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  Williamsburg I signed a petition form at williamsburgwarriors.org – trying to stave off those great communities from the suburbanizing juggernaut – and then a first: The letter that I sent the City Council came back to me, and it’s good. Here's what I sent... Dear Speaker Miller: A true democracy can only exist when the people most effected by a decision are a part of the decision making process. Our community has spoken and I am writing to urge you to stand with Community Board #1's principles of protecting 4,000 of our local jobs, creating 70 acres of new open space and park land, guaranteeing that the rezoning will include 40% affordable housing and making sure that the height of any new building remains appropriate to our neighborhood's character. Gentrification follows a familiar pattern: artists move into low income areas, help build up the community and are soon followed by more and more money until the artists are priced out of the area and the original inhabitants are uprooted and further ghettoized to undesirable locations. Some call this "progress". But for those of us who will lose our homes, those of us who live AND work in our neighborhood, and those of us who have helped build the neighborhood, this is tragic and devastating. Brooklyn is a special place that thrives on long-established neighborhoods and a diversity unsurpassed the world over. Diversity is a key component to strength. The diversity of our mixed-income, mixed-use, multi- cultured and extremely creative community in Williamsburg and Greenpoint should not be washed away by the mistitled wave of progress. We believe true progress comes from building communities rather than breaking them, that progress comes from celebrating and educating each other through our diversity, and that progress comes from standing united as a group with trusted elected leaders who have our best interests in mind. We ask you to stand with us. Please vote NO to the City's rezoning proposal for Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Thank You - Rev Billy PS: Gentrification is the Absence of the Spirit! :: back to top :: REVEREND BILLY FOR MAYOR! NEWS FLASH: Boycott Starbucks apologists Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. They prove -- there are no icons when compassion is lost. In our camp-pain for Mayor, it happens that we have 258 position papers. I need to read these position papers, and then to distribute them hard-copy as well as pixilatedly. I need to do this to somehow persuade slack-faced voters walking and sitting in public space – that they consider writing “Reverend Billy” in the write-in space on their ballot. And, it happens that there are 258 Starbucks coffeeshops in the 5 boroughs of New York City. Well, I’ve only written 4 position papers so far – let’s be honest with the voters. 4 papers. And they are quite short, because, if I were to utter the impassioned speech, outlining a single position, say the missionary position that an anti-consumerist preacher might have in a city that is turning itself over to supermall developers and Soho luxury apartment imitators, that is to say -- nondescript and radically depoliticized SAVAGE YUPPIES, but don’t get me started. If I were to read such a speech, I would want it to be, say, less than a page – so as to throw my pulpit over my should and escape well in advance of the police. And let’s face it. Who sends the police? The other candidates do. They send the police. Either my opponents must say out loud that they will not accept money from developers or transnational corporations, or they must accept that they have sent the police to arrest fake preachers in fake cafes. We are really fictional here, this is SERIOUS, in our effort to outflank the effulgently self-producing reality show called New York City, soon to be a suburb that wishes it were as real as the New York, New York Casino and Supper Club in Las Vegas. I stayed there once and went from the Chrysler Building to the Staten Island Ferry by falling down drunk. CHILDREN! We need help with these position papers, and I need doppelbillys to go into the Starbuckses to camp-pain. Can you dress up funny and embarrass yourself in front of apparently indifferent mocha sippers? It’s the Lord’s work. Please contact us and help with our candidacy. Write your position paper and send it to us, we’ll post it here. Some good positions: defend the children in Guatemala, Chiapas, Colombia and elsewhere who are forced into the pesticide-drenched coffee groves and are dying in great numbers to make the $4 latte possible. (Starbucks is not a Fair Trade company – they buy about enough Fair Trade coffee, 2% of their sales, to brag about it. In their cult-like schools for new baristas they tell the workers, “Tell them that we trade fairly.”) Or some of you might want to mention Starbucks’ creation of trash, or the firing of union-organizing baristas, or the genetically altered milk, or their indy shops-killing real estate practices, or the freezing without-nipples-or-navel of the oceanic fertility goddess in their logo, or the billion dollars in the pocket of CEO Howard Schultz and the impoverishment in the fields, oh, but I’m repeating myself. Email us with a position you’ll take and a coffeeshop you’ll take, camp-pain with us, tape it and put it on the website with us, Let’s Run For Mayor. The government of New York City must be Sweatfree. Perhaps you would rather not camp-pain yourself, but want the Reverend to come to a Starbucks near you. Let’s work together. You can help with the position, maybe be the watch-out or you can videotape the political theater. Save me from the Starbucks Manager figure. sSing with the choir. I gotta go. Amen. :: back to top ::  SUMMER-LONG-WHISTLE-STOP CAMPAIGN IN ALL 256 MANHATTAN STARBUCKS LOCATIONS! Reverend Billy is running for mayor on a solid no party platform. Campaign managers say he will reach out to the startled consumer bloc for their votes. (Details forthcoming). I accept the nomination for the candidacy for Mayor of New York. I accept it from the ghosts of the Jones Diner, from those who still get hope from the Esperanza Garden and Charas Community Center, for those who envision a New York City that is developed, not destroyed by developers. We will conduct our entire campaign on the premises of the Starbucks Corporation, offering 258 sermons in 258 locations in the five boroughs of the city. Although Reverend Billy is banned from Starbucks world-wide, we find it necessary to concentrate our efforts on this community-destroyer. Starbucks is what we call an Indicator Company. If Starbucks is allowed to persuade the public that is is a "Green" company, then all companies everywhere are free to lie just as broadly. If Starbucks is allowed to pose the Happy Peasant everywhere in its cafes, but nearly all of its coffee is not Fair Trade Certified, and coffee workers are impoverished while the Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is a billionaire - the precedent for this George Bush-like double-speak, becomes a perverse symbol for success. New York, of all places, must offer some protection for its citizens here, and for the citizens of the world whose products come here -- the sweatshop-thinking will be replaced by official compassion. Change-a-lujah! :: back to top :: Ratner out of Brooklyn/ Bloomberg's Olympic Dreams The dreams of the Bloombergs and Bruce Ratners, that New York will "develop" its way to some kind of glory, are not just the fastest way to gentrify and suburbanize the apple. Certainly we are seiged by the worst kind of sinner: middle-brow people whose dreams are made by what money shapes for them. The pastor counsels these billionaires to spend a few years going the other way. Become miniaturists, stop expanding. A billionaire is by definition an emperor, and Napolean and 50 others that crowned themselves later lost their empires and lost their lives because they couldn't stop invading their neighbors. The stadium is an invastion. Ratner's vision for Brooklyn would make downtown as ugly as NYU — these are money guys who can't stop. As Jane Jacobs said in her recent letter to Bloomberg -- communities should design their own future. Visit Develop Don't Destroy. :: back to top :: Urban Vendors 07/21/2004 - The Church of Stop Shopping stood with the Madison Square Garden Street Vendors Association to call for fair treatment of licensed vendors before and during the Republican National Convention. Pics from the Press Conference Urban Justice Center Street Vendors Project The Church of Stop Shopping supports the Street Vendor's Project, which is a part of the Urban Justice Center. THE HOT SUMMER IS A STAGE. The Devil will make his entrance, the dark goofy prince, George Bush, he will stumble into the footlights in the final scene. Children will be murdered by his teleprompter. And we are dared to create the rest of the play. This is always the case. Wal Mart drains the wetland. Starbucks kills the diner. And Disney will distract your child on the way to school. The Devil always enters the stage in the final scene and stands there with burning eyes. And what is our competing gesture? What is our part of the action? But when Prince Goofball enters Madison Square Garden, a play that he knows nothing about will already be in motion. None of Bush’s handlers suspect that Madison Square Garden is not a building; it is in fact a neighborhood. It is full of subplot, characters, people living their lives. Thousands of people choose to locate their activities at 34th Street, and each is powerful actor. Word on the street has it that the feds will start cleansing the streets on August 2nd, BUT SOME OF THE FOLKS MAY BE UNWILLING TO STEP ASIDE. The Republicans think of Madison Square Garden the way they thought of Baghdad, and Kabul. They believe that they can just buy the place -- it is their new colony for a long lost weekend. It is a stage they can rent, with the lights and the sound. They are wrong. THE STORIES OF THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE HERE NOW ARE SO STRONG THAT THEY ACT AS A FORCE-FIELD. They are so entertaining, it is possible that the Republicans will have difficulty finding their boy king in the festival of street life, shops and eateries, pontificating monologuists and divas, hurrying dealers and in a word: a highly original Breughel painting of non-Republicans. WE ARE TALKING TO THE PEOPLE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, THE PEOPLE WITHOUT OBVIOUS HOMES, THE VENDORS, THE SMALL SHOPKEEPERS, A MAN SITTING BY A TABLE COVERED WITH FLUORESCENT FLIP-FLOPS -- all these people who are at risk because they are less powerful than the horde of Tom Delays descending from the skies. But if you listen to them they seem to say: "Will you move all of us a mile away? But my life is here." And so the Church will support the defense of the people of Madison Square Garden-- at the very least we will stage a benefit performance to raise money for their legal defense. Where is Bush putting these people, for five weeks? His representatives must be forced to negotiate with the neighborhood, so that people know where they are going and have a means to survive. Call the Street Vendors Project, Sean Basinski, Director, 646.602.5679. :: back to top :: |
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   Brother Michael's Church Bulletin Diatribes, Data and Discussion. Blog-a-luia! 
YOU and your choir rock...I'm waiting for the day to see you in Portland. In the meantime, the theater was packed last night as we watched your movie. Nice job! Keep up the great work! Thanks! No shopping for me! -T
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Wed, July 9 @ 5:00 PM : : First Amend-a-thon!
: : Northwest Corner Of Union Square, New York, NY
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