BOOK REVIEW: THE REVEREND BILLY PROJECT

Perhaps prophetic, then, was the summer release of radical activist and actor Reverend Billy Talen’s latest book, The Reverend Billy Project (Michigan, 2011). Written in collaboration with both the Project’s artistic director and Talen’s spouse Savitri D. and journalist Alisa Solomon, the book is a series of reflections, journal-like entries and commentaries. But it also is a field guide to his Project’s work thus far, as much as it is an insight to the Project’s intentions and tactics. Using reflections as a starting point — and abutting each with explanations of how a certain action progressed — the writers embrace the reader’s emotions and intellect. Most importantly, by informing readers of the Project, it also functions to inform the revolt at hand.

Talen’s churches most notably define the Project, as Solomon dubs his activist and artistic venture in her editor’s notes. Presently performing as the Church of Earthalujah, and formerly known as the Church of Stop-Shopping and the Church of Life After Shopping, these experiments in social movements test the boundaries of activism. You could say he inspired the Occupy movement. Because, like the Occupy activists, Talen believes that the First Amendment gives him the right to protest – that permits need not apply. This is nothing new to Talen, who has spent the past 15 years performing as a post-theological street preacher decrying, among other things, consumerism, gentrification, and shopping, all without a permit. And like the Occupy activists in New York, who are encamped in the privately owned Zuccotti Park, Talen and the Project also extend their activism to private property, where permits rarely, if ever, apply.

If the US government works in favor of the one percent — and their interests — then the Project knows it firsthand. Take their encounter with the California Starbucks in April of 2004. A suburban California outlet of the well-known, corporate coffee shop chain became the scene for one of the Project’s public performances — leading to the exorcism of a cash register — and resulted in Talen’s trial-by-jury. Talen was found guilty by the jury for “sanctifying the cash register” — a misdemeanor in the state of California — and sentenced to three days in a Los Angeles jail. He also, by order, still cannot be within a certain distance of any Starbucks cash register in California. And why? Because his performance art and activism were viewed as a disruption of commerce by the court.

Just as Occupy activists are criticized for their tactics and vague message, so, too, were Talen and the Project in this case. As the articulate and eloquent Savitri points out, “the DA and the judge made it very difficult to talk about context, to discuss the meaning of what we were doing, the purpose.” That the court and jury misunderstood Talen is no surprise. (After all, who sanctifies a cash register to make a point about consumerism and fair trade products but anarchists and criminals, anyway?) But Savitri addresses the other point of Occupy, which is to ask: where is activism in the public square going in the twenty-first century?

Taken from the website: New.Clear.Vision