Yes Men 2.0: The Next Generation

Dear Friend,

For years now, and especially since releasing our film, we've been been flooded with emails saying we should go after evil company A, or evil politician B, or military-industrial complex C. 

Naturally, we can't. There are too many evildoers, and far too few of us. But the good news is, there are lots of groups and individuals who can surely do better than us, perhaps with a little coaching and guidance. 

That's why we're launching the Yes Lab, a series of brainstorms and trainings to help activist groups carry out Yes-Men-style activist projects on their own. We'll give advice and facilitate, but participants will carry out actions themselves, without us. 

We've already started working with three different groups—stay tuned this fall—but to really ramp up, and be annoying to as many big-time criminals as possible, we'll need to hire someone to organize things, and someone else to rally our tens of thousands of subscribers into ongoing projects. (Then, soon, instead of emails like this, you'll be getting emails asking you to participate in actions near you!) 

We're aiming to raise $50,000 for an initial 6 months while we build momentum and find other sources of funding. If you can chip in something to help, we'll retaliate by sending you some priceless, wacky or idiotic stuff from the archive of weirdness we've collected over the past 12 years. (Trying to find cola-flavored condoms or a nice human-flesh candle? Yup, we got 'em, and more.) 

Also, the first $10,000 in donations will be matched by a very generous donor who really wants to see the Yes Lab get going full steam. So if you decide you can spare some money to spread havoc among those who need it, not only will you receive a unique grab-bag of goodies, or a totally weird and unique service... but your donation will be worth twice as much! 

If our outlandish wares don't tempt you enough to forego the June rent, you can still help us out by sharing this with everyone you think might help out. 

And most importantly: if you're with an activist organization, and would like to work with the Yes Lab to develop some projects around an issue you're working on, please drop us a line at YesLab at theyesmen dot org, or via our contact form. We'd love to hear from you, even if it could be a while before we have the capacity to really move forward with projects! 

Yours in productive bedlam,

The Yes Men