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.

Save Face or Save the Planet

Preventing the worst of climate change is urgent, but psychologically elusive.  Unless the flood, fire, or tsunami is right in your face, it’s almost surreal to consider dramatically altering your life to keep the polar ice caps from melting.  Still, it’s absurd to equate 98% of the world’s climate scientists with “Chicken Little”, and most of us “get it”.  Or do we?

If a “threat meter” were on the planet right now it would be a smoldering orangish red alert.  In contrast mankind is responding with a few scattered protests, mostly drowned out by the silence of CONSENT. 

That’s right CONSENT.  If you are not publicly making it known you are against the insane destruction of our shared life-support system (read: “ecosystems”), then you are CONSENTING to what is happening.  If you’re not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

How do you most effectively REMOVE CONSENT?  Stop saving face and start saving the planet.  I don’t think we can do both.  Here’s why.  We don’t have time for rational step-by-step plans; by the time we reason with the unreasonable it will be too late.  In fact it is totally irrational to try and reason with irrational people (read: “oil mafia who are killing off their own children’s habitat”).  

We must REMOVE OUR CONSENT by becoming irrational and yet stay sane.  How?  Comedy, hilarity, weirdness, surprise, silliness, pranks and shenanigans. These are the best weapons we have against corporate thugs. They have all the money and power in their favor, we have the one thing they don’t have…a sense of humor…edgy humor.

Although it is the most powerful non-violent weapon we have, being funny requires the ultimate sacrifice; the ego’s need to look good, be right and save face.  Media-penetrating humor requires us to be laughed at, risk mockery, and feel totally uncomfortable in public.  Without making our “news” entertaining, our protests will go unnoticed and our arrests ignored. 

Maybe our real enemy is our all-consuming need to save face.  If we conquer this inner tyrant, maybe we have a chance of freeing ourselves from the dynasties that are steering us into oblivion.  Will you sing provocative silly songs, do dance mobs and puppetry to save our planet?  Will you bring your kids, play beach ball hot potato and march to a band of kazoos?  It may be the only way to get mainstream media to actually report on our demonstrations. 

For example, we polar bears were the only climate activists that showed up at the Republican National Convention.  During our “Going Away Party for Florida”, we were repeatedly interviewed by the press.

At the Democratic National Convention, again PBS, Washington Post, etc. photographed and/or interviewed us during our “Hunger Strike Against Global Warming – A Taste of Things to Come”, but only Grist actually ran the story.

By the time we got to the first Presidential debate in Denver we nearly did back flips when we saw about 12 other climate activist there too!  Although we love that they came, their efforts went ignored by the media.  We three, silly polar bears, performing for the crowd, did make the Denver Post and the Santa Monica Breeze with this photo. 

There are more examples from our protests at the final two debates, but the point is we learned that looking foolish works better than standing around holding expensive signs looking smart.  Other benefits of buffoonery are; it kept us fresh and free from burn out, warded off helplessness and depression, and gave us boundless adrenaline.  I am asking you all to get over your resistance to joining us, and SAVE THE PLANET instead of your face.

--
Rachel Hope

One thing I'd like to add in support of what Rachel has written here.  Ivan Marovic of Serbia's Otpor movement, had a rule: "If you want to say something, you do something on the street, and when journalists show up, you can talk to them."  Otpor overthrew a dictator using, largely, humor.  When they did a street action, good pictures often made the front page.  "A hundred people doing something on the street is not news," Marovic said.  "but a hundred people doing something crazy is a picture". -- Curtis Hannum

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You want to stop climate change? Join us.

The Pissed-Off Polar Bears are committed to ACTION.  Action must be every day, not once every six months.  We are prepared to help guide that. 

We went to the Republican National Convention in Tampa and the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte and were disappointed to find no other climate activists in either town.  (Turns out Whit Jones of the Energy Action Coalition was in Charlotte leading a push to get Duke Energy to dump ALEC, which is fantastic and we applaud him for it, but where was the rest of the movement?)

If global warming is indeed the greatest crisis to ever face humanity, what the hell are the climate organizations spending their time doing?  Raising funds?  Writing websites? Doing speaking engagements?  Organizing one big action every six months and then occasionally standing up to the Keystone pipeline?  (We don’t mean to minimize the hugeness of stopping the pipeline—stopping it for now anyway—but we do intend to push the movement to nut-up and start acting like this crisis is as urgent as it truly is!)

The American political system will play a HUGE part in solving this.  The rest of the world cannot do it if the USA doesn’t lift a finger, and unfortunately one political party (talking to YOU Republicans!) is determined to make sure that doesn’t happen.

So this election is enormous.  Mother Nature gave America a huge wake-up call with the dreadful heat, drought, and wildfires this summer, BUT THE CLIMATE MOVEMENT HAS NOT ACTED UPON IT.  NONE of them, as far as I can tell anyway, are looking to influence the American elections.

WHY THE HELL NOT?

We still have 50 days to have an impact before these elections.  The measure of our success will be dependent upon the commitment of everyone, INCLUDING the climate movement during those 50 days.  We are surrounded by a HUGE OPPORTUNITY: Pre-gathered crowds at political rallies.  We can and must go to those rallies with smart, funny, NONVIOLENT actions to recruit and win the sympathy of the American public. (Humor is an incredibly effective tactic, it disarms people; and people who take themselves very seriously are defenseless against it.)

We Pissed-Off Polar Bears spent the first half of this year studying Gene Sharp’s books on Nonviolent Struggle, and we’re CERTAIN that with a disciplined nonviolent strategy, we can create huge shifts in public opinion in a very short time.  (By the way, “nonviolent” does not mean “passive” – which is completely LAME and it will NOT get the job done.  It also doesn’t mean simply “peaceful”, because, in fact, Nonviolent Struggle is a very CONFRONTATIONAL technique that should put its opponents in a serious bind.)

At Democratic rallies we will push to recruit activists who understand that THIS IS THE MOVEMENT OF OUR TIME (Actually, of ALL TIME). 

At Republican rallies we will push to win over the media, the police, the family-members – the reasonable people - bystanders mostly - who know something’s seriously amiss with the weather.   Sure we’ll be confronted by bellicose deniers, but with patience and calm towards those who are attacking us, we hope to reach the others nearby.  

So we’re calling on people to STEP UP AND JOIN THE FRAY!  This is no less than a Call to Adventure to save all life on this planet.  We’ll show you how to do it by organizing “meetups” in your town to create groups to go to the rallies and start vibrant, active campaigns in your area.  We have precious little time, but our cause couldn’t be more awesome.

So f***ing JOIN US!!!  Go to our website (PissedOffPolarBears.com) and see how to start a MeetUp in your town.  Donate funds so we can take our actions to senate rallies nationwide! 

We need your help.  We need your involvement.  We need it now.  Contact us directly to become part of our well-planned strategy!

petethepissedoffpolarbear@gmail.com

polly@pissedoffpolarbears.org



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Rachel's 8 Day Hunger Strike Successfully Ends when the President Mentions Climate Change in his Convention Speech!

I just want to give a shout out to Rachel Hope, who is not just an activist, she's a kick-activist, going the  extra mile to save civilization from the climate catastrophe!  She did an 8 day hunger strike against global warming "A Taste of Things to Come: Famine Practice!", starting at the Republican National Convention in Tampa and finishing only when Obama made a strong statement about climate change in  his Democratic National Convention address.  Here is the video!

Hello!

Hello!  We are The Pissed-Off Polar Bears, and we want to get everybody on our side to stop the man-made climate catastrophe before it's too late!  (in other words, NOW!)  

This might seem impossible because no one's been able to do anything about it, but after months of reading up on Gene Sharp's books about Nonviolent Struggle, we believe that with an effective nonviolent strategy massive shifts can be created in public opinion and that this can happen in a hurry!  

We're also committed to what Serbia's Otpor movement learned, that the most effective weapons are humor and enthusiasm.

We just got back from The Republican National Convention in Tampa and the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, were we introduced Pete the Pissed-Off Polar Bear to people in the streets and did many actions, including The Going-Away Party for FLORIDA! and our 8 Day Hunger Strike Against Global Warming: A Taste of Things to Come: Famine Practice!  

Now we're focused on the American Political Campaigns, where we intend to help get as many candidates elected who understand the urgency of this crisis.  Our main focus is on electing a president who "gets it" (Obama) and electing Senate candidates who will ratify an international climate treaty.

We intend to use MeetUp.com and political rallies to recruit other activists.  

Much more to follow!  Join us!

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