Our modern-day Jokers have struck again. In their customarily fearless fashion, The Yes Men pulled a prank the other day on the City of New Orleans, just in time for the one-year anniversary of Katrina. But in the classic Yes Men twist, the joke, of course, is really on the power players themselves, namely Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who were sharing the stage with who they thought was a HUD official there to save their city from itself. Oops. Sadly, the joke is also on residents still hoping for a helping hand in the wake of massive human-caused devastation in their community.
Let me back up.
The Yes Men are a group of political activists who practice "identity correctness," or as we might call it, "impersonating the dark side in order to make a good political point." According to Wikipedia:
Their method is often satire: posing as corporate or government spokespeople, they might make shocking denigrating comments about workers and consumers, only to discover that instead of shock or anger, their prank is received enthusiastically, with no one realizing the reactionary rhetoric was only a joke. Sometimes, the Yes Men's phony spokesperson makes annoucements that represent dream scenarios for the anti-globalization movement or opponents of corporate crime. The result is false news reports of the demise of the WTO, or Dow paying for a Union Carbide cleanup.
The Yes Men have posed as spokespeople for The World Trade Organization, McDonald's, Dow Chemical, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The two leading members of The Yes Men are known by a number of aliases, most recently, and in film, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno.
Their experiences were documented in the film The Yes Men, distributed by United Artists, as well as the book The Yes Men: The True Story of the End of the World Trade Organization (ISBN 0-9729529-9-3).
Here's what went down on Monday, according to Amy Goodman.Speaking before a thousand construction-industry members at a privately-organized conference in Louisiana, Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin both introduced what appeared to be a HUD official. That supposed senior HUD official, Rene Oswin, was actually Andy Bichlbaum - a member of the political pranksters group The Yes Men.
Posing as Oswin, Bichlbaum went on to announce grandiose plans for HUD to reverse course in New Orleans such as: scrapping plans to demolish 5,000 housing units, spending $180 million dollars to fund one public health clinic per housing development, having Wal-Mart withdraw its stores from poor neighborhoods and having energy giants Exxon and Shell spend $8.6 billion dollars to finance wetlands rebuilding.
Did you catch that? The HUD "announcement" amounted to nothing less than a revolution for our urban areas, local businesses, and the legacy of Katrina. The Yes Men's "new direction" for HUD - which you really should read in detail, because it's brilliant - includes:1. Let People Come Home. "Until last week, our M.O. here at HUD was to tear down public housing whenever we could... We were wrong. We will not make this error again. This afternoon, we will reopen all housing projects in New Orleans and allow these Americans to be part of their city again."
2. Create Opportunity. "We're first going to stop the flow of money out of these communities. You know something's wrong when local earnings of poor folks end up in pockets of Wal-Mart shareholders in Manhattan. After extensive discussions, Wal-Mart and three other chains have agreed to withdraw from areas near low-income New Orleans neighborhoods and to help nurture local businesses to replace them. Legislation under study at state and federal levels will make sure this sticks."
3. Provide Basic Services. "In partnership with health departments and the CDC, and with your help, we will ensure there is at least one well-equipped public health clinic for every public housing development. We have 180 million dollars to make sure they're the best.... As for education, we all know that government education just isn't up to snuff. But why? It's because government schools are dependent on local taxes; when an area is underpriviledged, its schools have no money. That's why we at HUD are teaming up with the Department of Education to create a national tax base for schools."
4. Fix the Environment. "I am pleased to announce that Exxon and Shell have agreed to finance the rebuilding of the protective wetlands from part of their 60 billion dollars in profits this year."
How amusing - and how sad - that the most innovative recommendation in the wake of Katrina is, in fact, a joke. Why should an announcement bringing recommendations to rebuild local economies, give people their homes back, and protect the real health of its people have to be a prank? Have we sunk so low that anything innovative is absolutely impossible to achieve? In a neighborhood like New Orleans' Ninth Ward - where only 1,000 people out of 20,000 former residents have moved back, while money is pouring into richer, whiter neighborhoods - must some sense of salvation come only in the form of someone pointing out that no one's saving them at all?Oh, and it seems that the crowd - remember those 1,000 construction contractors gathered to hear the announcement? - agree.
"I'm not angry at them for pulling this joke," said one New Orleans contractor, "I'm angry that it is not for real."
Shame on us all that it's not.
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