Showing Revision 2 created 10/30/2011 by Russ Williams.

1. Title:
   Keep Wall Street Occupied
2. Description:

   Uploaded by ransackedroom - http://www.youtube.com/user/ransackedroom - on Oct 27, 2011 to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JlxbKtBkGM&sns=tw . Original description:

   "A fast, easy, free, and non-violent way to drive the big banks out of their greedy little minds is sitting in your mailbox right now. You just don't know it yet."

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   Hi!
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   Do you get a lot of junk mail?
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   I do. Most of the junk mail I get is unsolicited credit card offers
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   and up until Occupy Wall Street, I used to just toss these in the bin, unopened.
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   But Occupy Wall Street got me thinking.
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   These offers are from the same financial institutions that ruined our economy by speculating on the housing market.
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   This isn't junk mail, this is an opportunity for dialog.
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    Why?
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    Well, see, inside of every one of these credit card offers, is one of these.
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    It's a business reply mail envelope.
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    The banks signed contracts with the Post Office to get these envelopes,
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    and they only pay postage on the envelopes that get mailed back.
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    And the banks are assuming that we'll use these envelopes to send in our credit card applications,
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    but we don't want more credit cards, do we?
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    We certainly don't want them from the big banks that caused the financial crisis.
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    We can use these envelopes in other ways.
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    We can have a dialog.
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    So, phase 1 - this is the easiest: everyone can do this.
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    Just take the envelope, lick it, seal it, and send it back empty.
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    It's quick, it's easy, it takes you 5 seconds at the mail box everyday,
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    and it costs the bank about 25 cents.
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    Now, I know, this means banks pay less for postage than we do, but please, let's have that protest another day.
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    Phase 2 - if you want to put a little more work into it - would be to send it back full:
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    just take all the materials that came in the envelope, put them in there,
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    take the envelope itself, put that in there.
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    I mean after all, the heavier the envelope is, the more it's going to cost them in postage.
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    And then, any other junk mail you got that day that you think might be interesting to them.
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    Like, if you got this baby product catalog, put that in there:
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    I mean, bankers have babies, and being immoral doesn't mean you are infertile.
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    The other thing that I do is, I send them a note.
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    I printed out a bunch of notes on my printer and I just clip them out and I put one in with each envelope.
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    That way, they know that this wasn't just a miscommunication.
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    It actually was communication.
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    This one says: "Hello, Big Bank clerk, please join the union."
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    Now, phase 3, if you want to put a little bit of money into it, and I do mean a little bit,
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    would be a wood shim. This is a wood shim.
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    It's exactly what it looks like, it's a piece of wood.
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    You can get a pack of 12 of these at a hardware store for about $1.50.
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    Now a wood shim, when you put that in the envelope - oh, and put a message on it too,
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    so that it's actually communication.
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    This one is “#OWS" for Occupy Wall Street.
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    Put the shim in the envelope and suddenly the envelope becomes really heavy
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    and more importantly, it becomes rigid.
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    Why does that matter? Well, a rigid mail piece costs more in postage to mail.
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    It's why Netflix has to pay more money for their DVD mailers than you pay to send a postcard.
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    You can go further with this idea.
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    I think the gold standard for postage paid protest would be something like a roofing shingle:
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    that's really heavy and dense and crumbly.
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    But it is important that this should be about communication.
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    So I think that - putting some sort of message, you know: clear, rational debate, a slogan,
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    something that you saw on a good sign - I think that that matters too.
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    Think about the scene in the mail room of a big bank when they get a few dozen roofing shingles,
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    a few hundred wood shims and a few thousand empty envelopes.
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    They're probably going to have a meeting about it.
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    And that's the point of this.
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    This isn't really about running up the postage bill on the big banks,
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    although that's a nice side effect.
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    The real effect of this is to force banks to react to us.
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    If they start getting hundreds and thousands of weird reponses to their credit card applications,
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    well, they're going to have to have meetings, they're going to have to develop new procedures,
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    and every hour banks spend reacting to us is an hour banks don't spend lobbying Congress on how to screw us.
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    It's an hour banks don't spend foreclosing on our houses.
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    So I think that that's progress.
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    Now, this postage-paid protest sort of thing, this is no substitute for getting out into the street
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    and making your voices heard.
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    The Occupy Wall Street movement started in the street, and for the time being,
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    that's where the life of this protest is.
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    But after you've been out there, lending your voice to the crowd,
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    or if you happen to live in a city that's away from the big cities that are having major Occupy movements,
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    go to your mail box, spend 5 seconds sorting through your junk mail, and send some stuff back to these guys.
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    If you can't occupy Wall Street, you can at least keep Wall Street occupied.
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    Thanks for watching.
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    [Keep Wall Street Occupied! - Be civil. Be safe. Be heard.]