Interview with Andrew Boyd, Schmoozer-in-Chief of the Billionaires for Bush
by Kavita Kulkarni
08.08.04

Kavita: Let's start with a brief personal background, so that we all can have a sense of who it is answering these questions. Where did you grow up? What kind of things throughout your life have interested and inspired you? How did you get involved with politics and street theatre?

Andrew: I grew up two blocks from here (near Washington Square Park in Manhattan). My dad taught at NYU, so I was an academic brat for the first 10 or so years of my life. I lived in many other places since. I lived in Europe for 5 years when I was a kid. I went to school at the University of Michigan, lived in the Bay Area, Boston, and Baltimore for a little bit. You could say that I'm downwardly mobile…I used to live in Manhattan and now I live in Brooklyn. I don't expect that to change—the downwardly mobile part, that is. What else? I had stage fright most of my life, so the theatre part did not come naturally, at least the performance part of it [and] the exhibitionist part of it. I became very radicalized around the age of 19, around the global peace movement that had its spike at that time. I had just started school and was sort of liberal on domestic issues and cultural issues, but was pretty conservative on my foreign policy and military issues as a young adult. [This was] probably partly in adolescent rebellion against my mom who through the '70s and '80s had become more and more leftist, with feminist ecology and antiwar stuff, but also because I played lots of military games [that were] way more advanced than Risk. [I had] a very top-down view of the world as opposed to bottom-up, so I identified with the State and its economic and military objectives. I got weaned off of that after a couple of years of liberal arts education and being thrown into a progressive milieu during college. I took a year off of college after my sophomore year and went to the Bay area with a California mythology sort of driving me. I jumped freight trains and hitchhiked out there. It was a very coming-of-age sort of experience. There was a big civil disobedience planned at a weapons laboratory out there an hour east of Oakland, and so I went to a nonviolence training and was completely blown away. It was a total revelatory and transformative experience, taking action [and] entering the stream of history [and] realizing that those who were in charge didn't know what they were doing. It was sort of a trap-door, existential moment where I realized everything was political and that we were all responsible for everything. It was extremely powerful, but also extremely burdensome. That led to a ferocious engagement in all of these issues, but with a relatively monolithic, unwavering view of things.

K: I know that the first incarnation of Billionaires existed during the 2000 elections, when you guys called yourselves "Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)". Where did the idea come from?

A: Well, actually it started off as the "Rich People's Liberation Front", conceived by a fellow named Steve Collins, as a way to draw attention to politicians who were cutting deals for their wealthy contributors. That was in '95 or '96. In '99, the founder and director of United for a Fair Economy [in Boston], Chuck Collins, renamed the RPLF to "Billionaires for Forbes", which [carried] a strong, political argument in just the name of the organization. We did various hijinks against the Steve Forbes campaign. And then we came up with "Billionaires for Bush" and "Millionaires for Gore". Then the whole upsurge in the global justice movement happened with Seattle and A16. The elections were approaching, and big mobilizations were planned for the two conventions. Bush and Gore had emerged as the front-runners, so [at the Republican convention] we became "Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)", and decided to do a Million Billionaire March. I presented the whole package to United for a Fair Economy, and they said, "Cool, we have a little bit of money and we can help make this happen."

K: Why humor? What does humor bring to a political movement?

A: Well, it's very disarming. It's very pleasurable, so people choose to engage with it, or if they find themselves engaging with it, they choose to stick around or pay more attention to it. It feels like more of a fair exchange; if you're going to ask people to care about something, you're at least giving them something in return that's entertaining. It's very humanizing…it feels very crucially and essentially human. Also, personally, it makes [the work] more bearable for me. [Humor] is a very organic modality for me to communicate and draw people to an effort or cause. And it's very attractive to the media.

There's downsides, too…like it makes it more difficult to do the work. To write a position paper that is both funny and factual, and on message, that's very difficult. That's a high art form.

K: In your opinion and according to your experience as a veteran activist, what can Billionaires for Bush achieve that other forms of political activism might not be able to?

A: The thing that we do well…we have a simple idea that invites participation and is easy for people to take hold of, make their own, and add their own particular flair. It's designed to maintain its integrity, its message, [and] its purpose. It's scalable in terms of building new chapters and as far as creative material that can be added on to it. And the concept is strong and rich enough for [new chapters] to do it.

There are a lot of forms of activism that are massively more effective. Like MoveOn, for example, or Greenpeace. It's only really fair to compare [Billionaires for Bush] to other things of the same order. It's very effective at getting media attention. It's very effective at inviting people who don't have a strong history of political activism, but share progressive values and views, and are skilled, creative professionals. It's good at inviting young people with ironic tendencies. It's good at replicating itself. Whether it's actually effective at changing anybody's mind is a whole other matter. Whether it's the most effective voice with which to engage individual swing voters face to face…some ways no, and some way yes.

K: Who exactly is the audience that Billionaires for Bush is trying to reach?

A: I don't think we're as clear as we'd like to be about that. What we tell funders is that we're trying to reach voters in battleground states. One part of it is suppressing Bush voters by confirming their nagging suspicions that he is serving corporate interests at the expense of the average voter. We're also trying to persuade those in the middle. We're not particularly well set up to encourage the Democratic base to turn out on election day, except in a very indirect way by adding a flair to the messaging mix, by making our side seem sexy and smart and clever. But the work we do is very intangible and unquantifiable. These people in the key districts are getting obliterated and battered with TV ads right now, and humor is one thing that might get through to these people. We're providing a different approach in which we're not sort of pounding away at the issues. They might be open to us where they would be closed off to all this other stuff. But it's not scientific; it's coming up with our best stuff based on our guts and some rules of thumb, and lobbing this shit in the general direction of where we think it should go. Don't tell the funders that.

K: In a way, the Billionaires for Bush campaign seems to present a slight criticism of the lefty protest movement, in the sense that it mocks or satirizes it. Is that intentional?

A: Yeah, but it's very friendly and self-deprecating, because it's not directed any more at others as it as at us. Yeah, it's mild, it's friendly, and it's self-deprecating. [It's] maybe less a criticism and more a playful tongue-in-cheek reference…a sort of culture jam on activist culture. We're turning upside-down some of the most well known slogans [in protest culture], and that's just entertaining to ourselves. I don't think people feel that it's saying protest is naïve or wrong or bad or stupid.

But there is another criticism, in which we're trying to distinguish ourselves with a more refined, high-production form of protest than the average scrappy thing. That is sort of a criticism, but it's more a modeling of a better practice without trying to be too arrogant about it. It's a strange synchronicity, because to actually pull off looking like we're Billionaires, we have to look really good, like we had whatever money it took to look the way we look. It's a philosophy of activist communications…that it should be highly produced. A lot of attention should be given to the look and feel and aesthetics and messaging and iconography and presentation. That's important for a successful and effective street campaign that's designed to capture media attention. But we didn't invent that…Abbie Hoffman, Act Up, Greenpeace, these are all people that have modeled it for us.

K: What is the role of the mass media in your campaign? Is getting media attention your primary goal?

A: The role of the mass media is to carry the virus, to carry the story out to the broad public, which we can't do just by engaging people face to face on the street. The mainstream media is a conduit for the B4B media virus, and a way for us to reach voters with our message. [The mass media] are an unwitting partner in our messaging campaign. It's a way to generate a media profile, and generate people who are interested in contributing or donating to the campaign. Media attention is not the goal; the goal is to reach people. But media attention is a sub-goal, in that it's probably the most important way we have of reaching people. It's not an ultimate goal of the campaign, but it is an operational goal.

K: I read in an article that you cowrote with media theorist Stephen Duncombe that you believe it is time that political activists started using spectacular culture to push their political agenda instead of resisting it. The spectacular nature of Billionaires for Bush is quite evident. Is this akin to using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house?

A: I think it would certainly be perceived that way. You know, all politics is playing with fire. You're playing with power. You're sort of making claims on the truth…the Big truth…the truth for all of us. I think the argument in the article is, you know, you couldn't win a presidential election in the '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s without TV ads. Or you won't be able to engage in the battle for hearts and minds without understanding the dynamics of spectacle and engaging in it in a sophisticated and savvy way. We can either be irrelevant and totally marginal, or we can proceed in this direction and see if there is a way to engage in spectacle that is at least relatively in keeping with the basic progressive principles of participatory democracy and transparency. There is sort of an innovation in that article with the notion of transparent spectacle, or ironic spectacle…which is spectacle that announces itself or acknowledges itself as spectacle. It's a self-conscious spectacle, so it's a different kind of manipulation [compared to] the spectacle of tanks parading through Red Square or Bush landing on the U.S.S Lincoln. That is the sort of spectacle that claims to be a representation of the real. Most audiences are savvy enough to know that it's spectacle, but sort of play along with it nonetheless. Billionaires for Bush is a little different. It's: "Hey, we're a spectacle, come be part of our spectacle, come enjoy consuming our spectacle." We point out in the article that the Left has a tradition of deploying spectacle in a political way to some effect, We pointed out Greenpeace, and Act Up, Subcomandante Marcos, and Abbie Hoffman. You can have spectacle as part of your campaign or part of your movement, and also have very face-to-face, grassroots, door-to-door politics and base building and relationship building and profound authentic moments where people are transformed at a very human level. These aren't mutually exclusive.

K: What will happen to Billionaires for Bush if Bush is reelected in November? What will you do if Kerry is elected?

A: If Bush is elected, we keep the name and the cache and all the propaganda. We don't have to redesign the button and bumper stickers. We can still be Billionaires for Bush. However much I'd love to lose the brand, not have that cache, and have to redesign everything, we would maintain Billionaires for Bush. Whoever wins, we will continue, because [it is] part of the charter that I set for myself and those who helped found the organization. Unlike in the 2000 campaign where we sort of let everything slide after the election, we wanted to build for the long term. We knew that we would be using the 2004 election cycle to build up quite an operation and a sort of mini-movement, if you will. We figure it's very possible by November 2nd to have 150 to 200 chapters. We might have 10,000+ people on our mailing list. We'll have millions of people who know about us and appreciate and recognize the work that we do. We've educated a lot of people around our organizing model. We have a substantial base of financial supporters. We've trained a lot of activists how to operate in this way. You don't want to let all of this go to rot, but rather keep it together as a powerful force for continuing pressure on the issues. We want to maintain a nationwide creative action network. We want to maintain the infrastructure to allow [this network] to operate on campaigns that are coordinated on a national level. So if Bush wins we'd stay Billionaires for Bush and keep pounding on the guy. If Kerry wins then we have a number of choices. We could either become Billionaires for Kerry and be focused on pressuring him from the progressive left to make sure that he fulfills some of his campaign promises. Or we could become Billionaires for X, where X is to be determined, and operate on issue-focused campaigns. Let's say we wanted to focus on Living Wage Ordinances…we could be Billionaires for Unlivable Wage. Either way, we definitely want to build on what we've accomplished this year and continue as a creative action network. We could even jettison the whole Billionaires thing and just become whatever, like Ironists for Justice, or who knows what. But that's a pretty stupid name.

K: Thank you, Andrew. I look forward to seeing how the rest of the campaign turns out.

A: Thank you.