Reverend Billy TV Show with the Stop Shopping Choir

A rolling revival and talk show to OCCUPY sites across the world.

This fundraising will create video footage available to all OCCUPY media centers to maximize connection between the sites of this movement.  The footage will also be developed for nonprofit and commercial cable 28 minute television pilot.  Funding permitting we will purchase cable TV time for broadcasts, expanding the message of the OCCUPY movement.  Any income will be used to increase our touring to the most isolated OCCUPY destinations.

Content:  Each OCCUPY setting has its own culture, crazies and talent - and lots of videogenic activists!  We will cultivate in the shows' content the tradition of local first.  

Many forms:  In addition to Made-for-TV and the Net, this could add up to a documentary.  It will be useable in all modern media platforms (the Stop Shopping Church's fame has as much to do with the thousand Youtubes made by volunteers than the film "What Would Jesus Buy?")

Reverend Billy flew to London recently to host a simulcast between the Wall Street and St. Paul's communities.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE6ouF0-NO0

The Impact

The movement sweeping the world is a welcome one for our group of performance-activists.  We've faced arrest in bank lobbies opposing mountaintop removal coal mining, fore-closures and super mall development in UBS, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Deutschbank, HSBC, and Royal Bank Scotland. 

A recent arrest at Goldman Sachs with the writer Christopher Hedges and 14 Occupy Wall Str activists continued this pattern of bank dramas.  Coverage in 2011 includes PBS, Al Jazeera English, the New Yorker and NY Times, Associated Press and The Nation.

The Stop Shopping Choir and the rev have remained timely in the changing culture, ready on the first day of OCCUPY in New York.  The Reverend's Sept. 17th opening day sermon has 30,000 views.  The Stop Shopping Choir's anthem "We are the 99% (As we gather together)" is approaching 60,000 views as of this writing.  The words of this wonderful song come from the "Declaration of the Occupation."

http://www.revbilly.com/work/music/songs/we-are-the-99

This song will welcome OCCUPY communities to connect with one another in a way that this inter-faith church can offer.  The "church" is not fundamentalist nor Christian, but fronted by the televangelist Reverend Billy.  This group has many faith backgrounds, including singers with ethnic ancestry from India, Japan, Africa, South America and Europe -  an immigrant choir from New York.

Connecting

As the OCCUPY movement - the 99% of us - overwhelm the big banks and corporations - the OCCUPY people laying claim to the new vision in their respective public squares - must be in closer contact.  We are just now, at the time of this writing, creating our database, and contact among the 2000 sites has begun.  This revival tour will go beyond the computer.  The Occupy folks need compassionate, singing, human contact,