THE YES MEN fundraiser for Project Democracy on Thursday, April 14 at 7pm. Royal Cinema, 608 College St, by donation. See listing.
The Yes Men (Mike Bonno and Andy Bichelbaum) bring their savage-love for punking the system to the federal election with a touch-down in Toronto.
The visit is to rail against the Harper Gov and help raise funds for the new website ProjectDemocracy.ca and the artistic resistors at Department of Culture. (Thursday, April 14 at 7pm. Royal Cinema, 608 College St, by donation)
The duo became famous for impersonating company and government officials and delivering satirical pronouncements about industry and government practices that present a more ideal world.
A little over a year ago, the Yes Men shamed Canada at the Copenhagen Climate Conference with a fake press release from Stephen Harper touting Canada’s new enviro-policies of our dreams. And just recently, they were behind the rumoured “plan” that pipeline promoters in B.C. were collecting human hair to clean up oil spills The Yes shoutout is targeted at pumping ProjectDemocracy.ca for its practical, no spin skinny on how to make sure progressives pull out the stops to protect Canada from a Harper majority.
How did you develop your trademark use of humour and satire to draw attention to issues by altering and mimicking reality?
We started working together around 1997 on a funding system for anti-corporate activism called RTMark.com. While we were doing that Andy had a habit of making satirical websites, and he’d made one for the World Trade Organization that got the director general of that organization outraged. Because he held a special press conference about it, the rankings in search engines shot up for the fake site, and pretty soon we had invitations from folks thinking we were the WTO. We agreed to go, and played the WTO for the next four or so years.
That was a milestone – figuring out we could engage in that kind of screwball direct action. And then there were more milestones: we started collaborating directly with organizations to maintain our effectiveness around 2004, when we got Andy on the BBC representing Dow Chemical. Now we have a new milestone, we have started the Yes Lab, which is a project-based training program in our methods that we are offering to NGO’s and to student groups.
How fun is it to pose as government officials and make statements that could alter (for the better) the direction of policy and corporate practices?
It is super-fun both engaging in dark satire and in presenting a dream while masquerading as the enemy. The big difference between those two methods that we use is that it continues to be fun when you use your temporary power to announce the world you want to see… whereas with the satire its always depressing that smart humans can nod in agreement with the most horrible visions we can conjure.
What exactly got you into so much trouble with the PMO at Copenhagen?
Canada is a global climate criminal! We figured out a way to announce what we would like to see canada do – which is adopt reasonable hard limits on greenhouse gas emissions. There is no excuse for a rich country not to do this, it’s sick! But the asshole Harper government does not care about humanity… they are happy to trade short term profits for the stability of the planet itself. Eewwww….
What advice do you have for activists working on getting a progressive government for Canada?
Work your asses off, but don’t burn out. Prepare for the hard work that comes after the government is elected. You can not lose momentum after the election. Look to the USA for what not to do. Do not stand for industry insiders in the new government. Obama just put the same guys from wall street who swindled the public in the driver’s seat. What a colossal fuckup! Be ready to pressure the new government in any way you can. First make sure it gets in, then hammer them with the love they need to make progress happen.
