The Light Brigades are taking messages to the bridges with new letters and new field-ready light boxes for graphics and logos. We have 24 active chapters around the country now!
Join our big national rollout of coordinated actions targeting corporate tax evaders during the week leading up to Tax Day. This is a national project involving artists, game designers, researchers, protest groups, grassroots organizations and concerned citizens.
The Projection Action Network is on board, and groups such as NYC's Illuminator (yes, they have their van back!) and Baltimore's Luminous Intervention will be shining on in asynchronous collaboration tonight. Seattle's ever-impressive Backbone Campaign is kicking in multi-level street actions, and with US Uncut, The Other 98% and some OWS social media folks onboard, we have some massive momentum.
Oh, and did I mention the Tax Evaders video game? Today the people blast back against the oligarchs. It might not change entrenched policy, but it is certainly cathartic! Game On!
Last night there were actions all around the country, from Milwaukee to Tampa, Brooklyn to Seattle. In NYC, the Occupy Wall Street Light Brigade made its debut (they need more holders of the light, so get in touch if you wanna participate), and The Illuminator became a mobile gaming station, helping to fight the Tax Evaders in urban space.
The Overpass Light Brigade has already been going out, in spite of some of the shittiest weather this side of the Netherlands. The other night we took out our new portable lightbox for the ongoing time-lapse filming of our actions that is part of a larger documentary project. The footage is stunning, and our volunteers are amazing to put up with crazy demands and stage directions for three and a half hours on the freezing freeway. The new lightbox worked out really well, especially for close-up photos, and allows us to add logos and images to our visual vocabulary.
Join us in action! Do something, anything, that expresses your disgust at the way corporations now rule this country while doing as little as possible to support the very fabric of society. We're simply tired of austerity politics while corporations rig the game and game the system. We're tired of Democratic presidents who run on promises to watch out of the little guy and protect the middle class, and then offer up Social Security on the Altar of Austerity. We're tired of extremist Republican legislators who know only the logic of profit and greed. We're tired of the legal games of offshoring, of dodging, of evasion, while our schools get shuttered and our kids go hungry. We're disgusted that Exxon has 42 tax havens, Bank of America has 371, GE has at least 104. We find it unfair that Wells Fargo pays a -1.4% tax rate, or that Pfizer holds $73 billion in offshore non taxed liquid assets and has 80 tax havens, while oil leaks into backyards, economies collapse around Wall Street avarice, and normal people can't afford prescribed pills and medical treatments.
If indeed "Corporations are People, my friend!" as Mitt Romney boldly asserted while huffing the tailwinds of Citizens United, then we should probably be finding our own havens, our ports in the gathering storm, our offshore protection of the privilege to protest. My haven is found in creative resistance. Where is yours?
Tax Evaders: Game Over!
We'd like thank our allies:
Citizen Engagement Lab, The Other 98%, US Uncut, The Yes Lab, The Overpass Light Brigades, Americans for Tax Fairness, Public Research Interest Group, Occupy Wall St, and the countless concerned citizens who join us on the bridges and in the streets.
A version of this article was originally published in DailyKos.