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The Gospel of Reverend Billy

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In his bright white suit and rockabilly hair, the Elvis-channeling, megaphone wielding Reverend Billy is a familiar figure on the NYC protest scene. The Reverend started out as a solo street act during the height (or nadir, depending on your perspective) of the Giuliani years. He first gained notoriety in 1999 for his anti-Disney actions, which were centered in front of the company’s superstore in the newly neutered Times Square.

Watch Reverend Billy's Unholy Matrimony in Albany this Tuesday

If you are prepared to object to the unholy union of big business and the United States government, we implore you to join us in Albany, Tuesday, May 7th when Reverend Billy will preside over the ceremony to wed big business and government in a celebration even the wedding industrial complex would love. Since the law considers corporations people, then why can't they marry one?

We need you to show up in the streets with us on Tuesday to show Albany that we will not allow our democratic process to continue to be directed to serve the interests of big business and the 1%.

Open Letter to the RAN Community from Reverend Billy

Mike Roselle’s smack-down of “Big Green” and Sandra Steingraber’s letter from jail–serving time for her fracking resistance in upstate New York–show us the sea-change that must take place in green activist culture.

I met Randy Hayes, RAN founder, in the late 80′s and came to know the Earth First and Redwood Summer activism while a Bay Area resident. Now these years later, we’ve worked with RAN campaigners Amanda Starbuck, Scott Parkin, and Annie Sartor in Mountaintop Removal activism.

Slaves to Our Stuff: A Creative Vision to Break Away From Consumer Culture's Destructive Grip

This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org.

Need a creative way to fight fears of our planetary demise? A new book by Billy Talen prophetically titled, The End of the World (OR Books), may be just the trick. Talen, also known as Reverend Billy, and his Church of Stop Shopping, exposes the socio-political structure of consumerism and the commoditization of the earth with songs, impassioned preaching and theater events.

Billy and the Golden Toads

Reverend Billy Talen and his Church of Stop Shopping — which evolved from anti-consumerism street theater in San Francisco in the 1990s into a venerable New York City protest/performance institution — is bringing its creative environmentalist prayers and ploys back to the Bay Area next week.

Talen is a talented talker and writer whose most recent book, The End of the World, is a poetic plea for people to finally get serious about climate change, loss of biodiversity, and other environmental indicators that are passing irreversible global tipping points, all of them fed by the re

Church of Earthalujah in SF to raise the dead

Bill Talen, a performance artist from the Bay Area whose fire-and-brimstone sermonizing against shopping has annoyed captains of industry from coast to coast, is in San Francisco this week for another high calling — to bring back species killed off by climate change.

Talen, better known as the Rev. Billy, will lead his Church of Earthalujah, complete with rollicking choir, around the Bay Area for what he calls his “Extinction/Resurrection” campaign.

Reverend Billy: Is San Francisco Ready for Its 'Earthalujah' Moment?

Few souls are blessed with proper amounts of spunk and Earth-justice panache as Reverend Billy. And even fewer of them have the ability to spawn a successful tour that raises the level of awareness about the link between big banks and the eroding environment.

No 7-Eleven and Revenerd Billy in Tompkins Square Park

‘No 7-Eleven’ and Reverend Billy from The Church of Stop Shopping took to Tompkins Square Park yesterday to spread some Localujah! First there was the Community Wheel of Fortune [Video], a mash-up of sterile corporatization with entities like Stunkin’ Dobucks, Chase Blank, CVS Duane Raid, Denny McSubwhop and, of course, 7-Eleven. Kids from the neighborhood spun the wheel to convert these ubiquitous chain stores into neighborhood-friendly local businesses. They each won a new Stop 7-Eleven pin. Localujah! Then there were the plays!

Reverend Billy Roughed Up

“This is a fossil-centric doorbuster sale!” shouted “Reverend” Billy Talen to a throng of a thousand waiting to take advantage of Black Friday deals at a New York City Macy’s on November 23.

“Back away from the products, children. You don’t have to do it,” he continued while around a dozen members of the Stop Shopping Choir sang anti-consumerist songs in support behind him.

Apocalypse of the Mountain Top

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There are about 80 of us, Savitri and myself and an eclectic mixed up group of Europeans, South Americans and Russians.

First, we gather in the courtyard of Barcelona's Museum of Contemporary Art. Amen? Savitri announces that the name of our action is "Naked Grief," and that we will have to learn how to cry energetically -- with tears all the better! -- in public. We'll do this in Deutsche Bank -- a bank that finances CO2 emissions. As we sob and moan, we will remove our clothing. Then we will rub ourselves with coal and cry even harder.
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