Rev. Billy runs for mayor of NYCBy Steven T. Jones
Billy Talen was an activist and performance artist living in San Francisco in the early ‘90s when he became Reverend Billy, the charismatic founder and pastor of the Church of Stop Shopping. “We were always looking for ways to highlight the politics of our time,” Talen said. “One of the ideas we had was to appropriate the right-wing icon.”
Talen, his alter ego, and his flock have evolved over the years: moving to New York City in 1996 to preach the evils of rampant consumerism from the streets of Times Square, transformed by 9/11 into something like a real church, attending Burning Man in 2003 and developing an important relationship with that community, performing around the world, making the excellent film “What Would Jesus Buy?”, and this year renaming themselves the Church of Life After Shopping to better capture the redemptive nature of their calling.
But last month, Rev. Billy took an even larger leap of faith, announcing his Green Party candidacy for mayor of New York City. He will run against Mayor Michael Bloomberg the man, but also Michael Bloomberg the Wall Street made billionaire, as potent a symbol of the capitalism ethos and excesses as any in the country.
The Guardian caught up with Talen yesterday at his campaign office in SoHo (a neighborhood where he also lived until being driven to Brooklyn by rapidly rising rents) for a long conversation about a campaign that seems to highlight the most pressing issues of these turbulent times. We’ll post excerpts from that interview, and regularly check in with the unfolding campaign, periodically between now and November.
In other words…to be continued.
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Comments (1)
You think he's crazy now !!!
I hung with Young William back in his even wilder oat-sowing Eureka days and wasted nights.
Old thespians never die, we just learn how to improvise, and fake it when all else fails.
Now he's running for office.
I always knew that boy would come to a bad end.
"You are old Father William", the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head -
Do you think, at your age, that is right?"
"In my youth", Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain:
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again".
Keep on doin' it Brother Billy.
Posted by Patrick Monk. RN. | April 24, 2009 08:12 PM