UPDATED with Photo and Videos: Thanks for Making the Occupy the Koch Brothers Guerrilla Drive-In a Huge Success!
Posted on November 8th, 2011 by Melinda Gibson in From Our Partners, Profits Before People, Take Action!|
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This post has been updated with videos and a photo from Friday's event.
Here is a great video of the event from the Other 98%.
This is a video of the march: Occupy the Kochs - Guerrilla Drive-In
From Velvet Revolution: Koch Brothers Guerrilla Drive-In Protest at Wash Convention Center
This photo was taken by Common Cause. You can view more of their photos from the event here.
Thanks for Making the Occupy the Koch Brothers Guerrilla Drive-In a Huge Success!
Thank you to the 1,000 people who turned out Friday night, November 4, 2011, for the "Occupy the Kochs Guerrilla Drive-In" at the Washington Convention Center. Health Care for America Now and the advocacy group The Other 98% led the protest of the billionaire Kochs Brothers' front group, Americans for Prosperity, which hosted a gala dinner that night as part of a two-day conference featuring speeches by GOP presidential candidates Herman Cain and Mitt Romney.
Numerous progressive organizations teamed up with HCAN and the Other 98% to protest the Koch Brothers' corruption of the American political system at the unusual outdoor film festival. Americans for Prosperity, which spends millions advancing its extremist right-wing political agenda with the financial support of billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch and their companies, held the "Defend the American Dream" event to celebrate efforts to protect the richest people and corporations from paying their fair share in taxes and to eliminate important programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Protesters gathered at the Guerrilla Drive-In to enjoy popcorn, good food and political satire videos highlighting the Kochs' efforts to destroy the American Dream, shrink the middle class, increase America's growing income inequality, preserve tax breaks for special interests like Big Oil and strip workers of their rights. They sang satirical songs and marched around the massive Convention Center complex.
The protest showed that Americans are not going to accept a corporate takeover of our country. The event we started drew hundreds of Occupy DC and Occupy K Street people who joined in with our action. Later, those activists staged actions of their own around the hall.
"The Kochs and their front groups are trying to steal our democracy to make the 1% even richer," said HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome. "They and their cronies have purchased the Republican Party to destroy America's middle class, including taking away health care and stripping workers of the right to bargain for a better life. Across the country people are raising their voices in protest because they're fed up with a system stacked in favor of the richest 1%."
"The Koch brothers are not just the 1% — they are the .00001%," said John Sellers, co-founder of The Other 98%, which co-produced the Drive-In with HCAN. "They are the poster children for the hostile corporate takeover of our democracy, and it's about time they heard from the rest of us."
Occupy the Kochs comes as progressives across the country have been speaking out to put Americans back to work, tax the 1% and pressure the Super Committee not to make a bad deal for the 99%. For more than a month, Americans of all ages and backgrounds have been on the streets expressing their rejection of corporate money in politics at Occupy events and other movement protests across the U.S., and Occupy the Kochs demonstrates that the momentum for change is building.
Here are the progressive groups that joined up with HCAN and the Other 98% to stage the Guerrilla Drive-In: Campaign for America's Future, Campaign for Community Change, Common Cause, Justice Through Music, Oil Change International, Public Campaign, Public Citizen, Rebuild the Dream, Tar Sands Action, True Majority, USAction, and Velvet Revolution.

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