I didn’t become an activist as some sort of career choice. It was just a coming into consciousness about the global humanitarian and environmental disasters. I’m an activist because I have no choice.
The video of the pie throwing incident was posted on YouTube, and received close to 70,000 views in 36 hours, making it one of the most popular videos on the site. Without notice, YouTube abruptly censored the video, removing it from the website. Hundreds of news outlets, blogs, and websites had linked to the video.
There are hundreds of pie throwing videos still on YouTube, yet ours was taken down. It can only be called political censorship. Thomas Friedman is a billionaire. It was about image control.
I wouldn’t say I’m hiding out or “on the lam” because of the pie incident, but because of strong media attention and the fact the other student Margaree Little is involved in disciplinary procedures, for now I’m doing the media work in Colonel Custard character to keep the humorous aspect of it all.
Some people say what we did wasn’t humorous at all, but first of all, it was green Cool-Whip, and secondly, Thomas Friedman wasn’t hurt. There was never any intention to hurt him. What was hurt was his image and ego.
“Pieing” is usually used as a mechanism to curb abnormally large egos. When people say, “Oh, poor Thomas Friedman, he was so humiliated,” they should be reminded that his influential and continuous support of the war in Iraq and things like nuclear power, “clean” coal, carbon trading markets and other bogus “green” solutions to the climate crisis have caused countless suffering people, animals and habitats on the planet.
Compare his humiliation - which was minor and just interrupted his speech, making him feel upset - to that of families that are driven off their lands for industrial biofuel crops or people who have been murdered in Iraq. There’s really no comparison.
Thomas Friedman has blood on his hands. He’s a very widely known writer and there’s a strong element of power in people who have the ability to shape consciousness, opinion and events.
It’s almost funny that he’s thought of as a liberal because his words are blatantly racist, imperialist and disturbing to read. He expresses his support of the Iraq War using the exact same justifications as President Bush, saying it’s related to the terrorism of “those people over there,” who are irrational and don’t understand that they need a democracy.
Who Are The Greenwash Guerrillas?
The Greenwash Guerrillas [2] isn't necessarily an officially organized group at all. There’s no leadership or structure to it. What we are is a humorous political street theater movement to unmask ‘greenwashing,’ which is the act of misleading the public regarding environmental practices through dishonest attempts that appear beneficial to the planet.
Carbon trading is one of the central pieces to the greenwashing puzzle. Most fundamentally, it’s using capitalism to put a price on carbon. It’s privatizing the earth’s collective resources and carbon cycling capacity in the name of making corporations pay.
Pieing Thomas Friedman was just one way of exposing the privatization of our collective resources. On behalf of the earth and all true environmentalists, we declare Thomas Friedman’s ‘Green’ as fake as the Cool-Whip covering his face.
