Friday, August 17, 2012

#WhenLifeGivesYouLemons... Send Them To Congress!


Activist groups Stay Occupied and The Fresh Juice Party have teamed up to create a safe way for the American People to air their grievances without getting arrested, or sprayed with rubber bullets!  From August 20th, National Lemonade Day, until August 29th, National Lemon Juice Day, Americans are encouraged to use various social media platforms to Tweet #LemonInstagrams2Congress


Lemon laws are American state laws that provide a remedy for purchasers of cars in order to compensate for cars that repeatedly fail to meet standards of quality and performance. These vehicles are called lemons. The federal lemon law (the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act) protects citizens of all states.  There is currently no such thing for governmental bodies and programs that fail to meet standards of quality and performance... hmmm...

The community social media art project #LemonInstagrams2Congress first launched In Solidarity with the Occupy May 1st General Strike (#M1GS), as a creative non-violent means of enabling the American People to air their grievances, as protected by The First Amendment of the Constitution.  Generations young and old are using social media applications such as Instagram and Pinterest to upload pictures of lemons inscribed with grievances; and sharing platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and TweetCongress.Org, to send the images to members of Congress and share globally in order to engage in meaningful dialogue designed to create effective change.  Celebrities and activists already involved in this project dedicated to making civic engagement fun and accessible, include: Activist Band, The Fresh Juice Party, Actress Q'orianka Kilcher, Musician PonyBoy of Los Marijuanos, Internet Radio Personality Steve Gelder, Filmmaker Melissa Balin, members of Los Angeles Community Action Network and members of Occupy LA.

Between August 20th (#A20) and August 29th (#A29) people can participate by uploading their pics or e-mailing them directly to StayOccupied@gmail.com

"Participation Sans Intimidation." Filmmaker, Melissa Balin, explains, "The current political climate has instilled fear in the People to express themselves out in the streets.  We hope that this will be a fun, safe way for the next generation to learn about the concept of transparent participatory democracy, which is one of the Principles of Solidarity of the Occupy Wall Street Movement.  We have chosen #A20 - #A29 in celebration of California's effective lemon law and in the hopes of raising further awareness to other important issues like organic farm-to-table practices, encouraging small business entrepreneurship, and protection against politically motivated selective enforcement, such as protecting small children from receiving fines or citations for their neighborhood lemonade stands- in a creative and non-threatening way to those city officials whom we have seen exhibit a propensity to handcuff in other public forums."

The project will become a traveling exhibit planned to arrive in Washington D.C. in time to help Congress celebrate National Fresh Squeezed Juice Week January 17-23, 2013.  

To find out more about The #LemonInstagrams2Congress Project, please visit http://StayOccupied.blogspot.com

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