07. April Fool
Here's something I've never really told anyone about: the time I played Bill Gates in a protest theater piece, staged on the plaza surrounding the Gates Foundation in Seattle.
This was back in 2021, part of a global protest against the UN Food Systems Summit.
“You come. You buy the land. You make a plan. You build a house. Now you ask me, what color do I want to paint the kitchen? This is not participation!” – Simon Mwamba, East African Small-Scale Farmers’ Federation at a forum on AGRA
I have some activist friends who do work for food sovereignty with Seattle's Community Alliance for Global Justice and they invited me to the build-out day at a Beacon Hill church that hosts CAGJ's office and a bunch of lefty events. We were mostly making props for the little play, and signs for the protest. They had an oversized, Donkey Kong-proportioned print out of Bill Gates's face, and I cut it out and glued to cardboard, and I did the lettering for a bunch of small signs.
Then they needed somebody to play Bill Gates in the play, and that's when I decided to participate in the theater the next day. We rehearsed a bit at the church. My Gates character only had one line, and I didn't even have to show my face, so overall it was a low-stress gig.
The day of the event I arrived punctually to help set up. Gates Foundation security were polite; firm about our staying outside a particular perimeter. I realized they must get protestors here basically every day. Even on this overcast summer day we were not the only people bringing our message to the Gates Foundation building. I spotted somebody driving back and forth in front of the plaza in a beat-up Prius covered, doors and all, in hand-painted signs about COVID vaccines, plus other alt-right/libertarian/Infowars stickers. I believe they had a fixed mount for a megaphone on their roof, which they used while holding the microphone too close to their face.
We both wanted to give the Gates Foundation a piece of our mind, just for very different reasons. I had heard of the right-wing paranoia about the Gates Foundation, but it had no evident connection with the left-wing critique I was performing in. The enemy of our enemy is certainly not our friend in this case.
The Infowars Prius pulled into a driveway next to where we had set up, and I tried to think of how to engage with him if we had to share the space. His banner concerns seem laughable, but we had our own complaints about Gates Foundation's vaccine involvement: how they opposed a patent waiver to make vaccines accessible to poor countries (later changing their stance after they lost the fight). Given that Prius/Infowars guy was scaremongering about the vaccine having nefarious hidden motives, we probably wouldn't find common ground there.
The pickup line I had ready was: “One thing we can agree on is that we both hate NAFTA, and the reasons aren't as different as we may think.” But in the end, Infowars Prius guy only paused briefly, driving off when he realized we were all going to be there for a while.
Eventually we had everything set up, and enough people present to get started, and here is what we made together. If I have ever seen this video it was just once in 2021, so it was fun and hilarious to watch again.
I'm proud of my vernacular lettering on the signs, especially "Goodbye Philanthro-Capitalism". Let me know if you want to buy a "Goodbye Philanthro-Capitalism" t-shirt/tote. Maybe I can burn a silkscreen and print it on things, like some DIY bands do at concerts. A non-commodity, tangible radiation of creative and activist energy.
For more on Philanthro-Capitalism, see: - CAGJ's Rich Appetites shorts - Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
The half-moon was 21 hours ago, so this is my first newsletter to go out late! But if I had forced it out sooner I think it would have been pretty boring.
Expect the next one April 15 at 12:13PM Pacific... or thereabouts.
Love,
Orión