The world’s meanest oilmen get a Coke at Occupy DC

A new marketing campaign for the Koch brothers?

Last Friday night, after a day of live blogging the ASPO-USA conference near Capitol Hill, I walked ten blocks over the the Washington Convention Center to join Occupy DC and some environmental groups in a protest against the Koch brothers. Inside the center Koch front group Americans for Prosperity was holding their Defense of the American Dream Summit featuring among others Herman Cain, Grover Norquist and gotcha web filmmaker Andrew Breitbart.

But outside was about 500 marchers, mostly people under age 30, protesting the world’s meanest oilmen and the ways they use their billions to corrupt US politicians. The march was peaceful, except for a scary incident where the driver of a Lexus drove through a group of protesters, striking at least one man, but was released by police because they claimed they couldn’t verify what happened.

Also outside was some guerrilla video projected on the wall of the convention center. There was a video on the Keystone XL Pipeline and another featuring Jack Black as a Koch lobbyist. But the highlight for me was a send-up of the old Coke ad from the seventies, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke,” put out by the activist group The Other 98%.

With high production values, the video was shot to look and sound like the original. Except that the lyrics are changed. My favorite verse is the one about the “phony culture war” and the tea.

Watch “Koch Brothers — It’s the Evil Thing.”

— Erik Curren, Transition Voice