With all of the somewhat-depressing news coming out of the circles of media reform these days, I was heartened to see the announcement that the Yes Men are hard at work to spread their extra-special brand of media pranksterism; the work of identity-correction.
Announcing the Yes Lab for Creative Activism: “a series of brainstorms and trainings to help activist groups carry out Yes-Men-style projects on their own.”
According to the site:
In a typical Yes Lab project, an activist organization will come to the Yes Lab with a target—e.g. Monsanto, or war profiteers, or one of those “too big to fail” banks, or greedy health insurance companies, or a bad government policy—as well as a goal: to affect public debate, push for legislation, embarrass an evildoer, etc. Depending on ability, they will pay a fee to help the Yes Lab keep going. We’ll work with the group to develop the smartest, most effective plan to accomplish it. We’ll help assemble the team from within the group as well as our mailing list, we’ll train folks as necessary, and we’ll check in on the project until it’s successful.
So, if you’ve ever thought, “damn, wouldn’t it be cool to be a Yes Man,” put yr money where yr mouth is, and they’ll help you. The Lab is just in its pilot stages now – The Yes Men would like to raise $50,000 in seed money to help expand its activist meme, and are giving away some pretty enticing goodies to get to that goal. So far, they’re one-fifth of the way there.
It’s a target-rich environment these days for media activism, and the Yes Men have proven tactics. It’ll be interesting to see if this catches on; I sure hope it does.
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