Meet the "Earthalujah" Stop-Shopping Preacher and Choir
The anti-consumption and climate-action activist/actor "Reverend" Billy Talen has been at it for 25 years.
UPDATE and program note: On Sunday, August 11, I did a live check-in with the “Reverend” Billy Talen and his Stop Shopping Choir in a rehearsal for their weekly Earth Church 5 p.m. performance on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (36 Avenue C). You can watch and share on LinkedIn, Facebook, X/Twitter and YouTube:
Original post: Because we all have to laugh to keep from crying sometimes…
Back in May I caught up virtually with the comedic environmental campaigner Billy Talen, the “reverend” leading his Church of Stop Shopping through several decades of performance protests and events and, this year, serving as the opening act on Neil Young’s Love Earth Tour with his band Crazy Horse.
You can watch and listen to that wacky conversation below.
Today, The New York Times published a fine Cara Buckley profile of Talen that I hope you’ll read (and don’t miss the great Brittainy Newman photos. Here’s a gift link via Billy.
Talen is a pioneering practitioner of what his peers at The Yes Men, a team of anti-corporate pranksters, call “laughtivism.” I first wrote about him on my Dot Earth blog at The Times in 2007, the year the documentary “What Would Jesus Buy?” was released. The film chronicled his cross-country journey exloring and railing against how mall-based mass consumerism was killing small retail stores. You can watch the full film on YouTube:
I’ve reconnected with Talen (and his wife and longtime collaborator Savitri D.) many times since. Here we were during the pandemic:
A year ago he sent me this clip from a howling “wolves of Wall Street” demonstration at a JP Morgan Chase Bank branch.
He’s participated in several of my Sustain What conversations on climate activism, including this one with the activism-focused sociologists Dana Fisher and Robb Willer and Margaret Klein Salamon, the executive director of Climate Emergency Fund, a group funnelling donations from wealthy progressives to road-blocking and soup-tossing protest groups: A Climate Prankster, a Mayhem Funder and Sociologists Debate the Role of In-Your-Face Activism.
On the Neil Young Crazy Horse Caravan
Here’s our May conversation as the Love Earth Tour entourage settled in at a racetrack outside of Austin (the show ended up canceled by extreme storms).
I also like the Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir album “The Sun is a Star that Keeps Me Warm.” Listen and/or buy on Bandcamp:
Thanks Andy for profiling Reverend Billy and his incredibly important message. It's not the climate that's causing the crisis, it's mindless consumption, lack of care for each other, and lack of joy and and creativity in the way we live.
The Rev & The Chorus are a magical gift to NYC and the World. They have brought light & warmth to the dark times. Onward!