YES MEN HONCHO SPRUNG FROM CLINK

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (from Yes Men)
September 24, 2009


"Balls Across America" direct-action campaign launched; NYPD abuse of authority big factor in arrest

Contact: The Yes Men

Andy Bichlbaum, co-founder of activist group the Yes Men, emerged after 26 hours in New York City's central lockup with all charges against him dismissed.[1]

"The judge just laughed," said Bichlbaum. "The police had a less well-developed sense of humor - and, it turned out, much less regard for the law. But all in all, I'm ecstatic that they arrested me."

At 10am Tuesday, Bichlbaum was arrested and charged with trespassing, after he and 21 "Survivaballs" [2] gathered on New York City's East River and announced they were to going to "take the UN by storm" from the water, since all the land approaches were sealed. Once at the UN, they would supposedly use the Survivaballs to blockade the negotiations and refuse to let world leaders leave the room until they'd agreed on sweeping cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, as Secretary-General
Ban Ki-Moon has demanded.[3]

The event was a "scenic and mediagenic way to call attention to what our leaders
need to do in the run-up to Copenhagen," said Bichlbaum. [4] It was also the
official inauguration of the Yes Men's "Balls Across America" series of civil
disobedience actions, inspired by the call for direct action on climate change by
website http://BeyondTalk.net

Minutes after the balls began wading into the water, law enforcement swooped in on
the protesters by land, sea, and air. In order not to harm their attackers, the
balls admitted defeat and waddled out of the water and off the beach. Seven
participants were given tickets for trespassing, and one - ringleader Bichlbaum -
was whisked away to "the Tombs," New York's central processing facility at 100
Centre Street, due to an unpaid ticket for bicycle riding through Washington
Square Park.

Bichlbaum's arrest led to hilarious prime-time coverage on CNN.[5]

"Sleeping on concrete was a challenge, but I met a lot of interesting people, and
my arrest meant major prime-time news coverage we wouldn't have otherwise had,"
said Bichlbaum. "That's the whole point of civil disobedience. Thanks to my
momentary discomfort, our symbol of the stupidity of not taking action on climate
change was seen by tens of millions of people. It all worked out great, and I
remain grateful to the NYPD for having accidentally made our event successful
beyond our wildest dreams."

Despite Bichlbaum's gratitude, one thing stuck out for his attorney, Wylie
Stecklow: in filing his report, the arresting officer had lied through his teeth.

"The officer said he'd seen Bichlbaum jump over the fence, which was obviously
impossible, since the police arrived after the Survivaballs had all entered the
beach," said Stecklow, who defended Bichlbaum at his arraignment yesterday
morning. "And the officer said there were prominent signs posted to the effect
that entering was forbidden - also untrue." [6]

"Perhaps the NYPD thought that if an officer did not swear that he saw Andy climb
a fence, AND that there were signs providing notice that this area was off-limits,
a judge might have dismissed the case," said Stecklow.

According to Stecklow, officers swearing to facts they couldn't possibly know is
an all-too-common occurrence. "Often, during mass arrests, we see a Supervising
Officer assigning junior officers to write up the paperwork. But these junior
officers end up becoming the 'arresting officer,' requiring them to swear to facts
that are not within their knowledge. This leads to constitutional violations and
wrongful arrests, and undermines the confidence that citizens should have in the
criminal justice system," said Stecklow.

The NYPD has, in recent years, been found guilty of making numerous
unconstitutional arrests in cases of political protest, and then falsifying their
statements to fit the arrests. There have in particular been several well-known
cases involving the tackling and arrest of bicyclists, with false excuses then
written into police reports. [7]

"My case doesn't matter in itself," said Bichlbaum. In fact, I'm really happy it
turned out as it did. But I hope we can help expose the systemic and nefarious
culture of lying within the NYPD, that has had the effect of criminalizing protest
in New York City."

"The police have to be told very clearly that they can't lie and expect to get
away with it," Bichlbaum added. "The stakes are far too high."

"We need to strengthen oversight of the police by those who empower them in the
first place - you and I, the citizens of New York City," said Stecklow. "Right
now, at a bare minimum, that means giving teeth to the formerly well-intentioned,
now powerless body of the Civilian Complaint Review Board."

"Unfortunately, even when we have video proving police statements to be false, no
one seems interested in investigating," added Stecklow. "That's got to change."

After reading the arresting officer's complaint against him, Bichlbaum decided to
file a complaint with the CCRB in order to hold this officer accountable for his
false statements."It's not much, but at least this guy will have to explain his
story under oath. And then next time, maybe he'll think twice before filing a
false statement to make the crime stick."

The Yes Men hope their next actions won't depend on police misconduct to make them
a success. "With 'Balls Across America,' our goal is to get arrested fair and
square, all across this fair land of ours," said Yes Men co-founder Mike Bonanno.
"It's a great way to get attention for a crucial issue."


[1] Bichlbaum actually received an Adjournment with Contemplation of Dismissal,
which normally results in full dismissal in New York State
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjourned_in_Contemplation_of_Dismissal).

[2] The Survivaball (http://survivaball.com) made its first appearance in 2006,
when "Halliburton representatives" attended a conference on catastrophic climate
change and demonstrated the functionality of the large inflatable suits which keep
corporate managers safe from global warming (http://theyesmen.org/hijinks/survivaball). That hoax, and many more like it, are documented in the new award-winning documentary film, The Yes Men Fix the World (http://www.theyesmenfixtheworld.com), which opens theatrically in New York
October 7, before opening nationally October 23.

[3] http://nypost-se.com/news/un-chief-world-heading-for-climate-abyss/



[4] http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/23/headlines#14
http://nypost-se.com/news/us_news/congress-cops-out-on-climate/
http://nypost-se.com/news/us_news/crap-and-trade/


[5] http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2009/09/23/moos.survivaball.cnn



[6] http://theyesmen.org/crimcomplaint715.pdf



[7] http://blip.tv/file/771625, http://glassbeadcollective.blip.tv/file/784711/

Redefining the Stay-at-Home Mom

Over at The Becky & Hollee Blog, the conversation about balance continues. The last few posts have focused on whether Xer women are more equipped to balance work and life than our mothers. Maureen Dowd says women are less happy. Hogwash. I think Maureen Down is less happy. Hmph.

As my pal Christine Hurt is fond of saying, "women make hard choices." I agree, and I think it's both that simple and that complicated. But my daughter Emma recently helped me reframe my own choices. I work. I love both what I do and who I am when I do it. Several years ago, I had a student whose mom is a teacher. She and I were talking about why teacher's kids make such good students, and what messages they get from their parents about education and being a student. She said wistfully, "yeah, my mom really loves her students." There seemed to be an unspoken, "more than her kids." She probably didn't mean that; it was probably my own fear that my girls will think I love my students more than I love my own children.

Cut to last week. I took my daughters to our Muslim Law Students' Association dinner program on Ramadan. It was a lovely event, but I only remember vividly one thing: at one point, the invited speaker was listing professions (no recollection of why), and he said, "stay-at-home mom." Emma leaned over to me and, smiling, whispered, "That's like you. You're a stay-at-home mom." "How do you figure?" I whispered back. "Because you really like staying at home with your kids."

So apparently I do have it all. I'm an outside-working stay-at-home mom. Good work if you can get it.

Wanna Fix the World? Have I got a deal for you!

There are two things that I'm ridiculously passionate about: comedy and the disenfranchised. If you ever find yourself in need of a stand-up crusader, look no further.

So when I stumbled across Yes Men Fix the World on HBO On Demand (from whence it quickly disappeared) a couple of months ago . . . well, they had me at "fuck Dow Chemical." From the best I can tell (and I've spent stupid amounts of time on their web site), The Yes Men started several years ago with the goal of speaking truth to power by telling lies that purported to be from people in power. Pour example, they got themselves invited onto the BBC as reps of Dow Chemical who apologized for the Union Carbide explosion and announced Dow's intention to compensate the explosion's victims in India. I laughed until I cried when, afterward at their apartment, Andy says to a rep from Dow Chemical something along the lines of, "Oh, so you did not like that? Hmmm. Okay, good to know."

And then there was what they did yesterday in NYC. They brought attention to the dangers of global warming by sporting the Survivaball, a huge blow-up unit you can allegedly live in when we're forced to jump in our collective handbasket to hell. They also blanketed the city with fake copies of the NY Post with headlines that you would see if the Powers That Be were honest about global warming. A lot of their volunteers received tickets for handing out the fake papers; Andy Bichelbaum, one of the original two Yes Men, was taken to jail. To jail. Can you even begin to imagine how much I love a man who goes to jail for doing something funny that serves the greater good?

But back to the movie. Yes Men Fix the World is their second documentary, and it comes out October 7 in New York City. They've refused to turn it over to a film distributor that would surely require that they stop getting arrested while the movie is being promoted. So they're promoting it by word of mouth (and blog and tweet). It starts with the Dow prank and just gets better from there. To me, one of the things that's delightful about Yes Men is that they're not mean spirited. Everything they do is bathed in their own pure intent. But not in a sticky-sweet kind of way.

I want you to see this movie. And, believe me, you want you to see this movie. You'll leave shaking your head at how gutsy they are. But you'll also leave inspired to do something in your own way (I would have gone to the city yesterday to help hand out papers but for my, um, full-time job and two school-aged children). If they can use comedy to expose apathy and self-dealing, imagine what you could deal with a marketable skill.

Where Students Post Your Stuff Online

At one point last year (or maybe late in the year before), I read on the legal writing listserve that the answers to the Interactive Citation Workstation exercises, which I co-author with Christine Hurt, were "all over the Internet." {I wish Christine or I had been contacted first before someone started a widespread panic, but I digress.)

After a quick Google search, I discovered that there were indeed answers to a couple of exercises posted on a cite called DocStoc. A little more research told me that the site was started by an alum of Pepperdine Law School and that, at that point, the vast majority of the documents had been posted by Pepperdine law students. I sent an e-mail to the Dean of Students at Pepperdine; she reports that she reprimanded the students who posted the answers; and the owner of the site took the answers down.

The owner of the site was actually very apologetic and accommodating. Since then, the site looks to have done very well. It basically just hosts documents that anyone wants to put up there. Because law is a document-driven profession, you can imagine that there are a lot of legal documents posted. And because it was started by a recent law school grad, you can imagine that there's a lot of law school stuff up there.

So if you're concerned that answers to assignments or exams are posted on the Internet, this is one of those places where students post your stuff online. Check it out. {And although DocStoc started with a lot of law school stuff, they've since branched out to all kinds of grade school, undergraduate, and graduate education, so if you teach anything, it's worth checking out, both for resources as well as to make sure nothing you have copyrighted is posted.)

On Edutainment

I can't remember who coined the word "edutainment," and I'm far too lazy to look it up right now since it's not my main point. But I can tell you this: I know that Boomers and Veterans scoff at it. Myself, I don't see anything wrong with it. What's wrong with being entertained and educated at the same time? Of course, you can't go by me because I was raised on Sesame Street and Electric Company.

So I like to make my classes as entertaining as possible. I teach first-year and upper-level legal writing, though, so it's a trick, to be sure. There's only so much opportunity for hilarity when talking about analysis and writing. But I do my best.

This semester, I have a very serious-minded group of students. They take things seriously, and they have serious demeanors. That simply will not do. I want them to *be* serious without *behaving* seriously. If we're going to yuck it up about legal writing, I need audience participation (not to mention that I ask my students a lot of questions, and I tire easily of the {crickets chirping} response). Hollee Temple of The Becky and Hollee Blog (and also of West Virginia University College of Law) starts each class with music videos because she is the undisputed rock star of legal writing.

I thought about starting with music videos. A few years ago, I got the idea that I would start each class with some kind of bass-enhanced musical selection to get things going, especially for morning and after-lunch classes. But dragging the CD player to class seemed like too much of a pain, and it never occurred to me to show music videos until I found out Hollee was doing it. So there you go.

And then it hit me a couple of weeks ago. Stand-up comedy. It sets the mood I'm trying to set. It gives us a shared experience of laughing together. It relaxes people. Bingo! So far, I'm thrilled with the results (except that I almost couldn't start class this past Friday, because I was still bubbling up with spontaneous giggles and crying over the Jim Gaffigan Hot Pockets bit I'd just shown). The class gets warmed up much more quickly. I get to watch 5-minute stand-up comedy clips on YouTube as class prep. And the students are introducing and re-introducing me to comedy that I'm getting a kick out of.

So here's what I've shown so far. I will say that the word "fuck" is featured probably a bit much for most tastes. I happen to like the word "fuck." A lot. When I was in practice, I once had a law clerk who marveled that I managed to conjugate "fuck" into every part of speech. I can still do it. It's a big part of why I moved to New York. I needed new ideas on how to use the word "fuck." New Yorkers do not disappoint in that regard. As a nod to decorum, I do try to show the clips with curse words (or "cuss words" as we say in Texarkana, Texas) before the official class start time so I can't be accused of forcing students to watch it. I doubt there would be any consequence, regardless, but one hates to just buy trouble for no reason.

For future classes, I'm considering some Ricky Gervais and some Robin Williams (my students recommended his bit on golf, which I watched and found hi. larious.), and I just got a nice tip on some Dave Chappelle. So far, I've done Eddie Izzard, Bill Cosby, and Jim Gaffigan. If any of my favorite readers have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

The Mediocre Professor

There's a great piece in the Chronicle called The Mediocre Professor. I feel this guy's . . . what? . . . resignation?

I was never so certain of my ability to make an impact through teaching as I was the first few years of my teaching career. As my academic career started to get a little air under it, I started to notice that I had more credibility among peers at other institutions than I did with peers at my own institution or students. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed a reasonable level of respect, but I had a fan base outside of the building. I didn't worry much about it because I felt amply respected among those who knew and understood the field in which I taught, and most of those people just happened to do the same thing at other law schools.

Flash forward a few more years into my academic career, and I've landed two successive academic jobs, based in part on my reputation in my field. So that's nice. I enjoy what feels like ample respect among my colleagues at my own institution, which is also nice. And I wouldn't expect students to have any idea of my track record in my specific little field of expertise. After all, they were college students or stockbrokers before they came to law school. And I don't teach in the kind of area that gets you a lot of calls for talking head commentary on CNN or Fox News.

But considering the amount of time I put into my teaching and how little difference it seems to make in terms of the feedback I receive, it leaves me wondering if I really make an impact at all. Does exploring new teaching techniques and reading about the latest in adult learning theory really make me a better teacher than someone who is teaching from the same yellowed notes they've used for 15 years? What makes a good teacher? How do we measure impact? And what about a career in which we gives our very best effort to the people in the worst position to understand if it has any value or not?

I have to admit that I'm seduced by the idea of so pushing and inspiring my students that they each take a defiant step onto their desks to declare "O Captain, my captain." I love those rally speeches that coaches make in movies telling students that they'll run faster, harder, better than ever before because there's something greater than themselves at stake. Now I think that's a bit of an exaggeration when the "something greater" is a school's reputation for awesome football. But in law school, isn't that exactly what you hope for? That the practice of law serves something greater than the individual who practices law? And that you can help your students become better than even they imagined so they can serve this "something greater"?

But how on earth are we to know if we're making an impact? Short of being told, the only thing we have to go by is student evaluations, which are suspect at best, particularly for a professional course of study that students cannot fully evaluate unless they've graduated and gone on to practice. I had a professor who I thought was EVIL (like the fru-it of the dev-il) in law school. And I said something approximating that in the evaluations (and since I went to a small law school, I had him for a lot of classes -- Legal Writing II, Remedies, Professional Responsibility, and Federal Courts). It was only after I graduated that I realized how well he had served me. I can honestly say that I was a better lawyer because he was such a pain in my ass. I don't know that I ever did anything -- in law school or law practice -- that would have met his standards, but I know that trying to meet them made me better. If you put much stock in my comments on his course evals, you wouldn't think he was that great of a teacher. But ask me now, and I tell you that he is a teaching god the likes of which I can only fantasize about emulating. He doesn't teach anymore. He's a full-time administrator. Was it his students' misunderstanding of how gifted he was that pulled him out of the classroom for good? Did he think he wasn't making a difference?

I don't want to be like the mediocre professor in the Chronicle piece, finally resigning myself to not trying to be better and do more. But I do wonder from time to time whether it matters that I don't throw in the towel. Am I making a difference or fooling myself?