The Overpass Light Brigade originally intended to stand outside the main downtown Milwaukee post office last night with a message about corporate tax evaders for last minute filers. However, when we heard the horrific news out of Boston we knew we needed to craft a new message that conveyed our sorrow for those affected by the day's tragic events. It was raining hard, raining a cold springtime rain that soaks the ground for today's sun, and that spikes chill right through your warmest clothes. I was surprised at how many people showed up in spite of the weather. Our "Holders of the Lights" are really fantastic! There we stood in the dripping rain, shivering, talking about the day's violence, even while more folks arrived. We staged our action underneath a massive spaghetti overpass that feeds from downtown out to the big arteries. It was oddly still as we took the letter panels out of the back of the van, turned them on one by one, handed them out. We mourn. Yet again, we mourn.
In the preceding week, we had been collaborating with our growing Light Brigade Network as well as an impressive list of activists and organizers targeting Tax Evaders, those corporate tax dodgers who take much from the country, and pay little in return, even while convincing Americans that somehow we owe them the entire earth. We had been engaging nationally coordinated actions all week with Projectionists, video-game developers, US Uncut, social media experts and a dozen Light Brigades. It was exhausting and satisfying to see the work unfold, and to witness the potential of our loosely affiliated tactical media movement. When the news out of Boston hit, our final night's action abruptly shifted, not only in Milwaukee, but in Brooklyn, in Massachusetts, in Hilo, Hawaii. Here are a few of the pictures: messages of mourning limned in light. As The Illuminator and our new chapter, the NYC Light Brigade so aptly projected, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that."