Reverend Billy & Stop Shopping Choir to Kick Off New Campaign in Times Square Tomorrow

By: Apr. 16, 2014
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Reverend Billy & The Stop Shopping Choir, who first rose to international attention for their music-based challenge to consumerism, have turned their attention to big corporations' role in climate disruption. They take up the plight of the Honey Bee in their new campaign, HoneyBeeLujah!, which launches with an hour-long action this Thursday, April 17, in Times Square. The event will begin in front of the U.S. Armed Forces Times Square Recruiting Station at 6pm with the Reverend delivering the Choir's new manifesto. Then the activist-performers, adorned and accompanied by hundreds of Honey Bees handmade by Savitri D. and the Choir, will move throughout what Reverend Billy calls the "Stonehenge of Logos" at New York's most famous intersection.

The Times Square event is the first of numerous "swarmings" Reverend Billy and the Choir will conduct to raise awareness about the "Big Ag" complex of mono-culture farming. They will perform in and around the property of Monsanto and Bayer, Home Depot and Lowes-the corporations that drench the land with bee-killing pesticides and GMO crops-leading up to, and over the course of, the run of their HoneyBeeLujah Show May 4 - June 22 at Joe's Pub at The Public (425 Lafayette St, NYC).

The HoneyBeeLujah Show will run for eight consecutive Sundays at 2pm. Directed by Savitri D., with Music Director Nehemiah Luckett, the performances will feature the 40-member Stop Shopping Choir, fronted by their eco-televangelist, Reverend Billy, and accompanied by the five-piece Not Buying It Band. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at www.joespub.com or 212.967.7555.

the "Big Ag" complex of mono-culture farming and Reverend Billy says, "The Honey Bee is an indicator species, signaling wider troubles in the biosphere. Populations have plunged by nearly half. The bee's extinction, so vital to the human's food supply, suggests our own survival problems in the era of apocalyptic climate change." The Choir is especially concerned about the "Robobee," a drone-like pollinator device being designed to replace Honey Bees.

The upcoming Joe's Pub engagement follows the Choir's sold-out 2013 holiday season run at the prestigious venue, which, along with performances in bank lobbies and New York courts, decried lending institutions that are financing resource-extraction and are, by extension, responsible for climate destruction. With bees as their new inspiration, Reverend Billy's "post-religious" church joins a worldwide movement already in motion.

He explains, "Protests against the killers of our crucial pollinating collaborators are everywhere, from Perth to #10 Downing Street, and yet the effort to save the Honey Bee-now reduced worldwide by about half-is weak enough for Monsanto to continue its junk science assault on the beekeepers. Monsanto denies its pesticides are killing the bees and has even hosted a "Bee Health Summit." Meanwhile, they are trying to create a "Robobee"-to pollinate the crops with drones. This calls for some radical theatrics! Get ready to swarm!"

In their shows at Joe's Pub last November and December, and in non-violent bank lobby actions leading up to those performances, the singers inhabited the character of the Golden Toad, a small amphibian forced into extinction by extreme climate change in Central America in the late 80s. For one of these performances, at a JPMorgan Chase location on September 12, 2013, prosecutors demanded a year in prison and $30k bail for William Talen (aka Reverend Billy) and Nehemiah Luckett. The 15-minute performance earned criminal charges of "Riot," "Menacing" and "Unlawful Assembly." Those charges have been dropped, but the trial continues. The defendants are pleading innocent of all charges, including trespassing and unlawful assembly.The Choir's 2013 performances at Joe's Pub and in bank lobbies were part of a national tour, during which The Huffington Post wrote, "Few souls are blessed with proper amounts of spunk and Earth-justice panache as Reverend Billy. And even fewer of them have the ability to spawn a successful tour that raises the level of awareness about the link between big banks and the eroding environment. But leave it to this eclectic performing artist/preacher-so robust, so postmodern-Elvis-and his passionate posse to artfully descend upon the masses with something so distinctly one-of-a-kind."



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