In 2007 Burn the Man at the Nevada Test Site!

Well, folks, I'm not off to Texas for the Code Pink retreat. I really wanted to go, but it didn't work out for me to attend. Instead, Wayne and I are going to Burning Man. I went to it in 2001 and wrote an essay about the experience that landed me in pot country in North California. Since that time, I've been thinking about how grand it would be to move Black Rock City across from the NTS next year to protest war. I would love to see that Man burn there! So here is my campaign to move Black Rock City to southern Nevada. To read my essay click here.

Stop the War, Burn the Man

A Call to Larry Harvey and the Burning Man staff:

Art has the ability to save the world. Free art frees us from the tyranny of corporate war machine of modern civilization. Since 1945, the greatest symbol of this oppression has been the atomic bomb. Its use threatens to destroy human life and other life forms that are dependent on a clean environment.

The United States government continues experimentation and production of weapons of mass destruction. Its misguided military budget drains the public of its vital resources needed to make a sustainable world economy. Using these resources to wage peace by constructing grand new ecological cities—arcologies- a paradigm shift in design and science manifests a lovolution, a non-violent world-wide 21st century transformation. Arcologies would be devoted to experimenting with urban structures that allow nature, people, and technology to work together for social liberation.

Burning Man has been called a festival of immolation. Why not move the burn site for a year where it can really count? What better way for artists to show the world that we, as a species, don’t want to be burning men and women than by moving the Burning Man festival across for the Nevada Test Site.

What a media sensation it would make to burn the giant Burning Man effigy at the place where the biggest burns in the world have been conducted and continue to be conducted. What holy meaning the burn would have when we make it a protest for world peace by demanding total nuclear disarmament so that our resources can be free to build solar-powered arcologies of our collective dream.

The blaze of Burning Man would shed light on the follies conducted at the Nevada Test site and emancipate the next generation to use their ingenuity and creativity for the Lovolution. Peace is an art form and locating Black Rock City across for the Nevada Test Site on Western Shoshone land has the potential to help the world see a new spirit and model of development that is based on a gift and wisdom economy. It would give artists a place to voice their outrage of living in a nation-state that exists on a permanent war, nuclear regime, “addicted to oil” economy.