Just Say 'Yes' to Creative Activism

By Nick Cunkelman '11 and Hannah DeAngelis '12

Two years ago, the Yes Men got themselves invited as keynote speakers to Go-EXPO, Canada’s largest oil conference. Posing as representatives of Exxon-Mobil and the National Petroleum Council, Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum introduced a new biofuel, made from the human victims of climate change, and they called it Vivoleum. While showing a video about the first victim, a loyal Exxon-Mobil janitor (actually a comedian friend of theirs) they passed out biofuel candles to all those in attendance.

“There’s a priceless look on the audience’s face when they realize they’re holding this dead person in a candle,” said Bonanno.

This stunt is one of many. The Yes Men have (mis)represented the Dow Chemical Company on BBC news, spoken for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development along with the mayor of New Orleans, and presented their vision of Halliburton’s latest survival technology at an insurance conference. But these alternative personas aren’t just for fun.

The dynamic duo poses as high-level corporate executives or government officials, staging hoaxes to expose what they say are the unethical, profit-maximizing practices of the very organizations they pretend to represent. On October 27, Bonanno spoke at Colby about their recent work and to promote their new movie, The Yes Men Change the World, which was screened later that evening at the Railroad Square Cinema in Waterville.

Their brand of social activism is unconventional to say the least—“mischief that exposes truth,” Bonnano calls it. “If you want to be taken seriously, you have to make people think you have a lot of money,” he said.

In the Yes Men’s latest stunt, Bichlbaum posed as a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official in front of journalists at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and announced that the chamber would support an across-the-board carbon tax—a radical step beyond current cap-and-trade proposals that the chamber opposes—in order to satirize what he calls the chamber’s traditionally eco-unfriendly practices.

“The debate on climate change has been created by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,” Bonanno told students. “The reason we [as a society] haven’t done anything [to address climate change] is because there is lobbying and fake grassroots campaigns saying that climate change is not happening. It’s like trading a bit of short-term profit for, essentially, the future.”

The chamber took the Yes Men’s attack seriously. The night the pair was scheduled to speak at Colby and Railroad Square, they received word that the chamber was suing the comedy group on the grounds that the Yes Men used its trademark to make money.

Bichlbaum went to deal with the lawsuit and Bonanno introduced the film at Railroad Square to an overflowing crowd of community members, Colby students, and faculty.

“That film was remarkable,” said Bob Ingalls, a frequent Railroad Square visitor from Mt. Vernon, Maine, said afterwards. “Now that was good work.”

• Academics