Members of TrueMajority parked their traveling parade on Mt. Auburn St. last week. The group, founded by Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen, will travel cross-country in their unconventional vehicles.

Giant piggy banks showing disparities in U.S. government spending have been rolling down Mass. Ave. with bellies full of play money for the past several weeks, drawing notice from amused—and confused—onlookers in Harvard Square.

One large pig van leads the chain of vehicles, with “Pentagon. $396 Billion” painted on its side. Two smaller piggy banks follow, reading “Education K-12. $34 Billion” and “World Hunger and Poverty. $10 Billion.”

The pig van—along with a hybrid Toyota Prius with a tree seemingly growing on the roof and an RV with charts of military spending—were driving along the Harvard Square leg of a national “parade” to create awareness of government spending priorities and get more people involved in progressive politics.

“One of the problems with politics is that it’s been kind of dry, especially these issues on the left,” says Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream who also founded the organization behind the pigs on parade, TrueMajority.

Since June, TrueMajority has been publicizing its website, www.truemajority.org, through its parade, a traveling carnival and an e-mail campaign.

The “one-click activism,” in which TrueMajority sends e-mail alerts to members about issues in Congress and members can generate a fax to their representatives by just clicking “reply,” will allow voices of alienated or uninformed progressives to be heard, says TrueMajority spokesperson Jeffrey X.E. Galusha.

For nearly six years, Cohen has worked with the non-profit group Priorities, a group of business leaders that is concerned with how the national budget is allocated. TrueMajority grew out of discussions of what business leaders could do to contribute to progressive politics.

“The things we could add would be a business marketing mentality and the credibility that business people have in terms of budgeting and big numbers of money and large organizations,” Cohen says.

The many graphs, charts and other visuals that TrueMajority showcases in its publicity is part of an effort to make people aware of the large difference between millions and billions, Cohen says.

“You see these newspaper accounts. It all seems the same,” he says. “When it says the president gives $5 million for education, it pretty much runs the same way as when it says the president gives $10 billion for some weapons system.”

Shifting spending from the military to other programs is a central message of TrueMajority’s campaign.

“We need to move money out of Cold War era expenses and into social needs,” Cohen says.

Shifting a fraction of the defense budget to social priorities such as education, health care and world hunger could have a significant impact on these social issues, according to Cohen.

“For $20 billion, you can take care of health care for every child in the U.S. and take care of 50,000 kids around the world who are dying every day from hunger and malnutrition,” he says.

TrueMajority is concerned with wasteful spending, particularly on military weapons systems that it claims are no longer needed given the current geopolitical situation.