in some of the activity even going on but talk a little bit about the your your your your congregation and your your mission your will be in the you know we do in the church of stop shopping you know as we go into the times square you're coming for a rover ochs and our basic objection to two what has happened in times square in the last few years ago is that everyone's becoming tourists that happening from a couple different angles yeah one is that the people native to the culture for do so yeah are being harassed by police and retailers and so forth and they're just getting you know the the native stupid sidewalk culture is just it's just being blown away the the times square disney store to finish a little vignette yes and what we do is we we become tourists ourselves apparently in the eyes of the disney security is the ant which you know there are like no way to be over what is no way to prove whether they've increased their security staff as a result of the church of stop shopping yeah we know we flatter ourselves that that in the increase there was a time when there there seemed to be this sort of but what we what we do is essentially we try to make shoppers converse about what they're doing yeah or become involved in our tourist farces i see we have many different we've been doing this for almost a year now we're not any different strategies we will we will have marriage spats yeah with the people in the congregation will pretend to be husband and wife and they will have an argument and the argument will be across the bow of when you are a tourist standing that hypnosis yeah it's that stage they have for one reason or another we have like fifteen or sixteen different techniques that we've evolved at this point from there the i would say the marriage a spat is more like shock yeah yeah then the big thing yeah all the presidential candidates i know you know yeah that's good a court i get to get yes but in fact of course disney's disney's relationship to educating our youth is is you know suspicious at best  know when we go in and ask you know when we go in and pose as parents who are concerned about the the education of our children yes we're really i mean your idea of education released is that really you think there have been another challenge i have but i indonesia right amazing the internet is of asian globalization right globes as there comes to united for and it's changed the character of time square is becoming like you think or you have a sense right that new york times square is becoming like a theme park or something bless our bless your heart yeah yeah despite all the hate they definitely yeah they are struggling to stay on time square and they they keep beating rudy in court yeah liven things up of it right for the white people wa they really live and think yeah right but good for them good for them i mean the the idea of having an original viewpoint yeah in public is is more and more dangerous yeah and it comes right up against  giuliani idea the michael i's new idea the reason you are a citizen is that you're a consumer oh right right right right right rumors have a very limited power yes certain things they do and certain things they don't yeah freedom of expression is supposed to all come through the buying and selling cycle yeah right right so while i find that just stupid yeah i guess that's the dumbing down of america right now that is part of it it must be opposed and it's all part of the branding thing you get a branding thing and mickey mouse is like the ears the big ears i mean and the mickey to carry this be on time square mickey mouse and i mean i wouldn't want to get it automatically does kerry but i wouldn't want to get it where op shopping kind of message at a red tag sale at bloomingdale's or something like that you know one out of northern to do it would be like you would be america is about in very many ways you know i mean you're really touching on some very very heavy you know heavy duty i think it's become different lately i think some people say the business of america has always been business and and that that we are a nation of shoppers  i think that's true to some extent but but it's a question of balance yeah only it's starting to look as if we are being seduced on a constant basis by products you know everywhere we go hell i live in down downtown  astor place area yeah and it's increasingly the sensation of walking down the street as if it's like turning the pages of a magazine because every surface is covered by another seventy foot tall model yet you like you just made love or something  he thinks it's standard by which they choose the times square and i choose the disney company they are the logical time square is the place it's the stage yeah disney mickey mouse is the most famous corporate logo it's the logical villain in this piece there they they are hijacking our culture and everybody else looks of the other the other companies look to disney's leadership i see the feeling that you have when you in the times square disney store is very they are hypnotizing you from about six different angles but they all the time yeah and they were already had to have it charged yeah and they have already had a lot of pre you know prerequisite courses by watching television in the kind of community a culture that is so predominant american how they got out of new memories being excited you feel you feel your own personal experience being rearranged by disney you don't actually feel that we know it's palatable you know they have different levels of sound they have stuff coming up out of the carpets yes out of the ceiling across they've figured out the arc of the hand  and right now it does feel very counter intuitive to try to do that yeah it's right now i'm resigned to this feeling of being you know a clown out there by himself yeah well it must have been like i would chaplin and it is happening here and i think that people are at one point it might have been your sentimental engagement with them on pasta or that you pharmacy or bookstore it's gone past that yeah no it's actually we feel a certain sort of boldness yeah as we yeah right so that's the basic idea here how do we violate that interrupt interrupt the river billy's favorite phrase the sea of identical details how do you go in there and start the start up prime the pump the idiosyncratic pump you know this world for that and it's getting so much enough is do you know it's getting so much that i don't have a river i don't know i wonder what the limits are you know because you can't fire you can't how are you can't you can't yell fire in a crowded theater is it all right to go into it is it is it is do and each i understand that each american gives is that each american each household gives the disney company sixty five dollars a year wow so i mean we we are as a your let's get over disney yeah and going and creating that creating the happy ending in the sunset and all these kind of images and everything that people do absorb and become part of their psyche i mean it's becoming part of the psyche of the of the country the market overall you know i mean are you not are you trying to run counter to that kind of a dictum that sort of runs rampant in this country to city in this world now you know you ever feel like you're up against a very heavy duty institutions and thoughts and so forth  a little lonely sometimes yes but you know i feel we're i have i keep getting this feeling yes we are close to you see what's happened in france yeah i mean one hundred and fifty mcdonald's in france yeah that's right they got private thoughts we have to this this saturation that the the corporatization is so is so thorough that one finds oneself all day long none having an interior life of one's own so yeah what what what we try to do in the church of stuff shopping is we ago something that is as important to you as the disney company wants the story to be do you write and do do kind of story combat yeah right we do that on purpose yeah and then we meet him at the hotel in forty six street yeah after tape now and please thank you thank you thank you very much buy your writing they train them in heavy duty or it is trained in the advertising but the strangeness itself is is something that interests me and that's the kind of thing when we when we do when we have a reverend billy performance in a theater and then we the part of the audience that wants to go into the disney store with me comes up town or or or if we do it here locally at st clement's we just walk over you know the  hold your thinking i think we're thinking about what is it to discourage shopping in a way that competes with the imagery and message of that powerful place the it's it's a it's a an emotional shift it's a mood change you really understand how this is all physiological maybe that's the right word shopping is shoppers come in and i would be willing to bet  that their heart rate changes yes oh yes that you know it at all they have the you know the internal bio clocks that we have trains right the discharge of various kinds of woods that you know in a body that higher ups who feel that they are the representative of the company itself or that are running the show that the manager and so forth they they have i think an interest in disney that is more like that's the nation that they are citizens oh absolutely yeah yeah because the disney company really has replaced the national identity for a lot of i think how much the importance of buying things come out of the is to the national psyche in the result they didn't read far the be on the top that's the result the most company yes right it's remarkable yeah you know how difficult it is for them to consider the the fact that it is a sweatshop company that does not allow monitoring of the of  moved to the other side of the world yeah and you can't find their fact everything is made in the bad world of china yeah you can find their factories so our yeah and that's that i really have a derive a certain satisfaction from from being in the disney store and shouting that everything in this store you know was made by fifteen year old girls in rural china or i find we're making you know you know zero dollars seventeen cents an hour south koreans making a lot ahead with an on campus is it yeah and you know you're doing that kind of thing and that that question of the unquestioned acceptance of the idea of people getting their identity in a world where traditional spiritual values seem to be very very much above you know they're allowing all kinds of  exploitation of the human and the and the ecological environment which were a part they're not taking it you know does exploitation going on over and you know spiritual values seem not to be very strong and resonant with people and so what so they have retreated by default to consumerism in the way of trying to get some filling up with a group to avoid and that's a really big issue and to come up against it and is saying you're not going to find the relief you think you're going to get by buying product x y z and on to the ten power mouse is so obviously had a villain here i have a friend who went to tanzania yeah and said that she saw mickey mouse is so what carved in the wall of a mud hut really in a village that had did not have running water or electricity really is this something the reach of the famous mickey mouse so and it's hard to  lush out a state disease yes or no how do you how do you free yourself from mickey mouse yeah that's that's a real question i or the state of mind that wants to worship him it's a whole it's a live behavior the here theater and dixon place most recently in the new york international fringe festival oh yeah good good good or you know we have been increasingly enjoying the commitment of larger and larger numbers of people from those audiences right home run to the disney store and who have their shopping intervention ok let's talk about some of the geopolitical realities of this when you go to the disney st the more than once and what is the attitude of the disney people on the spot to see their friends and friends at the local precinct house and the you people that are in the corporate headquarters and wherever that is in california isn't that what's the attitude of having people go into their store and say tourists shoppers stop shopping when you know i'm right or do you are going to i like the theme park in orlando yes they made a tactical error they built this on one of the busiest intersections in the world the there talking about yeah macy's and you know right at the at the garden yeah right the guy to the garden at the busiest corner in the world you know as it happened so i'm i'm not surprised i mean when i think i think of that corner it's always a crowd yeah right yeah yeah handcuffed and in the system and it was a very interesting sensation and it had something to do i felt like it was reverse tromping or something i was in this metal and glass bubble  and i was surrounded by tourists who were around the car looking into the windows of the car as if i myself was some sort of product right right right and i felt like shouting i'm bags and putting their purchases their disney tchotchkes you know in the windows and sort of as if to criticize me for having disparaged their their their face their shopping yeah yeah they were bouncing these these puppets in the windows and so i taken the village common they have taken from us on the stoop to see if they have taken what jane jacobs would call that you know the neighborhood and they have put it inside the outer skin surface of their stores they want the village coming to be under inside yeah people don't understand it the these cute little reserve the right to rescind the sidewalk permit at any at any moment so that's another one of giuliani's quality of life issues and they have all but always been that way but right now they're they're they're harassing creatures they're the hyde park kind of thing where you're going to end it well i stands to nd workers any really you have to have a commercial reason for walking the streets of times square why sign interesting you have to have a commercial reason for doing that you have to have a credit card would you call f s a i guess stop shopping anonymous you know there's never thing a twelve step program for shoppers you think they're going to have that kind of is there anything like that they've got to forget i believe there is a drug isn't there as you know i think for people who go shopping and there's somebody because they can't stop so there are a lot people you can arouse to sue to come out and protest protest against a community gardens or what whatever or whatever manner you know it should be times square used to be the place where two hundred original dramas  object to it and do something to it now this issue about your being able to talk there are let's say viewer take it across the street or you were to go to virgin atlantic you were to go to kmart you were to go to tiffany's you were to go we hope goodmans i mean we hope to not be expanded or cannot be picked up on and people who in a certain sense have a sense of you know some sort of take exception to the idea and the vapid kind of quality of so much of what the shopping is about and so forth and what's going to happen on the that somebody gets up to people in the mall to go to a jersey mall and say leave this mall or something or do do well you're an anti that's why we have to do it here we have to do it here in new york because there's a tradition for it to grow up around tradition for it's a tradition they would like to wipe out prostitutes coming in there you will not have you will not have you know no more rudy giuliani's long list of people now he's killing the mentally disturbed no it's now he's killing people who act weird and we're going to last guy that got shot just jumped through a an open window advised right right right right right you know this is not this man is not legal yeah the only on his imagination is not legal i see what you mean he's a prosecutor running wild and yeah it goes does he have residence across the country as a political leader you going to run  consume consume like that and that's the thing of but that's a very important part of what gives the economy going yes well that's what they say but is a very it's a word of is it worth it if we become ghouls in the runs at them ghouls in the process i'm i'm very interested in that kind of thing but so what what has the what have the power to be done as far as trying to bring some sort of you know attention to the fact that you're doing this kind of this kind of thing within a i have a certain number of have the guts to write about this issue because they're upset about the theme park isolation of their own lives the theme park is they you know that there are i had a recent story about the church of stop shopping in the associated press written by a  wonderful writer named ted anthony it was picked up by seventy five newspapers across the country and he just decided well i know minutes take this risk and i maybe i won't have to work for disney it really comes out of the individual yeah so we have to practice inciting bringing up our own magic selves yeah in the face of making a mouse now if you do see street theater if you do theater in the city then you're going to be it starts on december th the member for the ninety nine and it runs through new year's eve it's going to go right through new year we will have an alternative millennial celebration where we'll bring together you know political kind of spirit like that that they do they the animals are showing their own their own ethnic identity around being good all american mouse and you know these people of this world are not being made in america and used anti american you know as mickey mouse mickey mouse stifles difference mickey mouse stifles dreaming and tries to supervise that ultimately the great revenge for us is to get together in small groups and let what life really is which is a totally mysterious complex thing  activity at st john the divine and we have a card that we want to put up and let people know yeah that because of the terrible devastation in turkey and they're putting on an exhibition in the st john the divine church and i think it's the rd yeah the  rd the rd there's going to be a and we put up a card where people can get in touch one year for me wonderful how they can go about that yeah that's to be supported so we want to let people know about that and we thank you for viewing and bill thanks again once again for coming and good luck on the work the vote on thank you so much  honor to be here it's a tough job somebody's got to do i'm glad it's you doing it and i would try to see if we can try to help you in some small kind of way your pleasure to have the perceptions of bill talen reverend billy also known as reverend billy and he's got a website a  dug dot com and he's doing fighting the good fight for you know for authentic human living here in new york city and by example around the country again bill once again all the best to you and thank you hearing into manhattan that