For those who thought the homeless only used cardboard signs to make a pitch that they will work for food, a lone homeless picketer took to the sidewalk in front of the Manteca Bulletin Wednesday afternoon to fly a sign with a different message.

His cardboard sign read, “Stop the war on the homeless.”

He spent 30 minutes or so exercising his First Amendment rights while passing a news rack with that day’s newspaper and its main headline of “Locking out homeless” for the story about the City of Manteca’s efforts to end the pilferage of recyclables from blue Toters in neighborhoods.