceptible to.  This, the fear of negative press, was a very common concern on this trip and was often brought up over the next ten days.

On the bus that day, we watched a documentary called “The Third Wave,” about a group of volunteers working in Sri Lanka after the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami.  A handful of people that appear in the film, including some of the film’s creators, Alison Thompson and Oscar Gubernati, were filming a documentary about the Dirty Hands Caravan. 

I later got a chance to sit down and speak with Alison Thompson, listed on imdb.com as the director and executive producer of “The Third Wave.”  Alison is an Australian—a daughter of missionaries—with absurdly blond hair, ridiculously blue eyes, and a calm and sweet demeanor that seems appropriately suited to being in front of a camera as well as behind it. 

She told me that her work in Sri Lanka was about getting involved and volunteering, and that the documentary came about quite naturally by simply passing the camera around between the volunteers and telling them to record some of their experiences.  When I asked her, she told me she was prompted into volunteerism while she was living in New York during the 9/11 attacks; Alison rollerbladed to ground zero and began trying to help in any way she could. 

“I’ve seen mankind at its best and its worst,” Alison said.  “Helping people gives you confidence, it makes you feel good.”  She went on to describe what she felt The Dirty Hands Caravan and its corresponding documentary is about: providing people with “a road map” so they can more easily find ways to volunteer in their community and abroad, something that people can emulate on their own.  She says that the message needs to get out that “citizens need to take the world back into their own hands,” and that Dirty Hands is a wanted ad: “Volunteers needed, no skills required.” 

Sean Penn chose Alison and Oscar to help film the Dirty Hands documentary because of his interest in “The Third Wave,” an interest that has also spurred him to screen the film at this year’s Cannes Film Festival on May 16. 

Short anecdote about Alison: when we arrived in New Orleans, some kind of insect larvae had created a large cocoon on her dress which she had me remove because she was too disgusted by it. 

Back to the bus ride.  I spent a great deal of time that afternoon trying to find out, precisely, who was in charge and what we were going to be doing on this trip.  There was a group of about 15 people working on the trip that are trainees for the Creative Artists Agency and helped to organize our activities and the trip’s logistics. 

The ones I spoke to on that first day told me that, less than two weeks before the Coachella Festival, Sean Penn approached CAA with this whole plan.  Ryan, one of the CAA people, told me that they themselves had all volunteered to be involved in this project.  “This is the perfect time to do something like this,” he told me, “before you settle down, before you have a family.” 

Also that evening on the bus, I overheard someone drawing a comparison between this trip and a story. 

Here’s the story: A man walks down a beach covered in starfish that had been washed ashore.  He eventually comes across a little boy picking up individual starfish and tossing them back into the sea.  “Little boy,” the man says, “there are so many starfish here; there’s no way you can make a difference.”  The boy ponders this for a moment, picks up another starfish, tosses it back into the sea, and says, “It made a difference to that one.” 

I rolled my eyes.  What?  It’s a hokey story!  But keep in mind, at this point I was a little disillusioned with what I then perceived as a complete lack of centralized authority or established plan. 

I had no idea what we would be doing, I figured that all of this interest in volunteerism and humanitarianism was great in theory but was ultimately resulting in a sort of idealistic entropy, where so much energy was getting lost in talking about helping people that we, in the end, would never get around to actually helping people (you know, what people normally do).

That night we set up camp somewhere in Arizona.  The next morning I woke up and began scrounging through my things, thinking that I had lost my sunglasses. 

I picked my head up and, right outside of my tent, Sean Penn was walking around with a garbage bag, picking up trash.  “Good morning,” he said to me.  “Hey,” I said.  “Are those your sunglasses?” he said, pointing to an area of gravel outside my tent.  I couldn’t see where he was pointing.  “Maybe,” I said.  He handed them to me.  Sean Penn found my sunglasses.  Regarding this event, I have, written in my notes, “Sean Penn: nice guy.”

Yes, there’s a reason I placed that anecdote immediately after the starfish story. 

But moving on.  That morning, Tuesday, we had a catered breakfast (almost all of our meals on this trip were catered and free) and we had another sit-down/talking-to by Sean Penn and one of the other major players on the trip, Cleve Jones (www.clevejones.com).  “We don’t want this to turn into a field trip,” the volunteers were told, “we want you to come away from this experience with knowledge to apply later.” 

Later that evening, people on my bus were shotgunning beers.  Upon the completion of a beer, everyone would get quiet, someone would ask, “What’s your name and where are you from?”  The drinker would answer, and everyone would cheer.

Before that, though, in afternoon when we arrived in Tucson, the caravan stopped at SAAF: the Southern Arizona AIDS Foundation (www.saaf.org).  The volunteers had a chance to hear from employees at the organization describe what they do for people with HIV/AIDS (in a word: everything).  From case management to poverty assistance, prevention education to medical consultation.  Check their website, they do spectacular things.

After we heard from the foundation speakers, the volunteers were given poster-boards and pens and told to write slogans: we were going to march through Tucson. 

I wrote, “You don’t have to be positive to care” and “Prevention is the best medicine.”  We marched along the streets, soliciting honks and cheers from some commuters.  A family member of mine died as a result of HIV/AIDS when I was a child; this experience, this march to raise AIDS awareness, was profoundly satisfying for me.

That night, when we set up camp in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the volunteers gathered around a camp fire and heard from activist Cindy Sheehan.  Her story, the story of her son dying in Iraq and her becoming an anti-war activist, is well-known and easily available to the public. 

She discussed her history and her activism for a bit, the role that Blackwater (the private military contracting company) played in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, her congressional run against Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco (www.cindyforcongress.org), and how now is the time for today’s youth to break away from the self-serving attitudes of the 80’s and 90’s and begin focusing on the social uplift of all rather than the self.

We also heard from Pat Pedraja, a 13 year old boy (he had his birthday while on the caravan) that had been diagnosed with leukemia and, with the help of his mother, began a charity organization called Driving for Donors (www.drivingfordonors.com).  In 2007, he won the CNN Heroes Viewers' Choice award after signing up thousands of new bone marrow donors.  Pat was contacted by the organization, Do Something (www.dosomething.org), and invited to join The Dirty Hands Caravan. 

In almost every stop, Pat would be playing catch; he’s extremely active in a number of sports.  He’s young and precocious and has a measured temperament that is unusual for a child his age. 

When I sat down to speak with him, he told me that he was a finalist for Do Something’s BR!CK award.  I asked him what he thought of this trip, and he told me “This about having people find something to be passionate and care about, no matter what it is.”  You can read Pat’s account of the trip here: http://www.dosomething.org/dirty_hands_caravan_update.

On Wednesday, we spent the entire day travelling and I had a chance to talk to Jennifer Jourdan, one of the people in charge of logistics and maintaining the paperwork (making sure everyone signed waivers), met Cleve Jones and Sean Penn on the set for the upcoming film “Milk.” 

She was asked to join up for the trip without really knowing what she was getting herself into, but did it because of her admiration of Sean and Cleve.  When I asked her what she expected from the trip, she teared up and her voice cracked when she said, “I’ve already seen what’s been accomplished on this trip.”  She seemed genuinely blown away that so many people from such different backgrounds had joined together with no other motive than an interest in helping people.

I hopped to another bus in the caravan and had a chance to talk to Doug Goodman, the tour manager that has previously worked with bands like Slayer, Smashing Pumpkins, Ben Folds, and managed the Warped Tour.  While waiting to talk to him (and while I was talking to him), he seemed to be juggling thirty things at once, constantly emailing on a blackberry or checking routes on his computer. 

I didn’t have to prompt him with any questions; he simply spoke his mind as he worked.  He told me that he had been contacted by CAA for this job, but that he had refused payment for it.  Doug went on to describe his dismay with so many activists that concentrate on things like Iraq or freeing Tibet, saying that things this large are “beyond us.” 

“We need to concentrate on something small that we can have an impact on,” he said, “[Sean Penn’s] ideas are going somewhere.”  “People are sheep,” he said, “If we can get these sheep to pick up a bag on the side of the street, we’ve made a difference.”  “It’s much easier to protest big things,” he said, “but it’s a lot harder to do local things for our community.”  Concerning the trip, he said that it was “about acquiring the mindset to make a better world.  You can’t fix Darfur if you can’t pick up your cigarette butts.” 

That night we camped by Lake Travis, in Texas.  Douglas Brinkley, historian and biographer for such figures as Jack Kerouac and Rosa Parks, spoke to us briefly about his experiences travelling on “The Majic Bus” (a wandering classroom that read novels about American road trips and sought to replicate them) and a little bit about what is currently occurring in New Orleans right now, specifically the absence of infrastructure to truly rebuild and the lack of private equity to provide incentive for that rebuilding. 

The scribbling I managed to get down in the firelight does not do this man’s eloquence or knowledge any justice, go read his book “The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.” 

The same night we were also treated to a performance by Jerry Hannan (www.jerryhannan.com), whose song “Society” was performed with Eddie Vedder for the movie “Into the Wild.”

On Thursday, the Dirty Hands Caravan teamed up with American Youth Works and the Environmental Corps, split into groups, and did work around the Barton Creek Greenbelt in Austin, Texas. 

Some groups did trash pickup or other things around the park, while others focused on removing invasive species (Nandina and Ligustrum) that were taking over and killing native flora and fauna.  This process essentially consisted of cutting the roots with a pickaxe, and then tackling the tree with about three or four people until it popped out of the ground. 

Needless to say, by the end of this our hands were most certainly dirty.

When we arrived in downtown Austin it was already fairly late.  Cleve gave us a choice, appear at a May Day immigration rally and then get back on the bus or march along with the demonstrators.  An overwhelming majority of our group (it was nigh unanimous) decided that we should march.  We did this very thing after a quick Spanish lesson (“Si, se puede!”) and heard from a local organizer about the need for universal respect for immigrants regardless of nationality or legality. 

Concerning the city of Austin, I must defer to a quote by one of my fellow volunteers: “This would be a great city if it weren’t so hot or in Texas.”

On our stop in Houston the next day, in a community near the Manchester area that is literally surrounded by chemical plants that has the highest rate of childhood leukemia in the country, the volunteers concentrated on trash pickup and running a bone marrow donor drive.  It was here that Pat Pedraja departed from the caravan amidst a small birthday celebration and a few gifts.

On the way to Baton Rouge, we stopped briefly in a town called Iowa, Louisiana.  A variety of shops closed and locked their doors upon our arrival, and, facing a group of seven travelers, the purveyor of the Cajun Kwik Mart stated, “We don’t take buses.”  Someone during this time had called the police and the caravan had to make a hasty getaway. 

At the airport in Baton Rouge, while we were waiting for Sean Penn, I had a chance to sit and speak with Cleve Jones.  Cleve is the man who originally conceived of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and was a friend of activist and politician Harvey Milk (this is a paltry list of his activities and involvements). 

It was on the set for “Milk” that Cleve met Sean Penn (Cleve, in the movie, will be portrayed by Emile Hirsch), and, about the same time Sean contacted CAA, Sean Penn approached Cleve to work on the Dirty Hands project.  “It’s impractical, unrealistic, there’s no screening for the people involved,” Cleve said, “but, how do you say no to Sean Penn?” 

He talked to me about the process involved in organizing the trip, who called who and when, et cetera.  Cleve mentioned, concerning what prompted Sean to do this: that Sean is a father of teenage children, and he is increasingly worried about the plight of today’s youth.  “Numbed,” Cleve said, is a word Sean often uses to describe this plight. 

Cleve went on to say that he is proud that the Dirty Hands Caravan “has substance, that people are being exposed to a wide range of issues and ideas, and that the response has been fairly positive.”

Of volunteerism, Cleve said, “I don’t feel I’ve made many sacrifices.  There’s nothing more rewarding than this, this is the greatest thrill.”  He lamented the fact that so many people today are missing out on the excitement that comes from togetherness and doing hard or dangerous work. 

Regarding his goal for the trip, he said he hoped to “inspire young people to do something and understand the power of individual responsibility and actions.  If only a few people on this trip take this idea with them, then the trip is a total success.”

Short anecdote about Cleve: when Cleve found out that I had paid for my own lunch at a Subway somewhere in Texas, he insisted on reimbursing me.  It’s not there, but in my notes should be the words, “Cleve Jones: nice guy.”

In the foyer of the airport, the volunteers gathered around and, when Sean Penn arrived, sang a song that had been written by some of the volunteers: “We are the Dirty Hands, we travel through the land in a caravan, we are the Dirty Hands, the people don’t know but they’ll understand.”

That night we arrived in New Orleans at the Noah’s Ark Missionary Baptist Church, a church that Sean Penn, in Spike Lee’s documentary “When the Levees Broke,” described as having a “poetic” name.  We were hosted there by the pastor Willie Walker, who said to us that night, “Thank you all for not forgetting about us here in New Orleans.” 

The church had recently been remodeled by "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."  Everlast sang some songs for us that evening, a few covers and a couple of his own.  (He, unfortunately, felt it would be too difficult to satisfy my request for an acoustic version of “Jump Around.”)

Saturday morning it rained heavily.  A few groups of volunteers stayed behind to do work in the area around Noah’s Ark Church (gardening, making a driveway, some carpentry), and the rest of us travelled down to the Lower 9th Ward. 

I don’t know what you’ve read about the state of affairs in New Orleans today, but most of the people I’ve spoken to seemed genuinely surprised by the sheer state of the place three years after the disaster. 

Parts of the city look like they’d been bombed and abandoned, the shells of buildings are still standing, and on the front of almost every home is a large spray-painted X with the date the search party went through in the top quadrant and the number of bodies found on the bottom. 

In the Lower 9th, it’s just fields and fields of plant growth overtaking the cement foundations of homes that are no longer there.  Being there was overwhelming.

After a bit of down time wherein the volunteers heard from other volunteers at Common Ground Relief (www.commongroundrelief.org) and had a chance to speak with locals and explore the area a bit, we were all split into groups.  Some of us did trash pickup, others brought food to the homeless camps living under the overpass, while others still were directed by the Common Ground people to help residents that had been able to move back into their homes (some painted, some gardened, and others tore up rotten floorboards). 

That night, back at Noah’s Ark Church, the volunteers had a chance to hear from more locals talking about their personal experiences in the last three years, the poverty they face, the obstacles standing in the way of rebuilding, the fact that costs in the city are becoming increasingly exorbitant. 

I had a chance to talk to Sean Penn on the porch of Noah’s Ark Church amidst the chaos of volunteers organizing trips to Bourbon Street. 

We hung over the side railing while he smoked a cigarette and I hastily and haphazardly asked questions.  Of his activism, he said he’s been interested in current affairs for years, that he has “been following presidential campaigns since [he] was a kid.”  “I’ve always attempted to be a student of the world,” Sean Penn said, “I’ve been exposed to any number of class systems, economic systems, governments, lack of government, and it has occurred to me that we are now living in a time where, if we put hope in our political leaders, we are doing nothing more than raping and murdering our children.”  “We have to tend to our own people,” he said, “and that doesn’t have to be well conceived.”

I asked him what his goals for the trip were, and Sean said, “Very little.”  He talked a bit about organizing the trip in only twelve days, and then he said, “I’m counting on the imagination of youth, and I would like to see this continue.”  When I asked him what his financial involvement in the trip was, he said that he had paid for the entire thing except the water, which was provided for by Pepsi. 

He spoke a bit about Do Something helping to join up the Dirty Hands Caravan with the various charities we worked alongside during the trip.  When I asked him about the near absence of media attention, Sean said that there wasn’t an absence, that he wasn’t trying to avoid the attention, rather he wanted a sort of cult following to emerge behind the name, “I want people to be inspired to continue these actions.” 

Sean Penn spoke a bit about “The Third Wave,” and how it “changed [his] view on volunteerism.”  “Kids should get tax breaks and other incentives for doing volunteer work,” he said.  Like many of the other people I spoke to on this trip, he emphasized the power of personal and individual responsibility for making the world a better place. 

Sean Penn extinguished his cigarette and left.  This was the last evening he spent with the caravan.

The next day was much of the same.  People split off into groups and volunteered in different places.  Some went down to the Lower 9th Ward, some stayed behind at the church and gardened or helped prepare for what will eventually be a driveway (Everlast helped by breaking up the sidewalk with a sledgehammer). 

The next morning most of the volunteers boarded the buses and began the trek back home.  Some, about 20 people, stayed behind to continue working in New Orleans.

In this account, I left out certain details such as the drug and alcohol consumption; the numerous thefts that occurred; the illegal waste dumping; our near-daily run-ins with the police; the fact that, on Sunday night, a man was murdered less than a hundred yards from Noah’s Ark Church; and a bunch of other things. 

These events give a false portrayal of the trip, I think, and what it was intended to be about.  The bad things that the organizers of this trip were so afraid would draw negative publicity (and in fact did occur) are the things that go hand in hand with an endeavor like this, especially one as spontaneous. 

One of my biggest questions was what this trip was, at heart, about (a question I asked almost every person I interviewed).  But I think everyone came away from it with something a bit different. 

Was the trip a success or a failure?  Was the result good or bad?  The answer to both of these questions, I feel, is a resounding, “Yes.”  It just depends upon who you ask, and it remains to be seen whether this happens again.