#BILLIONPEOPLEMARCH

Hey all you wild cats, dreamers and redeemers out there, It’s been awhile since Occupy Wall Street came and went. Now the revolutionary spirit is stirring again. We’re building a global people’s power bloc – and it all begins with the #BILLIONPEOPLEMARCH. On December 19, I’ll be one in a billion! We’ll take to the streets in a global big-bang moment that will, for one beautiful day, make business as usual impossible. In every major city of the world, we will come together in our rage, sorrow, compassion, defiance and determination. A revolutionary carnival against the whole dysfunctional system that keeps us on the brink of climate catastrophe, financial meltdown and World War Three. But #BILLIONPEOPLEMARCH is more than a moment — it’s a movement. Linked on the Internet, we’ll zero in on the biggest, most systemic world-changing metamemes that have the power to shift the global narrative towards a sane sustainable future . . . and then we’ll take to the streets again (and again) to push our ideas through.

After centuries of top-down rule by tyrants, kings and now corporations, we the people will take charge of our own destiny and start calling the shots from below.

THE LONE WOLVES PROWL

Maybe marching in the streets isn’t for you. You like prowling alone, or with a few close friends … choosing your own actions, picking your own moments. But you can be one in a billion too. On #D19, turn a bank window into a work of art. Nail a manifesto to the doors of the economics department. Blackspot an ATM. Dance on the back of the stock market bull. Beautiful, secret gestures have their own way of making history.

AESTHETIC TERROR

The blackspot is the anti-logo, a logo to wipe out logos. It represents … nothing. Or maybe everything. It’s the sign of people power, the mark of the new world to come. First you see them on Coke machines. Then one day a big one on a bank window (quickly taken down). On ATMs, bus-stop ads, in the corridors of economics departments, whacked on corporate HQs, hacked into websites… The aesthetic tone of the world begins to shift. The mood of our cities, the tone of TV, the knack and smack of navigating the Internet — the way it feels to be alive today. Once the global mindspace is peppered with trillions of blackspots, the revolution has begun.

FIGHT CLUB

Big tobacco. The arms trade. Sweatshops. Oil spills. Blood diamonds. Factory farms. Financial collapse. Climate change. The list of corporate crimes goes on and on. But never — not once — has a criminal corporation been brought all the way down: its brand erased, its business disbanded, its profits paid out in reparations, its name tossed into the dustbin of history. This year, our people’s power bloc will name one corporation and bring it to justice. (Exxon, anyone?) We’ll occupy its operations. Pummel it with media mindbombs. Launch a #BILLIONPEOPLEBOYCOTT. For the first time in history, we’ll sentence a dirty criminal corporation to death.

BUY NOTHING XMAS

Tired of fighting austerity? Let’s hit back with a brand of austerity all our own. Consumer capitalism lives or dies on how much we consume. One of the most radical everyday acts we can do is buy nothing. There’s no better time than this holiday season … get your family and friends together and do something wildly different. Turn-off Cyber Thursday. Boycott Black Friday. Poster a mall with counter-consumer mindbombs. Hold up a big funhouse mirror to the post-contemporary shopping frenzy! This Xmas, buy nothing. You might just have the most meaningful holiday season you’ve ever had. Buy nothing, experience everything! #buynothingday #buynothingxmas #popewalk

RULES FOR RADICALS

Eight ancient (and not-so-ancient) lessons for world revolutionaries:

1. There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit from the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in those who would profit from the new order — the lukewarmness arising partly from fear of adversaries who have the laws in their favor, and partly from the incredulity of mankind who do not believe in anything new unless they have had actual experience of it. —Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince 2. A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another. —Mao Tse-tung, Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan 3. One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s distance from the scene of conflict. —Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals 4. The important thing in strategy is to suppress the enemy’s useful actions but allow his useless actions. —Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings 5. It is bad to be led about by the enemy. You must always be able to lead the enemy about. —Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings 6. The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy’s cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him. —Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings 7. You decide your own level of involvement. —Tyler Durden, in Fight Club 8. Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not. —The Once-ler, in The Lorax (Dr. Seuss)

WE CHANGE THE WAY MONEY FLOWS

What are five big metamemes that can shift the global doomsday machine? That’s the question we’ll launch with the #BILLIONPEOPLEMARCH. And the people’s power bloc we’re building will come up with the answers. Here’s one tantalizing possibility: WE CHANGE THE WAY MONEY FLOWS! What is the capitalist algorithm but a machine that runs on money? And running the machine are the people who skim off the top from bank fees, interest rates, mortgages, currency trades, payday loans, stock dividends. They’re just leeches, bloodsuckers, people who sit on their asses moving their money around … who get tip offs from their brokers on when to buy and sell. They’re the heroes and oracles of Wall Street … the time has come to throw them from the temple. Could this be our first demand: A 1% Tobin Tax on all stock market transactions and currency trades? Slow down fast money in the global casino. Hack hack hack the capitalist algorithm every which way you can: • Go local and indie in everything you buy • Drop out of the debt-and-credit economy • Divest any stocks or shares you hold • Take your money out of the big banks and put it into local co-ops and community credit unions • And some day soon, on a day of your choosing … whack a blackspot on every fucking ATM on the planet!

Jump Cut

…we jump over the dead body of the old left . . . …hack into the guts of the capitalist algorithm . . . …win a guerrilla meme war against the cruddy forces of the status quo… outlaw secrecy change the way money flows redefine progress make prices tell the ecological truth halt the arms trade …take the straight line in a curvy new direction… …trigger a jump cut in the human imagination. play jazz