Coexist Bumper Stickers

I was on the phone with a friend, Steve Kelly, recently while driving. I was heading north on I-94 on my way to teach. I saw a car with a Coexist bumper sticker. Since Steve sees things the way I do, I decided to ask him a question.

“Hey, I am behind a car with one of those Coexist bumper stickers. Guess what kind of car it is?”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Steve replied “A Subaru.”

He was correct. It was a Subaru. Neither of us could recall seeing a Coexist bumper sticker on any other brand of car. Of course, this brought up a lot of questions:

• Did they only sell these bumper stickers to Subaru owners?
• Does every Subaru come with one in the glove box?
• Are Subaru owners the only people who care about the future of the world and mankind?
• Is there something magical about these cars that makes their owners care more about the future of the world and of mankind?
• When did they stop slapping “Envision World Peace” bumper stickers on their cars and replace them with Coexist bumper stickers?
• Where does one even buy a Coexist bumper sticker? 

The Subaru questions were all too metaphysical to solve in one short car ride. But, that last question intrigued us. Where indeed can one buy a Coexist bumper sticker? Neither of us had ever seen one in a store. You can only see them on Subarus. As we were both driving, we did not have access to the Internet which we both knew could provide answers to this question. So, we had a good laugh and drifted off to another inane but less metaphysical question. 

Having finished a days work and having a few minutes before turning in, I recalled the question of where to buy a Coexist bumper sticker. So, I googled it. Here is a big duh... There is a Coexist foundation: http://www.coexistfoundation.net.  

Since 2006, Coexist has been working to promote better understanding between Jews, Christians and Muslims, and between these communities and others, through education, dialogue and research.

I thought I had really hit on something. I looked on the website for a store where I figured I could buy all kinds of items with the Coexist logo from baseball caps to t-shirts and most certainly bumper stickers. But no! No? Really? There is no store. If the Coexist Foundation didn’t create and sell them, where are these bumper stickers coming from?

I looked at the logo of the Coexist Foundation more closely. Something was wrong, it was similar but not the same as the bumper stickers we see melded to the rear of Subarus. The Coexist Foundation only has the Crescent, the Star of David, and the Cross. The blue and white bumper stickers have these icons but also the peace symbol, the Yin-Yang icon, and an ‘e’ that has the male arrow and the female plus sign sticking out of it. I would have never ever guessed there could be two or more different Coexist logos. Why? And why are there only bumper stickers for one of them and why are they only on Subarus? I digress.

The question is where can I buy one.

I finally got smart. I had only been googling “Coexist." I next googled “Coexist bumper sticker.” Voila... I can get one for the most affordable price of $1.50 at Amazon.com where until recently you could also by whale meat in a can (that is whole boggy bit). Who woulda thunk that something so Subaru could be gotten for such a proletariat price on such a universal website.

The blue bumper sticker which started all this has peacemonger.org and a phone number written in small print on the bottom left hand side of the bumper sticker. On the bottom right hand side, also in small print, is the sentence “Profits help fight hunger, fascism, and social injustice. They sell a wide variety of items dedicated to promoting peace and coexistence that is if you do not count the George W. Bush toilet paper. Other products include:

• Celebrate Diversity refrigerator magnets
• Coexist rainbow hoodies
• Of their ten bestsellers, nine of the items have the Coexist theme
• There is a button that says “Ask not what your planet can do for you, ask what you can do for your planet.” This button is on-sale for $1.50 which is half off of the original $3 price!
• There are “My karma ran over my dogma” bumper stickers and buttons. I found these quite amusing.
• There are bumper stickers that use the same symbolography as the Coexist bumper stickers to spell out Tolerance, Peace, and Believe.

The Peacemonger is Jerry Jaspar of Visalia, CA. He was dubbed a Peacemonger in 2002 when the US invaded Iraq leading to the downfall and eventual demise of Saddam Hussein. He believes that 9/11 was a CIA sponsored attack. I am not so sure I can buy into that but I respect his steadfast devotion to peace and tranquility for the all the peoples and religions of the world. I would love that too. I just assign a much lower probability to it ever happening than Mr. Jaspar does. Possibly this is because I believe “Their dogma ran over my karma.” He doesn’t sell bumper stickers that say this.

There used to be another bumper sticker that seemed to be on every other Subaru before the Coexist bumper stickers. That was the Envision World Peace bumper stickers. I do not see them anymore. The seem to have gone out of fashion when some clever humorist created a bumper sticker that said Envision Whirled Peas. I actually even thought about buying one of those bumper stickers.

Politically correct notes and caveats:

• No Subarus were actually hurt in the writing of this blog.
• The author of this blog is not affiliated with the Subaru Automobile Company, The Coexist Foundation, or Peacemonger.org nor has he accepted any compensation of any kind from any of these organizations.
• The author of this blog actually believes that Subarus are good cars. He might consider buying one but is afraid his inner liberal would then be exposed to the world.