Buy Nothing Day Parade of Angels

The marketing techniques of retail banking resembles any corporate consumer campaign, the same smiling actors with their promises of happiness, power, youth…The big banks also move hundreds of millions to super malls and chains, overwhelming neighborhood and community shops. Some of the banks, UBS especially – finance such earth-abusive activities as “Mountaintop Removal.”

After a spirited sidewalk parade celebrating Buy Nothing Day Reverend Billy entered the lobby of UBS with a white robed "swarm of angels". The angels, members of The Life After Shopping Gospel Choir, were there to ask UBS to stop financing the deadly coal extraction process known as Mountaintop Removal (MTR).The group, still singing, was forcefully ejected from the lobby by security and Reverend Billy was subsequently arrested by The NYPD.

Read more about UBS and Mountaintop Removal

 From the Rev. Billy Pulpit:

•  The Tombs from the Air: "I did the freezing 18 hours in the Tombs (went ‘into the system’) on the request of the UBS bank security people. But maybe after our sermons and songs in their lobby, those guys knew now what mountaintop removal and fracking and tar sands are. That’s what they are defending."
• THERE’S AN ANGEL IN MY BANK VAULT! "I see angels of peace rising from the streets and entering the hard, square buildings to loosen the abstract money from the computer screens. I see angels flying through thick shiny steel walls like the absolute opposite of bombs. I know that my thoughts would be crimes if they were more than thoughts."

Pictures and video....

Got pictures or video to share? Send them to danny@revbilly.com!

 

 

 

Media

• Billy and Savi on Earth Roots, radio from Brighton, UK

• Hear a special episode of Radio Provocateur featuring audio from the parade