CRAPping at the anti-mining march
Having hundreds of protesters hurl abuse at you, make obscene gestures, get in-your-face, make wild accusations, even spit on you, and generally express their frustrations, must seem like an odd way to spend a Saturday morning.
CRAP is an acronym for Capitalism Represents Acceptable Policy and is very reminiscent of the YES MEN style of social activism – hilarious and serious at the same time. It has come out of direct actions in the UK. Daniel and I had the profound privilege of CRAPping at the Climate Camp protest in Wellington at the end of last year and it was incredibly invigorating as well as (personally) a very empowering and creative form of ‘activism’. It involves taking on the role of big business and giving a voice to that segment of our world that seems to be running the show (since they won’t be there representing themselves). The objective of CRAP is essentially to protest the protest and [show support for] the economic imperatives driving this new legislation. All you need is a suit or other conventional business attire, a sense of humour, thick skin, and a willingness to literally play devil’s advocate at a large environmental protest. You will not make new friends but you will likely make lots of passerbys think about the issues a bit more! I think it is also very likely that if there is media there you will be targetted (you will stand out)!
Edgy because I am as frustrated at the idea of mining our National parks as most of the 50,000 people who turned out today. I can understand it from a resource point of view, and recognise we are, globally, scraping the bottom of the barrel in so many resources we have come to rely on. So part of me wanted to be in the crowd, showing how much I disapprove of Gerry Brownlee’s proposals.
Sometimes scary, because there were far too many people who didn’t get our ironic anti-protest stance, and took us seriously. Some were profoundly and visibly disturbed by their own perception that we were there to promote mining. Their reactions ranged from angry gestures, to getting up close and in our faces to challenge the greedy exploiters they saw before them. I found myself feeling oddly grateful to the big security man who stood off to one side keeping an eye on the four of us, as we were attracting a lot of attention from the passing crowd.
Educational in a number of ways. The strongest intuition I had was that we made ourselves the lonely (only) target for the people’s frustrations. Our placards had the give-away acronym printed on them: Capitalism Represents Acceptable Policy, but people needed an outlet. The image of one older woman’s face as she hammered away at me, to convince me of how evil I was, still leaves me a little sad. I tried to ease her pain, by telling her it was theatre, but she seemed unable to hear me.
Standing in the position of the bad-guys and being confronted by (mostly) angry people made it clear like never before, that the way we communicate with one another impacts significantly on how effective our communication ends up being.
All this talk of extracting resources needs to be understood in the context of the much bigger and global picture of peak everything…
PS – Tuesday morning’s Sideswipe in the NZ Herald, printed this from Alison Jones of Westmere:
“A sense of irony was in depressingly short supply among the thousands in Saturday’s anti-mining march in Auckland. A bold and brilliant quartet of street performers in suits, with briefcases, stood on the footpath with signs reading ‘Under Mining is Our Business’, ‘Mining = $$ = Happiness’, and the like. Their hilarious – and plainly satirical – tableau earned them a dispiriting amount of abuse, and even threats of physical violence from the passing parade. Several admirers had to take up positions nearby to explain to the hotheads that real mining magnates don’t make a habit of standing in Queen St with placards.”
Hey James,
Nice work on the counter-protest, I’ve been a big fan of the Yes Men for a long time so it’s awesome to see that we have a home-grown version! I feel kinda bad for booing now – you guys certainly do have thick skin.
I wish I had been able to attend the March – I think (hope) that I would have grasped the irony and come up and given each of you a hug!! Certainly if I had had the chance I would have at least come up and talked to you – even if I hadn’t got the joke! It’s a shame that so many well-intentioned people didn’t think that the best way to engage the “opposition” might be by good-humoured conversation rather than by shouting and spitting!
Good on you!
Gillian
That last pic of you and… is that Finn next to you… that’s CLASSIC! If anyone who knows you had have seen you, they would have laughed.
It is scary how harshly people can judge you by what you wear, or what you stand for, isn’t it? I’m currently staying in a VERY national-voting, capitalist household at the moment, and it’s a very interesting experience clashing on topics. ‘They’ think I’m coming from an uneducated, emotional and ‘conspiracy-theory’ perspective, and I have to really fight to get them to understand the logic, science and research that is behind my position. It takes a lot of calm and patience to get both sides to (at least) understand where eachother are coming from!
Wonderful! The Yes Men are fantastic and its great to see the spirit of what they do in the world expanding into NZ! Loved what you’ve done, may the women and men of CRAP be present at many more such events!
Great stir. There is nothing as educational as putting ourselves in the shoes of our opponents. Interesting as well that what seems like the most outrageous over-the-top satire to us is actually what our opponents are saying in all seriousness.
Well done James, what a star. I also hope I would have recognised there was irony in your position, especially with that tie, definitely flower power era. As you say the form of our communication has serious impacts on its quality; it shouldn’t have to come to this.
Good on you guys! Excellent effort. Please invite me next time
.
When I first saw you guys (and Gal) I thought “oh dear” but then the cheap suits gave it away. Nice job, I heard one woman going OFF at you, so I can imagine that you must have had your hands full calming people down.
Great theatre, James. I loved the posters. Kind of like the medieval community theatre where the people could jeer at certain archetypes (like the ‘devil’ etc). Those characters were very obvious to people, of course, via costumes, masks. So, your “work” is useful “reflective experience” for us when we gather in groups like the march.
Most important to have this reflection as we enter, possibly, very difficult times of transformation and so important, as you say, to stay in heart feeling and humour and the assumption that we are all (the human species) in the same boat here – vulnerable, and needing to grow beyond our old patterns, and needing each other’s help and compassion. Love, Dean
haha – i was (one of?) the people taking your photos and telling you i loved you!
i actually thought you WERE the yes men x x x
Thanks Karen : -) It was people like you who kept me from running for the hills. BTW I followed your site to your music videos. Excellent!
Good on you James and co. I think what you did is a great way to highlight how communicating with anger and refusing to listen to the other side of the argument is largely counter-productive. It’s a shame not everyone could appreciate what you were trying to do at the time, but I’m sure you’ve given some people valuable food for thought.
Awesome work guys, love your ability to use humour to get people’s attention. Not only to get their attention but to leave them chuckling while they consider what it is that you’re trying to get across. Result is likely to be much more favourable too (than hearing a chant or seeing people steaming with anger and frustration). Keep up the great work, and check out the Zeitgeist Movement for true workable solutions to this whole “profit above everything/shareholders first” mentality
Mike
Hi James
LOL! You and Finn too! Great training for when the real street unrest comes!
If MCGilly Cuddy Serious were still around, you’d be prime jester candidates!
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/bernard.smith/manifesto/contents.htm
If the mainstream public really believe that voting makes a difference, and street protests will fix the system….hmmmm…not going to happen within the illusion of democracy here.
As long as the mainstream stays in a consumer culture, and believes in the political process, collapse is guaranteed IMHO.
Regards
Ted
Nelson
As soon as I saw Finn standing there, I straight away knew that it was a seriously good piss take. I loved the way you guys created so much noise and passion from people, we could hear the boos for 100m’s later – nice one
Yeah well I was fooled! To far away to see close up, I was pushing the wheelchair of a brave 22yr old woman with an 89 yr old rebel with his walking frame in tow so all I could do was boo as well! Thought they were very brave to make a stand. I read the caption Mining = $= Happiness and thought that seems so naive! Its easy to forget that some people are actually living that reality when you’ve been creating a different sense of values in your own life… Glad to hear it was a set up, well done the actors! Equally sad to reflect how real your acting was. Our leaders are actually only partially developed humans who are not holding our precious global existence in their political hands…it’s dripping into a big hole and people have voted for them.If only Avatar was real, we could do with some enlightened “blue apes” about now to finally kick the ass of our “jughead clan” right off our planet. We have as protesters, scientists, naturalists, spiritualists, mothers, fathers, children…been begging for them to wake up, catch up for decades. Now what?