Sunday, December 2, 2012

Novel and Brilliant Street Theater Would Translate to Climate Protests PERFECTLY!


I love flashmobs and I love Improv Everywhere.  They flooded into a Manhattan Best Buy, 87 people wearing blue polo shirts and khaki pants, the standard outfit of Best Buy employees.  The store manager called the police but the cop said "I'm not going to arrest them for wearing blue shirts and khaki pants".  They also got 207 people to freeze in place in Grand Central Station for five full minutes, only to then causally unfreeze and go about their business.  As that was happening, a bystander speculated "I think it's a protest".

It wasn't but why not do protests that way?  We Pissed-Off Polar Bears conjured up our "Going Away Party for FLORIDA!" at the RNC and a "fully-catered" hunger strike at the DNC called "A Taste of Things to Come: Famine Practice!".  It ended up being just me and her at both events, but imagine how great it would have been if more activists had been willing to have more fun with their protesting?

When I first became a climate activist I was very big on creating autonomous "dens" all over the country, where activists could come up with their own ideas.  My climate partner at the time chafed at the idea, but I still think it's the right way to go.  Not all ideas out there will be great, but if more people are creating more ways to protest, we're bound to come up with some great stuff.  The Otpor movement in Serbia was big on this, people could do any protests they wanted as long as the protests were targeted at Slobodan Milosevic and as long as the protests were nonviolent.  We could do the same thing, requiring nonviolent actions, but substituting Milosevic with the fossil fuel industry and the climate deniers that keep them propped up.

You got an idea?  You don't think the climate movement is doing enough?  Come up with your own groups and your own actions and send us videotape so we can promote it.  Just be sure your actions are completely nonviolent, which includes not damaging property.  We'd also prefer if they were funny!  Our email is PeteThePissedOffPolarBear@gmail.com.



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