Home Stretch Interview with Reverend Billy, Candidate for Mayor of New York

(This is our third conversation of the campaign with Green Party candidate for Mayor of New York, Reverend Billy.)

How's the campaign going? Are you confident?

I'm confident that an accelerated evolution is now taking place.

Could you elaborate?

This government and its landlord development thug-buddies will ultimately be chased out of town by scared neighborhood defenders. (pause)

Will this occur on election day, or at some future date?

It's taking place now -- the Michael Bloombergs of this city are suffering a bout of conscience at this time.

What stimulated that?

The change is coming from the neighborhood bodega, pedestrians stopping and looking up at the sky -- straphangers who yank out their iPods -- the city is full of citizens shedding their consumerism. There's nothing the NYPD can do about that! They can't stop-and-frisk fast enough!

We understand you and the Rainforest Relief people have an event coming up Thursday that has to do with the tropical hardwoods being used illegally on city property.

Rare hardwoods are being used for the benches in the High Line Park. At 5:30 Thursday we gather at the fountain in Washington Square. That is the kind of earth justice that we are moving toward -- not just environmentalists, we all feel this. We have to imagine life far away to imagine our own lives. This city is never been able to bring itself to consider -- well, I just wanna end on that. We have to imagine life far away in order to imagine our own lives

Does that kind of thing take the place of political action, like your mayoral campaign, and legal action?

Got to have both. Enforce what's on the books, which means turning to someone who might want to bribe you with money, and telling them "I'm not gonna buy this from you. Find some old recycled wood."

The Church of Life After Shopping was involved with changing Victoria's Secret a couple of years ago -- they were clear-cutting arboreal forests in Canada in order to publish a million semi-pornographic catalogues every day -- every day! Grok that! A million a day! So we went to various Victoria's Secret cash registers and exorcised them... even if I'm Mayor, we'll exorcise the demons from the Starbucks, the Gap, and Nike.

The new Disney store they're gonna put up in Times Square, if the National Labor Committee tells us that they still have sweatshops, the City of New York will put those Disney officials in the Tombs. We'll put them in the Tombs with Ray Kelly!

We noticed that last month the polls had "Other" candidates for Mayor at less than one percent, but this week the Marist poll had "Other" at seven percent.

I want to be called Brother Other!

We hear you were at an "other" candidates forum last night.

This was our fourth or fifth candidates' forum at the Hudson Guild at West 26th. It was all the third-party candidates, I think. Don't think I'd been with all of the candidates before.

Was [libertarian candidate] Joseph Dobrian there?

He was trying to run the meeting! He's against Big Brother while being Big Brother himself. But I'm Brother Other! I want to run this city with Jimmy McMillan! The Rent's Too Damn High!

One thing I talked about at the forum was the Stella D'Oro strike -- they will be our saints, the survivors of that 11-month, brave heroic action up at 238th street in the Bronx . They're saints and we're gonna bring them up on stage in our big show at the High Line Ballroom. And that's my plug! 1 p.m., with the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, and the New Hot Democracy. That's Sunday, November 1! Nobody turned away!