creative dissent - The Art of the Prank

February 3, 2012December 15, 2023

Museum of Sydney Spotlights Culture Jammers

Culture Jammers
Museum of Sydney
Sydney, Australia
February 11 – June 10, 2012

A subversive spotlight
by Karen Michelmore
abc.net.au
3 February, 2012

Sacred cows make the best hamburgers, says the activist who defaced an Australian icon.

It’s been eight years since David Burgess scaled up to the top of Sydney’s gleaming white Opera House and lashed it with bright red paint.

It took three coats before the act was complete. NO WAR screamed the sign.

The highly-visible protest against the looming Iraq war split the Australian community between those who were shocked at the wonton vandalism of the national icon, and those who applauded the message.

Ultimately, it landed Mr Burgess and his activist peer Will Saunders in jail for nine months’ weekend detention for malicious damage.

“I won’t say there were days I didn’t wake up feeling utterly miserable, but you couldn’t really regret what we’d done,” Burgess says. Continue reading “Museum of Sydney Spotlights Culture Jammers”

November 21, 2011December 15, 2023

Pepper Spray Cop Meme Goes Viral

‘Casually Pepper Spraying Cop’ Meme Takes Off
by Mark Memmott
NPR.org
November 21, 2011

When he walked down a line of seated Occupy protesters Friday at the University of California Davis and shot pepper spray directly at them, campus police Lt. John Pike likely never thought that video of the incident would go viral on the Web, that there would be outrage not only at the school but around the nation, or that “casually pepper spraying cop” would quickly become one of the year’s top memes.

All those things did indeed happen.

And as Buzzfeed.com’s Matt Stopera tells NPR, when he and others look back at the end of the year to judge which memes took off, “this is definitely going to be one of the bigger, more important memes.”

Read more, but there are many more images on BussFeed, peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com, and The Washington Post. Continue reading “Pepper Spray Cop Meme Goes Viral”

October 18, 2011December 15, 2023

Chris Hedges on the Dissent Imperative

A Movement Too Big to Fail
by Chris Hedges
TruthDig.com
October 17, 2011

There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn. The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant. Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking. So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi. So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform.

Resistance, real resistance, to the corporate state was displayed when a couple of thousand protesters, clutching mops and brooms, early Friday morning forced the owners of Zuccotti Park and the New York City police to back down from a proposed attempt to expel them in order to “clean” the premises. These protesters in that one glorious moment did what the traditional “liberal” establishment has steadily refused to do””fight back. And it was deeply moving to watch the corporate rats scamper back to their holes on Wall Street. It lent a whole new meaning to the phrase “too big to fail.”

Watch a video of Chris Hedges in Times Square, October 15, 2011:

Continue reading “Chris Hedges on the Dissent Imperative”

September 26, 2011December 15, 2023

Protesters Bare All Over a Proposed San Francisco Law

From Erin:

Protesters Bare All Over a Proposed San Francisco Law
by Malia Wollan
The New York Times
September 25, 2011

San Francisco “” Perhaps it should not be a surprise that San Francisco does not have a law against being naked in public, nor that a small, unselfconscious segment of the city”s residents regularly exercise that right.

That tiny minority was joined this weekend in the autumn fog and cold by unclothed sympathizers at a “Nude-In.” One of their objectives was to draw attention to a proposed law “” introduced by Scott Wiener, a city supervisor “” that would prohibit nudity in restaurants and require unclad people to put a towel or other material down before sitting bare-bottomed on benches or other public seats.

Mr. Wiener said the law was introduced in response to an increase in nakedness in parks, streets and restaurants.

“It used to be that there would be one nude guy wandering around the neighborhood and no one thought twice about it,” said Mr. Wiener, who represents the city”s Castro district. “Now it”s a regular thing and much more obnoxious. We have guys sitting down naked in public without the common decency to put something down underneath them.”

Mr. Wiener”s effort was destined to grab headlines, but he probably did not anticipate that his legislation would inspire even more people to disrobe. Continue reading “Protesters Bare All Over a Proposed San Francisco Law”

April 13, 2011December 15, 2023

GE Returns Billions to Public… NOT

Submitted by Carl Gibson of US Uncut:

GE Returns Billions to Public… NOT
April 13, 2011

USA Today, AP fall for US Uncut ploy; GE stock loses billions

Washington, DC – US Uncut, a burgeoning grassroots movement pressuring corporate tax cheats to pay their fair share, posted today a fake GE press release announcing that they would return their illegitimate (but legal) $3.2 billion tax refund, and that they would lobby to close the sort of corporate tax loopholes that had allowed them to skip taxes in the first place. Several major media outlets, including USA Today, ran the story as true. (Here is a link to the original USA Today story; here is the first article debunking the release.)

US Uncut quickly reacted with another release pretending to praise GE for this entirely unpredictable, unlikely, and in fact impossible act.

“This action showed us how the world could work,” said US Uncut spokesperson Carl Gibson. “For a brief moment people believed that the biggest corporate tax dodger had a change of heart and actually did the right thing. But the only way anything like this is really going to happen is if we change the laws that allow corporate tax avoidance in the first place.”

In the period the hoax was believed, GE’s stock plunged by .6% (far more than the value of the supposed return), then quickly recovered as soon as it became apparent the press had been duped. “Obviously, GE can’t possibly be expected to do the right thing voluntarily; their stock would keep plunging,” noted Gibson. “That’s why we must change the law.” Continue reading “GE Returns Billions to Public… NOT”