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#WECALLBS ON THE NRA'S VERY EXISTENCE
New Yes Men film highlights fundamental racism of modern gun lobby

Available formats: YouTube, Facebook

(Feb. 28, 2018) In the wake of the Parkland shooting and the inspiring activism of teen survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the National Rifle Association and its Republican partners are facing intense scrutiny for their critical role in the rise of mass shootings and of homicides overall in America.

The NRA’s unhinged rhetoric and utter lack of remorse have been on full display since the horrific gun massacre at Stoneman Douglas two weeks ago. Spokesperson Dana Loesch (notorious for her recent ads that seem to be mustering NRA supporters into a pro-Trump paramilitary) even seemed to blame the media for the shootings, while NRA President Wayne LaPierre spewed more of his usual "arm the teachers" lunacy (promptly parroted by the current occupant of the Oval Office).

A short Yes Men film, completed in August 2017 and launched today on YouTube, uses shock humor to remind us where the NRA's lunacy and ugliness come from: FEAR—specifically, the profoundly terrified racism of the '70s. Featuring a Yes Men hoax performed June 22, 2016 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the film tells:

• how Republicans—in a terrified reaction to the Black Panthers' performative activism—once promoted the first gun-control legislation;
• how, once the Black Power movement was crushed, Republicans began calling for looser gun-control legislation, presumably for (white) "defense";
• how the NRA, once a moderate organization, became a tool of racist Republican fear when it was hijacked by extremists including LaPierre, its current president; and
• how fear of a Black uprising partly morphed into the right-wing street's signature terror of "government" (which in its best form, after all, is just another word for "people power").

The film communicates how the NRA and the Republican Party, tapping into deep racist fear for their power and profit, have turned America into the most violent high-income country in the world by a truly immense margin, both overall and specifically. (We have 7 times the homicide rate, and 25 times the rate of gun deaths, of the average high-income country—mainly thanks to Republicans and the NRA.)

The film also features a comical encounter with the NRA's Dana "Paramilitary" Loesch and her sinister, truth-indifferent "debate" techniques that so spectacularly failed at CNN’s Town Hall last week when she tried to use them against Parkland school shooting survivor Emma González.

With this film, the Yes Men wish to join the students of Stoneman Douglas (and many others before them) in calling B.S. on the NRA’s very existence. Please support them, and the nationwide #NeverAgain movement:

• Students can organize walkouts wherever they are.
• Anyone can attend or support the March For Our Lives.
• College students can skip Florida for spring break, because money seems to be the only thing that talks to some people.
• And most importantly, EVERYONE needs to do whatever we can to make sure the politicians who have so much blood on their hands never work in D.C. again.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 5, 2017

Bicycle Hoax Highlights Soulless Cycle
Belgian collective, in cahoots with refugee groups and the Yes Lab, hits hard at European policy towards refugees, false market solutions, assholes

Hundreds of spectators witnessed a bizarre spectacle Saturday, when a slick new tech startup called RefuGreenErgy held a three-hour launch event in central Brussels. The event featured four "RefuGreens" (actual refugees) happily pedaling battery-filling bikes while "company representatives" (actually activists) described to tourists and others how the refugees were producing "green" electricity they could buy; the refugees, in exchange, would get 24-hour periods of amnesty and 1.60 euros per day. "It's a guilt-free way to help others," explained one representative.

Reactions ranged from quiet approval to horror. The hoax was finally exposed when, after two "company officials" explained the concept to an assembled crowd, a member of the public, a man who works with refugees, spoke up emotionally against the concept, and the "officials" admitted it was a hoax. (See footage here.) At that point, Saïd Elouizi, a member of Brussels collective Voix des Sans-Papiers (Voice of the Undocumented), spoke of the importance of taking action as citizens: "We need to react to every speech and act, and not remain passive consumers.... Solidarity is our power."

The hoax, by WAAR (We Are All Refugees, a group of "artivists" from Belgium and abroad, working in cahoots with refugee groups and the Yes Men) was carried out in the capital city of Europe in part because refugees are constantly threatened, deported, and locked up by many European states, including Belgium. One Belgian politician, Theo Francken, has even brought agents from Sudan—whose president is under an international arrest warrant—to identify Sudanese refugees so that they can be deported back to the danger they fled.

The hoax was designed to call attention to the moral responsibility of countries like Belgium for the so-called "refugee crisis." 

“There are increasing numbers of climate refugees—perhaps 250 million by 2050," said WAAR member Zelda, referring to a United Nations report. "Climate change is caused by the industrial countries, and they bear responsibility for it."

"If we want to look at deeper causes of the wars and violence that force refugees to flee, it's not a big stretch to see our colonial history as a root cause," said WAAR member Hélène.

Another WAAR member noted that European colonial history continues as companies cause large-scale conflicts that force citizens to flee, as in the case of Areva in Mali.

"Our objective was to highlight the logic by which capitalism deals with and takes advantage of crises—even those that it's caused," the activist explained. "Faced with the ecological crisis of climate change, many companies respond with solutions that serve the objective of profit, without having any concrete effect on the problem itself. A horrible idea like RefuGreenErgy is sadly plausible, thanks to the 'Uberization' of society, ‘greenwashing,’ and the utopian view that the unregulated market can fix the world."

The hoax has so far received coverage in several Belgian media outlets. WAAR also launched a website, a promotional video, and Facebook and Twitter accounts. The hoax was developed during a week-long workshop with The Yes Lab at La Fabrique de Théâtre as part of the Brussels SIGNAL festival, and was carried out with the participation of refugee-activists from several organizations.

WAAR requests that you:

• Support collectives and organizations that help the undocumented in their quest for work and legal status.
• Support airplane passengers who oppose the deportation of refugees by air, who are now being prosecuted by the Belgian justice system.
• If you are in Belgium, welcome a refugee from Maximilian Park (Brussels) into your home to allow him/her to rest, and to protect him/her from police raids.
• Visit asylum seekers in Belgian refugee centers.

Media contacts: contact@refugreenergy.org
Hélène Collin, +32 474 99 31 33
Alexandre Dewez, +32 498 33 88 62

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AUGUST 1, 2017

ACTIVISTS CALL DNC'S BLUFF WITH #DNCTAKEBACK

Fake news precursors the Yes Men, working with grassroots activists, create illusion that election-winning populist issues are part of DNC's "Better Deal" - because they should be.

Highlights video, announcement text at www.yeslab.org/DNCTakeBack

One week after Democrats in Congress announced “A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future”—a new "populist" economic agenda that has been criticized as grossly insufficient—a "DNC representative" held a live-tweeted press conference in Pasadena before an audience of 100 to clarify some of the plan's "lesser-known populist features": Medicare for all (desired by a strong majority of voters overall, according to a number of polls, and even by 41% of Republicans), free college tuition (desired by 62% of all voters), stronger unions (by an ever growing majority), and public campaign financing and the elimination of corporate lobbying (large majorities of Americans feel corporations, the wealthy, and lobbyists have far too much influence in politics).

The bipartisan audience asked questions for 50 minutes. "Never once did anyone express doubt that these were the actual new positions of the Democratic Party—because why shouldn't they be?" said Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men, who posed as the DNC rep for the event. All the positions Bichlbaum described have been shown by polls to have widespread support across the political spectrum, and candidates espousing them have been winning in state and local elections nationwide, even in heavily Trump-leaning areas.

"But the Democrats have a donor problem that they need to get over before they can adopt these positions and thus win elections reliably as they once did," added Katherine Brezler, National Digital Director and Co-Founder of PeopleForBernie.com, who collaborated with the Yes Men on the project.

Although videos of the event had garnered hundreds of thousands of views on Facebook and Twitter, and although the #DNCTakeBack discussion remained vibrant on Twitter, there was no reaction at all from the DNC by Monday morning. Therefore, the Yes Men decided to send out an "official" DNC press release with more details on the "Better Deal's" supposed positions.

"We feel bad for the thousands of people who've believed that the DNC was taking the Democrats in an election-winning direction," said Jennifer Prediger, the journalist who moderated Saturday's session. "But the illusion that this was real was a shallow one: it actually could be. The Democrats were once the party of the people, and they can be again, but only if people exert enough pressure."

"We hope that the DNC will do this, but we know the grassroots already are," said Brezler.

"If the DNC by any chance doesn't do the right thing then we need to redefine #DNCTakeBack," said Prediger. "We the people need to 'take back' the Democratic party, so that we all stand a chance against fascism in the US."

This is the first hoax by the Yes Men that delves into electoral politics, as well as the first one that targets those on the same side of the political divide. "We can blame the Trump win on all sorts of things, including the Russians and racism and so on," said Bichlbaum, "but the Democrats definitely failed to offer disaffected voters any alternative. Instead of fighting for the working people as they used to, they’ve championed the neoliberal policies that left so many of those people in the dust. The chickens have come home to roost."

This was also the first-ever fully livestreamed Yes Men event that can be viewed in its entirety. The event lasted one hour, with 50 minutes of questions asked by the public—including at least one Republican. "Strangely, there was no notable tension at any point, with any of the questioners, except when I admitted I knew very little about SB562, the California health care bill," said Bichlbaum. "That was quite stupid of me."

"Everything in this was very heartfelt," said Bichlbaum. "It was a fiction, but like many people, we deeply want the DNC to actually adopt these positions. Many people see the writing on the wall, and there are many different ways of spreading the message."

Read the text of the announcement here, and view video and photos here. And contribute to the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #DNCTakeBack.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

UN Not Recognizing 4/20, Not Ending Drug Violence, Not Standing Up To Drug-Addled National Bullies, and Not Urging Stoners To Grow Pot At Home

Hoax highlights UN paralysis on drug policy at April 19-21 UNGASS

Last week, during the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the world drug problem—whose dates strangely centered on April 20, or 4/20—the Los Angeles Times quoted a press release announcing an ambitious new UN plan to decriminalize drugs and make them a health care rather than criminal justice issue.

This was welcome news for most of the world’s countries, who support making such a shift, but sadly the press release and associated Twitter account were a hoax, as discovered by journalist Tom Angell from Marijuana.com.

Shortly after Angell's revelation, a supposed UN denunciation of the hoax explained that “deadbeat states” like the USA, Russia, and China had prevented the UN from meeting the needs of poorer states like Mexico and Colombia who continue to be ravaged by the drug war. That release, also a hoax, quoted a UN spokesperson suggesting that citizens of the USA, Russia, and China should grow their own as the only way to wash their hands of bloody drug violence. (See coverage in The Guardian and CNN.)

Both press releases were in fact home-grown by Potanist, an online community for cannabis enthusiasts, who teamed up with notorious tricksters the Yes Men to get their message out.

“In the US, cannabis prohibition disproportionately impacts low-income communities of color and those on the fringes,” said Potanist’s Matt Heffler. “In Latin America, it provides drug cartels with practically infinite funding. Everyone suffers—except the US private prison industry and the cartels."

"The UN could really make a difference here, and it's very sad that they've caved in to bullying," Heffler added. Countries like Mexico and Colombia, crippled by rampant violence over drugs bound for the USA and Europe, have been demanding an end to the failed war on drugs for years, and many had hoped that this UNGASS would be a step to that change.

“In the US we tend to think of medical access to drugs as the main reason to legalize cannabis," said Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men. "But ending the cycle of violence fuelled by the drug war is orders of magnitude more important. Unless there's policy change, US citizens can't buy drugs without fearing their purchase is contributing to somebody's death. That can really harsh your buzz."

“Working with Potanist on this opened my eyes,” said Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men. “If you hate the violence but still want the drugs, you have to work on legalizing it. And until you succeed, you should at a minimum consider growing your own weed. It’s like giving up factory-farmed meat if you care about climate change. Sadly, without systemic change these half-baked answers are the only ethical options we’ve got.”