reverendbilly
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The environmental movement ignores culture-making. The classic strategy for Earth activism in the West is to shadow the perpetrator of the crime. Thus the policy-making and lobbying of the most destructive corporations - is matched by policy-writers and lobbyists from the advocacy groups. Even the websites of the Wildlife Conservancy and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) - resemble corporate graphics.
The number of people reached by the leading institutions of the environmentalism is a sliver of society. The default position for most media is to remain silent about Earth, with coverage of Climate Change sliding since 2009 in the USA. There is silence until a climate disaster demands the top of the news.
When revolutionary change came in the past century - the heralds of new values were comedians and singer-songwriters. There were words, delivered by melody, beat, and/or outrageous personality. From former times, we could cite John Lennon, Andy Kaufman, Lili Tomlin, Gil Scott Heron, Joe Strummer. Who is it now? Lady Gaga? Shakira? Stephen Colbert? We must grow new performance artists of this international rank - whose passionate defense is Earth.
Performers that might carry the Earth's message are not supported by the big budgets of the environmental movement, not by NGO's nor by their foundations. They do not think of culture-makers as people that they can invest in. Even as they watch more and more artists succumb to the dumbing down of corporate sponsorship - they hesitate to risk money on the Earth artists' wildness. They stop at educational events, teach-ins, conferences with workshops - which is GREAT - as far as it goes, but….
Not betting on culture-making is the wrong decision. It comes from fear. There should be Earth activist producers roaming the small clubs right now, looking for the Bob Marley of the movement. How much longer can the Earth's voices to go un-amplified? My suggestion: look to the kind of culture-making that comes from the activist side. Paul Watson, the Yes Men, the late Wanghari Maathi and her amazing speeches and tree-planting ceremonies, Julia Butterfly Hill and Tim DeChristopher.
These are newsmakers who are always ready with a statement, a speech, a moral homily, a symbolic act that borders on drama. And they offer a kind of entertainment by risking arrest. The perp walk is the oldest performance. When you expand the arts to include activists, then James Baldwin, Victor Jara, Emma Goldman's "Mother Earth," and Pete Seeger come to mind. Let's not stand on ceremony. The Earth needs bold dazzling words, with or without a guitar. We need more Monkey Wrench Gangs, more Silent Springs. I remember Rachel Carson personally confronting chemical executives…
In New York City - you would think that we need some Earth culture bad. If only because we spew so much talk out to the world. But our Earth performance goes from celebrities shilling about fracking all the way down to costume rituals in our community gardens. (Of course there are artists doing daring Earth projects on their own, in wetlands, on rooftop with gardens - and they often work in unsupported obscurity.) So you have the vast world of the New York stage - the dance, cabaret, Broadway, readings and concerts. At the time of Hurricane Sandy, these thousands of stages were thoroughly free of drama about the Earth. Sandy turned off those footlights.
Ultimately, all culture will be about the Earth. Nobody will be painting Campbell's Soup cans when the flood gets high and the fire gets hot. We are being pulled into the extinction that we forced on the rest of the biosphere. Our songs and dances and poems must express our desire to live - with such anguish and emergency and beauty! - that we rise to do the radical human act that matches the unprecedented action of the Earth.
We are submitting to the mug shots of an activist photographer. We are confessing to crimes against big banks IN ADVANCE. So there is a pre-criminal condition that we share.
The disappearers come at us from two directions. Jail and big banks. So we try to shed double light. First, we feel the humiliation of the mug-shot, feeling the gaze of the security state, en route to the retinal shot and the strip search, the scramble to be represented legally, to be heard, to be free again. But then free to do what? Free to cause acute and articulate embarrassment, to destroy utterly the FAKE PRESTIGE OF BIG BANKS. Will someone give me an Amen?
JP Morgan Chase is the Devil, Citi and B of A complete the trinity of Evil. Tops in climate-killing investments - billions of profits for creating C02 emissions - at the same time that they give the New York Police Department direct payments to keep the non-consumers (especially non-consumers of color) lost in the prison system. The Stop Shopping Church singers spend time in the Tombs, like most Occupy workers, behind bars with the folks who are there for a much longer time, in many cases with no idea why they are there and unsure about basic legal questions. A person can be late for something and take a short cut through the park and get caught in a sweep, god knows. The guns that stopped them were paid for by Chase, and their homes were foreclosed by Chase, and the air that we all breathe is poisoned by Chase. Here's an idea: When we get out of here let's take some radical songs into the posh hushed lobby of JP Morgan Chase!
Come violate the front porches of the Vampire Squids with a counter-drama from the Stop Shopping Choir. Over the summer months follow our campaign. We'll take the theatrical stage of the bank lobbies of JP Morgan Chase, Citi, and Bank of America. The art section is full of emoting actors on stages, but does Broadway have any electrical charge left? Chase, Citibank and B of A - their lobbies are the stages of the Lake of Hellfire. Wow! That's a show!
To shout "You put billions into C02 emitting industries!" in a bank lobby - oh the echo comes back as the Devil's bad gas. Come with us behind the lines. Nothing - nothing is scarier than a big bank lobby. Revolujah! 
We believe that bank lobbies need to be violated quickly. By "bank lobby" we mean the entry-spaces, the quiet, clean theaters that radiate outward from the bank's power, with the secret vaults and super computers at the center. These fore-rooms secure the control of consumers, reducing our ability to influence the institutions, which are killing the physical life of the earth, our communities and our independence.
So, this is our battleground — where the requirements come at us from cash machines, teller windows, surveillance cameras, security officials, displays of printed matter and tables for banking forms.
Performances by citizens of conscience who demand changes in deadly investment practices of big banks — must begin throughout the world. Indeed, this has begun with the righteous filling of commons like Syntagma Square in Athens, Placa Catalunya in Barcelona, Puerto del Sol in Madrid, Occupy Wall Street in New York, and Russia and Chile and Madison, Wisconsin and on and on in this glorious uprising. If corrupt governments are swept aside, the banks — which own the governments, will have their desperate end-game.
By pranks and prayers in the bank lobbies we are walking in through the front door. Re-humanize the banks! Use jokes, gender confusion, manifestos, and simply loot the thousands of gestures, costumes and words that the strict decorum of the place has prohibited. Above all — bring the music!
The FEAR OF BANKING tour began in Zurich at the invitation of Cabaret Voltaire, where initial in-bank protests were performed with Occupy Zurich activists and Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men. Now we have come to Barcelona at the invitation of The Influencers, and joining us here are the Russian protesters Voina - the world-class activists who stage strategic orgies in Kremlin buildings. Evan Roth, the hackster with Free Art and Technology is here. Many exciting artists have come. We hope to meet them down at the local transnational bank.
See FEAROFBANKING.COM, or the events page at Revbilly.com - for the banking stops in this first tour. We will return to New York for the environmental justice's working group’s (Occupy Wall St.) Valentine's Day party for Bank of America. Then off to the Bay Area for Occupy the Truth. Please meditate on our bank invasion as Yeti mop-abominations in Zurich and create your own lobby performances. We would be honored to greet our 50,000 socialites with your indiscretions!
Consumerism is violent. The apologists for ads and products, life styles and brought-to-you-by media are disastrously wrong. The thousands of marketing confrontations that a person must get through daily are not persuasive, clever, or normal. The 50 foot-tall actor wearing a watch and grinning at me - is not my new best buddy, Amen? This is atmospheric assholishness…
The mono-culture of Consumer Society - this corporate economy - can only be created by threatening us with loss of our good looks, status, youth and power. They want us to quietly believe that without their products we will suffer the annihilation of our personal identity.
And what does this psychic aggression have to do with the police I found surrounding Zuccotti Square this afternoon? A longing for a very recent pleasure of freedom from corporate bullying swept through us as we stared at the empty square. When we lived in that little plot of granite, there were no corporations. There were no threats. We had a gift economy. We were being of service to one another. It was a civil revolution. What am I saying? It still is.
What was it that made journalists froth at the mouth and cops come running with their pepper spray on September 17th? At least part of it was - we were starting a new economy. Their products were not inside the square to supervise our desires. And - once Consumerism is established as the dominant economy, it is far easier to militarize police and physically attack those who resist the allegiance to corporations. Yes it is surprising that the shift from psychic to physical violence is that automatic. But sure enough - once Consumerism was banned from a small patch of ground - especially public space in the shadow of Wall Street - that armed police were terrorized and the logos on the sides of the surrounding buildings seemed to angrily glow.
The police are paid directly by big corporations. So they are both city cops and rent-a-cops. They are still spending the 4.5 million given them by JP Morgan Chase shortly after the takeover of the square on September 17th. Was that extraordinary pay-out really a gift to the city to restore order in the face of anarchists? No, of course not. The institution sitting on the top of the present economy saw a clear threat to their scam. The gift economy aspect of Occupy Wall Street was immediately vilified in the commercial press as hippy-esque, bongo-ridden and noble-but-naive. We didn't listen to those people, watching their anger alongside that of the cops. And that was before two thousand Occupy sites erected their tents around the world. We were learning to start a democracy from scratch, and found it fascinating, and still do, and so do more and more people.
How far will police and law enforcement agencies go in attacking those who enter public space and stay there together, these islands of no Consumerism? At what point does a policeman admit that the refusal to cooperate with consumerism is not grounds for violence? If they are violent, then they have made their choice. But we will continue to say (without violence but full of conviction!) that you police are part of the 99% and - we welcome you!
