We have Actual Reality and we have a lot of Virtual Reality in this episode too...We have to know the difference...We live in a highly mediated mindscape, with the immersion in corporate marketing the fundamentalist ritual practice of ordinary living in America.

In our Earth Riot this week our show of the Actual is a preaching by Bertha Lewis in the year of Occupy Wall Street. She addresses the "Church of Stop Shopping" during the struggle to keep Walmart out of New York City. That effort to keep the slayer of neighborhoods out of the city did succeed, and Bertha's activist was a crucial driver of that resistance. And isn't Bertha hilarious?

And with this April 16 Sunday, LiveStreamed 3pm New York time, (link at Revbilly.com) we cross into our second year

of this experiment. We bring humor and music and a kind of DIY spirituality to our defense of the Earth.

Thank you for being with this in this work (and this play). May the Earth's crisis evolve in such

a way that we can have a life and in our living share this planet with all life. Earthalujah!

Rev Billy, on behalf of Savitri D and the Stop Shopping Choir

Anne and Paul Ehrlich wrote: “Evidence points to the need for a quasi-religious transformation of cultural values.”

Passover and Easter are liberation stories, from Egypt & from Rome; into the Promised Land & into the miracle of Life After Death. Christians & Jews celebrate control over the Earth, its storms & bodies of water & animals. An obedient natural world is the theatrical frame of Moses and Jesus. But that is the virtual reality of faith. In fact, of course, the Earth is in control & never more than now, as we careen into the Sixth Extinction. To believe in this planet-wide event is to have a new kind of faith. Earthalujah!

For the Earth:  We Must Boycott the ‘New Reality’ that the world’s most valuable company says will replace the iPhone.

Governments and corporations have separated us from the Earth via gradualism. Somehow we ended up in our apartments with the Earth only coming to us as decorative shrubbery or background in movies, while gas & oil & plastics kill everything in sight.  But with ‘New Reality Pro’ the Apple Corp is getting greedy.  They are breeding us with AI robots!

If the Earth is intelligent— if the Gaia Theory is true, then she wouldn't want to live in the role of every human beings' "Other", and neither would I.

This is exactly what we have done, to storms and floods, starvation and drought, heatwave and novel viruses. We colonize when we separate these disasters from each other and pretend that each is a stand alone event. Climate science denial is one thing, but proclaiming that the daily disasters are not coming from one source...that is the denial adopted by all liberal governments, religions, and corporations. It is easily hidden in their marketing fakery, and it will kill us all.  

The first song in today's Earth Riot asks, "What did they do to the great outdoors?". The Fabulous Unknown would be a better description of the natural world than the “great outdoors”. The word "Great"— how can we decolonize that word and heal from there?  

Some people who have been called "Great" also seem to have The Fabulous Unknown of the natural world in them. Wangari Maathai, Muhammad Ali, Che Guevera, and all the unknown revolutionaries who gave their lives for our freedom create our beloved ecosystem. The Unknown has eyes we need to see through and ears that allow us to listen. That’s why both making love and making justice feel so good.

The surviving warrior, Angela Davis, speaks with young, gifted and black students in Toni Morrison's hometown.

"I am no longer accepting things that I cannot change; I am changing things I cannot accept. I am everyday associated with a people who refuse to give up!

Not only that - a people who have created in the process of the struggle - beauty!"  ---  Beautiful Earth, Beautiful Earth, what do you have to say? Beautiful Earth Beautiful Earth, what do you need to hear?

If I had an indigenous imagination (maybe even a little part of mind) and I was dedicated to defending the Earth but I was exposed 8 hours a day to TikTok, would my activism survive? Would I be able to focus on the toxicity in the investments of fossil banks, and dramatize this crime?

Environmentalism was at once based on eloquent essays. Ecological conscience was grounded in research, impactful data and graphics. But now most of the public doesn't notice such things. Now we are addicted to the little screen. We are "liking" the changes in the faces of Colbert and Gaga and celebrities judging America's Got Talent. We are "liking" someone wearing a costume that makes him look like a green bush. He is disguised, standing still in this perfect likeness of shrubbery, and he suddenly jumps in the path of a pretty woman. The surprised passerby screams and falls to her knees. This is hilarious. The bush helps her to her feet and she is trying to smile. Where does such a communicating style put our activism?

Consumerism micro-manages our bodies. Retail spaces require that we walk/reach/grab and return to the cash register, all surveilled and monitored by security.

Gestures deemed Inappropriate by police are the justification for murders of the unarmed. Our dramatic work in the lobbies of JPMorgan Chase has evolved since our first direct action in this “king of climate crime” in 2007. This year in 2023 we go banking with a single emotion: extreme wailing sorrow, hysterical laughter, lamentations for police murders of forest protectors, and repeated pratfalls (tipping over while reciting the 6th Extinction’s “tipping points”).

Most of us back away from divisive fear. We do that instinctively. While most of us Earth-defenders are closer to the people called "Woke" by the Right, it's also true that most of us don't like to point fingers and accuse. But let the Earth show the way...

The Earth isn't binary. A boreal forest of a long-grass prairie are the coming together of many species with many qualities, and human beings have their own ece-systems called communities, or neighborhoods. In such places we need difference - and we know it. We live in service to one another, building a gift economy. We create invisible currencies made of feelings of trust. Can we scale up such public compassion as big as a city? A nation? A planet. Yes - we have to.