Occupy Broadway Draws Artists, Protesters To Theater District
by Johanna Barr
Huffington Post
December 4, 2011

New York — A diverse group of performance artists and protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement headed to the Theater District this weekend to stage a 24-hour demonstration called Occupy Broadway.

The protest aimed to reclaim public space through creative resistance. Beginning at 6:00 p.m. Friday, more than 60 acts performed in Paramount Plaza, an open area on Broadway between 50th and 51st Streets.

Organized by members of the Occupy Wall Street Performance Guild, an offshoot of the Arts and Culture working group, the event drew a long list of names from the downtown New York theater scene and beyond.

Read to the end to see Mike Daisey’s monologue. (more…)

From The Yes Men, September 24, 2009:

NYPD abuse of authority big factor in arrest

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 24, 2009

“Balls Across America” direct-action campaign launched

Andy Bichlbaum, co-founder of activist group the Yes Men, emerged after 26 hours in New York City’s central lockup with all charges against him dismissed.[1]

“The judge just laughed,” said Bichlbaum. “The police had a less well-developed sense of humor – and, it turned out, much less regard for the law. But all in all, I’m ecstatic that they arrested me.”

Jeannie Moos coverage on CNN

(more…)

Press release submitted by The Yes Men, June 18, 2009:

World Leaders Sign Pact to Avert Climate Disaster

Newspaper Ignites Hope, Announces “Civil Disobedience Database”
[Watch video here]

In a front-page ad in today’s International Herald Tribune, the leaders of the European Union thank the European public for having engaged in months of civil disobedience leading up to the Copenhagen climate conference that will be held this December. “It was only thanks to your massive pressure over the past six months that we could so dramatically shift our climate-change policies…. To those who were arrested, we
thank you.”

There was only one catch: the paper was fake.

Looking exactly like the real thing, but dated December 19th, 2009, a million copies of the fake paper were distributed worldwide by thousands of volunteers in order to show what could be achieved at the Copenhagen climate conference that is scheduled for Dec. 7-18, 2009. (At the moment, the conference is aiming for much more modest cuts, dismissed by leading climate scientists as too little, too late to stave off runaway processes that will lead to millions or even billions of casualties.)

The paper describes in detail a powerful (and entirely possible) new treaty to bring carbon levels down below 350 parts per million – the level climate scientists say we need to achieve to avoid climate catastrophe. One article describes how a website, http://BeyondTalk.net, mobilized thousands of people to put their bodies on the line to confront climate change policies – ever since way back in June, 2009.

Although the newspaper is a fake (its production and launch were coordinated by Greenpeace), the website is real. (more…)