Reverend Billy Occupies Wall Street

Posted by Reverend Billy Talen on @ 10:58 am

Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy

URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2011/10/07/reverend-billy-occupies-wall-street/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=alternet

WATCH: Anti-Consumerist Preacher Reverend Billy Talen serves up a fiery sermon against the global economic machine at the ongoing Occupy Wall Street demonstration in downtown Manhattan.

There’s a term for the present American system: “Totalizing.” That means that consumerism/militarism comes all the way across the landscape – into every nook and cranny. It kills all the smaller systems, like the neighborhood economies, the gift-economies. This system is self-propelled to come into the arts, into medicine, into libraries, into our intimacy – and into our children’s lives at the beginning of identity.

At the Occupation of Wall Street you really feel this. Liberty Plaza is a small park where we say we’re free of that system. The difference is so dramatic. We are starting a culture here – a way of life from scratch. It is clumsy and beautiful and frustrating. But no-one regrets being here and everyone knows what leaving this small island means. Go back into America and our freedom is portable, hidden near our hearts.

From his humble beginnings preaching outside the Disney Store in Times Square, Reverend Billy has spent the last decade toggling between community activism and theatrical spectacle. He even became the subject of "Supersize Me" director Morgan Spurlock's sophomore documentary, "What Would Jesus Buy?" A logical extension of his anti-consumerism gospel, Reverend Billy now tackles the growing environmental crisis with "The Church of Earthalujah!" Backed by a 35-voice gospel choir, Reverend Billy and The Church of Earthalujah transcends parody in favor of a passionate humanism that speaks to growing public anxiety in the face of the ever-growing climate emergency and impotent leadership from politicians, NGOs and corporate CEOs.