05 Mar BLF Strikes Again!
I’ve always loved the Billboard Liberation Front’s unique brand of civil disobedience, but this time they’ve outdone themselves:
Here’s a snippet from the accompanying “Press Release”:
February 27, 2008
San Francisco, CAThe Billboard Liberation Front today announced a major new advertising improvement campaign executed on behalf of clients AT&T and the National Security Agency. Focusing on billboards in the San Francisco area, this improvement action is designed to promote and celebrate the innovative collaboration of these two global communications giants.
“This campaign is an extraordinary rendition of a public-private partnership,” observed BLF spokesperson Blank DeCoverly. “These two titans of telecom have a long and intimate relationship, dating back to the age of the telegraph. In these dark days of Terrorism, that should be a comfort to every law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide.”
AT&T initially downplayed its heroic efforts in the War on Terror, preferring to serve in silence behind the scenes. “But then we realized we had a PR win on our hands,” noted AT&T V.P. of Homeland Security James Croppy. “Not only were we helping NSA cut through the cumbersome red tape of the FISA system, we were also helping our customers by handing over their e-mails and phone records to the government. Modern life is so hectic – who has time to cc the feds on every message? It’s a great example of how we anticipate our customers’ needs and act on them. And, it should be pointed out, we offered this service free of charge.”
Commenting on the action, and responding to questions about pending privacy litigation and the stalled Congressional effort to shield the telecoms from these lawsuits, NSA spokesperson [REDACTED] remarked: “[REDACTED] we [REDACTED] condone [REDACTED] warrantless [REDACTED], [REDACTED] SIGINT intercepts, [REDACTED] torture [REDACTED] information retrieval by [REDACTED] means necessary.”
Priceless.
I’m not concerned about AT&T handing over my conversations to the NSA.
Primarily because I haven’t been able to finish one in a months thanks to AT&T’s terrible 3G service in Dallas.
Vandalizing someone else’s billboard is not “civil disobedience”. It is censorship.
Help me understand how a challenge of this kind to take commercial speech and turn it into political speech against the police state is censorship? The BLF’s effort seems so minuscule and impotent as compared to AT+T and NSA that I just find it hard to even fit this in a word like censorship.
Best,
Ben
It is not censorship–it is a thoroughly deserved, really funny, spot on, nonviolent prank. If AT&T and its defenders start whining about “censorship”, they will lose the rest of what little public sympathy they have left.
Of course, that may not make any difference: five months ago the headlines read “Obama and Clinton support Telecom Immunity Filibuster” and yet the Senate easily passed the immunity bill.
The struggle of the Rule of Law versus the Golden Rule (that “them with the gold makes the rules”) isn’t turning out so well.
Like most anti-war protests — it’s juvenile, mildly amusing, destructive of someone else’s property, and will do nothing to solve either war or the problems that often give rise to war.
Maybe BLF can invest in pipe bombs for Marines. I’m sure their next campaign will come out against anti-war bombings of military recruiting offices. Pathetic.
And it isn’t censorship it’s vandalism. Civil disobedience is ignoring an order or law — a la MLK, Jr. or Ghandi. BLF are property criminals. It’s minor granted, but BLF “ain’t” MLK or Ghandi or Thoreau.
Troy, On the contrary, I think Thoreau would have loved BLF. Here’s two paragraphs on his politics form the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Thoreau was an activist involved in the abolitionist movement on many fronts: he participated in the Underground Railroad, protested against the Fugitive Slave Law, and gave support to John Brown and his party. Most importantly, he provides a justification for principled revolt and a method of nonviolent resistance, both of which would have a considerable influence on revolutionary movements in the twentieth century. In his essay on “Civil Disobedience,” originally published as “Resistance to Civil Government,” he defends the validity of conscientious objection to unjust laws, which ought to be transgressed at once. Although at times it sounds as if Thoreau is advocating anarchy, what he demands is a better government, and what he refuses to acknowledge is the authority of one that has become so morally corrupt as to lose the consent of those governed. “There will never be a really free and enlightened State,” he argues, “until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly” (“Civil… Read more »
Incidentally, it’s Gandhi, not “Ghandi.”
As Gene Sharp has meticulously documented and discussed in several books (e.g., The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part Two: The Methods of Nonviolent Action [1973] and Part Three: The Dynamics of Nonviolent Action [1973]), there are myriad forms of nonviolent social protest and civil disobedience. Indeed, the conditions Gandhi himself set for civil disobedience were quite stringent and owed not a little to his religious beliefs and moral values, some or all of which others might not share. In these cases it is unreasonable to expect such individuals or groups to abide by the standards and strictures of Gandhian civil disobedience.
And I think it’s refreshing to see imagination and creativity stimulate the tactics and methods of political protest.
I went a bridge too far with Thoreau as a back-up , but I stand by my opinion of the BLF? I forgot a proto-Communist would disavow private property (it’s been awhile since I read Walden, etc.)
“Gandhi it is.” So if the BLF is prosecuted for vandalism or whatever then there’s no protest right? They did violate the law so punishment is the price of their convictions right? If they were to actually suffer for their cause I might respect them more. Since there is a bit of a moral relativism to your Gandhian civil disobedience where do you draw the line? Is gang-tagging OK? How about in your neighborhood? I know your ideals sound nice in the abstract, but when I see you supporting such behavior (not the message, but the method) on behalf of causes with which you disagree they’ll be more persuasive. I don’t know y’all personally of course, so you may be 100% or mostly consistent in celebrating civil disobedience. I hope so.
Speaking for myself, I have no objections whatsoever to prosecuting the BLF for violating the law, as that is, indeed, one consequence of putting their convictions into practice by the method(s) they’ve chosen. (I don’t understand what you mean by ‘moral relativism’ here.) When a member of the Abalone Alliance in California protesting the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant some years ago, I argued against those planning actions of “civil disobedience” that involved a legal strategy of pleading a defense of “necessity,” in effect, avoiding a guilty plea for clear violation(s) of the law (I also didn’t think, in any case, their actions met the legal standard of ‘necessity,’ although that was not the reason for my opposition). I understood their argument (many of those who planned to do this were close friends), but I thought it subverted much of value in “principled” civil disobedience and would set a dangerous precedent (which, in fact, I think it did). Having been a member of several organizations and movements “on the Left” over the years, I can assure you that there are individuals who think carefully about engaging in civil disobedience (if only because no one, truly, wants to go to jail,… Read more »
By the way, readers of this thread may be interested in a discussion some time ago held at the (now defunct) Law & Society Blog on civil disobedience: http://www.lawsocietyblog.com/archives/288
I had planned to post a more thoughtful exploration of the issues broached but never got around to it, in part, because it would have been too long and complicated (at least so I told myself) for a blog.
It is nice to see Major ___ de Coverly has found work since mustering out as Squadron Executive Officer on Pianosa.