Editor’s Note: May Day is approaching quickly with just over two weeks left, injecting new enthusiasm throughout the movement. As we find new strategies to voice our concerns to the public, we revisit an old one: here, we present again occupier Bill Allyn’s use of creativity to extend his message over the Internet and ultimately the mainstream media.

This is the story of how, for 3 minutes, I occupied the mainstream media (well, sort of). First, I wrote a poem, and put out a graphic version on Facebook (it was Sept 28th, 2011—11 days after OWS began.)

By the time I woke up the next morning (ok, afternoon…), someone had done a spoken-word version on Youtube, which already had about 700 views. That version now has over 43,000 views, and there are scads of copycats and different versions, including Greek and Portuguese subtitled versions.

Then I turned it into a song in my little home “studio.” I had written the song at the same time in late September, but for some reason didn’t release it on Youtube until February 13th, 2012. Here is the song & video.

Within 12 hours of posting this song/video to Youtube, Iran’s Press TV contacted me for an interview (about 3 minutes), which was broadcast globally.

I don’t know if it’s inspiring to anyone else, but it is certainly inspiring to me to know that I can write a poem/song in order to make my voice more heard, and it actually worked, and got me (a nobody, trust me), on world news… It really can work! It did for me. I got good exposure for the Occupy Movement, and 3 minutes of my “15-minutes-of-fame”, so now I’m only owed 12 more minutes. 

-Bill Allyn-