The ‘Yes Men’ strike again

The “Yes Men” struck again this week.

The satirical enemies of bureaucracy, these guys have turned up at international conferences, including one of the World Trade Organization’s, a few years ago.

What makes them unique is that they exploit the biggest bureaucracy shortcomings—lack of communication and an unquestioning worship of seemingly powerful individuals.

If you haven’t heard of these guys, here’s what they do:

They pose as their bureaucratic enemies garnering an invitation to a major event, such as the WTO’s annual conference a few years ago. Usually, if not always, the invitee is a guest speaker at the chosen event—and that’s when the fun begins. At the WTO’s conference a few years ago, the Yes Men announced the WTO would be disbanding. They’re good enough at what they do that members believed the bogus announcement, and news of the WTO’s imminent disbanding went international.

This week, their target was the federal government over the issue of New Orleans. Just one day before the anniversary of the Katrina disaster, Yes Man activist Andy Bichlbaum, pretending to be HUD “Assistant Deputy Secretary Rene Oswin,” told hundreds of shocked businesspeople at a forum the agency would reverse locally controversial policy and reopen housing units now targeted for replacement by mixed-income development. His announcement was backed up with a fake, but very convincing press release from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson.

The audience applauded the speech, and the moderator thanked “Oswin” for the “dramatic announcement.” Though not on stage at the time of the hoax, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans governor Ray Nagin gave preceding speeches at the event.

You’ve got to hand it to these guys, they’re very good at “identity correction,” the term they use for their impersonations.

Their primary weapons are a computer and expensive-looking suits, combined with an exquisite display of knowledge of psychology and a convincing stage presence.

When the announce something, they make sure it is not the true message of the targeted organization, but couched in such a way that the audience believes it, and then thinks about the experience for some time after the hoax is found out.

The message is usually something everyone would like to hear from some large organization that is doing something that is unpopular, or would be, if more folks knew about it.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development called the Katrina event “a cruel hoax,” which it may have been, but the applause the announcement garnered should tell HUD something about how people feel about this issue. Perhaps the hoax was cruel, but denying some of the poorest Katrina victims the opportunity to go home to their own neighborhoods, because there will be less housing for them so more housing can be made for wealthier potential residents is far crueler, especially after the federal government promised Katrina victims so much assistance, very little of which has yet to arrive in anyone’s hands but those with unbidded contracts. It’s kicking the most vulnerable members of New Orleans society out permanently, just a year after they lost everything, including in many cases, loved ones, to the storm.

That is far, far crueler than a prank designed to make the world think, in my book. And the Yes Men are not intentionally cruel; they really want to make a difference.

“It’s helped us to become the people we wish we could be to correct the problems,” Mike Bonanno, the second “Yes Man,” was quoted as saying of the prank in an article by Reuters Monday.

The thing is, they may be right about the housing, in addition to their announcement being popular, if untrue.

A contractor reportedly told Bichlbaum he thought the buildings could be fixed for less than half the cost of new construction during a barbeque the group held for an open public housing unit.

The “Yes Men” may be pranksters, but they’re watchdogs too, if peculiar ones. And quite often, their announcements may be the right thing for the targeted organization to do, even when they are not followed.

Was this week’s Yes Men prank cruel? Not really.

It’s crueler the HUD and the federal government can’t to take a hint (or a scream) from the New Orleans public and restore housing like it promised to when the streets were still under ten feet of water, and every TV camera in the world was watching.

It’s a year later, and vast swaths of the city, particularly poorer neighborhoods have yet to see any clean up or reconstruction at all. If the federal government intends to renege on its promises so blatantly, and yes, cruelly, they deserve what they get in the way of public expressed opinion.

The Yes Men and information of their other stunts can be found on the Web at www.theyesmen.org. The 2003 Yes Men self-titled movie with details of its WTO escapade, as well as others is available in many video stores for sale and rent.

(Originally published in The Easton News, August 31, 2006)