An e-mail to the Youth Communist League from me (chefan17@gmail.com).

Hello, I'm Bill Louis from the progressives against progress (http://www.progressivesagainstprogress.com/). We believe that any progress brought about by corporations can never be helpful in the end, and should be stomped out, and were wondering if you would like to join us in some of our campaigns.

 read more »

An e-mail to the Youth Communist League from me (chefan17@gmail.com).

Hello, I'm Bill Louis from the progressives against progress (http://www.progressivesagainstprogress.com/). We believe that any progress brought about by corporations can never be helpful in the end, and should be stomped out, and were wondering if you would like to join us in some of our campaigns.

 read more »

Progressives Against Progress – Report from
the 2004 Green Party Nat’l Convention:

We arrived at the convention at 8am to set up our table. After dealing with some confusion about exactly where we were supposed to be, we were told by convention directors to pick any empty table near the other issue groups. We initially chose a table along the back wall near the still-empty LP booth (as suggested by the director’s pointing us in that direction), but decided to take a chance, play dumb, and move to an empty spot adjacent to the entrance to the main meeting room - right next to the Ralph Nader campaign table. Nobody questioned our decision, which was rewarded with increased attention by the conference attendees, passing by us on the way into & out of the meetings.

Our mission for the day was to out progressive the progressives, with outrageous proposals for regulation & redistribution, based firmly in their own socialist philosophy. We would judge our success by seeing how many of the convention attendees we could get to sign our “petitions” for such measures, even as we explained them into absurdity.

We came prepared to promote our stated views on three issues, passing out flyers to the (disappointingly small) crowd, and distributing “Progressives Against Progress” press releases to the reporters on-hand.

The response to our charade was unbelievable, to the point of being downright scary at times. On several occasions, I had to step away from the table in awe, unable to believe that people were actually agreeing with the nonsense that I was spouting in support of our absurd proposals. Some agreed enthusiastically with our assertion that putting an end to for-profit farming (and thus substantially reducing the supply of affordable foods) would do wonderful things to help solve the epidemic of obesity now plaguing our great nation. Others thought the idea of “democratizing” the internet by allowing the voting majority to decide which sites did or did not deserve to make use of bandwidth, that newest of limited, precious public resources. Reaction was mixed however, to our proposal that the precautionary principle should be applied to government’s new legislative measures and social welfare plans; and not just to businesses in the biotech industry.

The Progressives...’s proposals didn’t receive the first hint of disagreement until we decided to take things a step further, and start distributing our “Nominate Castro for President” flyers to the crowds of delegates, preparing to cast the first ballot for the party’s nomination. Getting into the meeting required a bit of improvisation on my part, in order to distract the security personnel while the remaining Players snuck past; but in the end, it wasn’t too difficult a task to perform. ‘Crashers distributed the flyers to the entire delegation, asking people sitting at the end of each row in the room to take one and pass the rest down, before disappearing from the room as mysteriously as they had arrived.

Our drastic actions were cause for concern among some of the delegates, but others were clearly intrigued by the idea. One gentleman, upon seeing the Castro flyers on our table, said that he didn’t think nominating him was “realistic”, but rejoiced in the idea of recognizing his accomplishments. He explained, “something truly wonderful is happening here,” after which he started doing this little dance thing, and singing “Guantanamera”. Another delegate approached our table, and told us that he would definitely consider voting Castro on the next ballot. (Interestingly, the way voting during the allegedly “pro-democracy” green party convention was arranged, votes for candidates not on the officially-qualified list were not counted, and instead were removed from the total number needed to win a majority; we’ll never know whether he kept to his word).

By late afternoon, it was becoming clear that nothing we could say would be enough to make the Greens so much as flinch at our ideas, so we decided to blow our own cover. As the delegates returned from their afternoon break, ‘crashers presented them with copies of our “Anti-Globalization Pop Quiz,” which was designed to address one of the major concerns of Green Party politics being discussed at the convention. I didn’t think the “quizzes” were unclear in the message they conveyed, though the confused looks on the faces of people reading them tended to suggest otherwise. Signs of comprehension began to show, as people finally started to make the connection.

Satisfied with our performance, the Progressives Against Progress packed up their props and prepared to make an exit. Of course, no show would be complete without a grand finale, and this one was no exception. While crashers Amber & sh(A)ne once again snuck into the delegates section of the meeting room, and distributed copies of the “you’ve been crashed” press releases to the crowds of media representatives (some of whom got really upset with us, and one even threw one of the press releases back at Amber. So much for un-biased reporters!); the remaining ‘crashers amended the Nader campaign sign hanging above the convention entrance to read “Darth Nader 2004…you’ve been Crashed!”, including a link to the Bureaucrash website.

;)

Author’s note: I received a call in response to the “You’ve been crashed” press release while I was on the way out the front door of the convention. I ended up giving an interview to a reporter from Liberty Magazine who was there covering the event. Since the issue is now out-of-print, I’ve been given permission to link to it here.

Progressives Against Progress – Report from
the 2004 Green Party Nat’l Convention:

We arrived at the convention at 8am to set up our table. After dealing with some confusion about exactly where we were supposed to be, we were told by convention directors to pick any empty table near the other issue groups. We initially chose a table along the back wall near the still-empty LP booth (as suggested by the director’s pointing us in that direction), but decided to take a chance, play dumb, and move to an empty spot adjacent to the entrance to the main meeting room - right next to the Ralph Nader campaign table. Nobody questioned our decision, which was rewarded with increased attention by the conference attendees, passing by us on the way into & out of the meetings.

Our mission for the day was to out progressive the progressives, with outrageous proposals for regulation & redistribution, based firmly in their own socialist philosophy. We would judge our success by seeing how many of the convention attendees we could get to sign our “petitions” for such measures, even as we explained them into absurdity.

We came prepared to promote our stated views on three issues, passing out flyers to the (disappointingly small) crowd, and distributing “Progressives Against Progress” press releases to the reporters on-hand.

The response to our charade was unbelievable, to the point of being downright scary at times. On several occasions, I had to step away from the table in awe, unable to believe that people were actually agreeing with the nonsense that I was spouting in support of our absurd proposals. Some agreed enthusiastically with our assertion that putting an end to for-profit farming (and thus substantially reducing the supply of affordable foods) would do wonderful things to help solve the epidemic of obesity now plaguing our great nation. Others thought the idea of “democratizing” the internet by allowing the voting majority to decide which sites did or did not deserve to make use of bandwidth, that newest of limited, precious public resources. Reaction was mixed however, to our proposal that the precautionary principle should be applied to government’s new legislative measures and social welfare plans; and not just to businesses in the biotech industry.

The Progressives...’s proposals didn’t receive the first hint of disagreement until we decided to take things a step further, and start distributing our “Nominate Castro for President” flyers to the crowds of delegates, preparing to cast the first ballot for the party’s nomination. Getting into the meeting required a bit of improvisation on my part, in order to distract the security personnel while the remaining Players snuck past; but in the end, it wasn’t too difficult a task to perform. ‘Crashers distributed the flyers to the entire delegation, asking people sitting at the end of each row in the room to take one and pass the rest down, before disappearing from the room as mysteriously as they had arrived.

Our drastic actions were cause for concern among some of the delegates, but others were clearly intrigued by the idea. One gentleman, upon seeing the Castro flyers on our table, said that he didn’t think nominating him was “realistic”, but rejoiced in the idea of recognizing his accomplishments. He explained, “something truly wonderful is happening here,” after which he started doing this little dance thing, and singing “Guantanamera”. Another delegate approached our table, and told us that he would definitely consider voting Castro on the next ballot. (Interestingly, the way voting during the allegedly “pro-democracy” green party convention was arranged, votes for candidates not on the officially-qualified list were not counted, and instead were removed from the total number needed to win a majority; we’ll never know whether he kept to his word).

By late afternoon, it was becoming clear that nothing we could say would be enough to make the Greens so much as flinch at our ideas, so we decided to blow our own cover. As the delegates returned from their afternoon break, ‘crashers presented them with copies of our “Anti-Globalization Pop Quiz,” which was designed to address one of the major concerns of Green Party politics being discussed at the convention. I didn’t think the “quizzes” were unclear in the message they conveyed, though the confused looks on the faces of people reading them tended to suggest otherwise. Signs of comprehension began to show, as people finally started to make the connection.

Satisfied with our performance, the Progressives Against Progress packed up their props and prepared to make an exit. Of course, no show would be complete without a grand finale, and this one was no exception. While crashers Amber & sh(A)ne once again snuck into the delegates section of the meeting room, and distributed copies of the “you’ve been crashed” press releases to the crowds of media representatives (some of whom got really upset with us, and one even threw one of the press releases back at Amber. So much for un-biased reporters!); the remaining ‘crashers amended the Nader campaign sign hanging above the convention entrance to read “Darth Nader 2004…you’ve been Crashed!”, including a link to the Bureaucrash website.

;)

Author’s note: I received a call in response to the “You’ve been crashed” press release while I was on the way out the front door of the convention. I ended up giving an interview to a reporter from Liberty Magazine who was there covering the event. Since the issue is now out-of-print, I’ve been given permission to link to it here.