Prop 23 Fail – Meme Team Attacks

Lipstick on a Texas Oil Dollar – Prop 23 Goes Down

Here’s a new series of videos we did to help destroy Prop 23 – the Texas Oil powergrab hell bent on buying out CA government, all just to avoid fines for polluting, and to kill their clean energy competition. We made one film for each major demographic affected by Prop 23, and a summary of all the issues by the super cool Benjamin Bratt; his reputation helped us target latino voters, whom had largely been ignored up to that point.

The idea was to use memes – internet video phenomena often repeated – to catch people where they’re already browsing on line. We ended up only having time to hit the Mac/PC meme and playing with the “I’m a Celebrity So Listen to Me” genre. We’d like to explore this idea further.

By the time we were asked to come on – three weeks before the election – the oil companies had begun to back off, as poll numbers showed it was a lost cause. Thus, the question became, “How hard can we rub it in? How deep between the legs can a Texas oil baron’s tail go?”

We wanted to make sure the answer was, “So far that it’ll make them think twice before trying to buy out a state that’s determined to clean up their environment and move beyond fossil fuel addiction as a way of life.” We worked with a great group of activists and actor Benjamin Bratt for a quirky campaign, released just days before the election.

Background
Proposition 23 (and its nasty friend Prop 26) would have suspended AB 32, Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. If enacted by voters, Prop 23 will freeze the provisions of AB 32 until California’s unemployment rate drops to 5.5% or below for four consecutive quarters. California’s unemployment rate, which currently hovers around 12%, has been at 5.5% or below for four consecutive quarters just four times since 1980. It would have forced new green jobs to go bye bye or move out of the country, killing our strongest growth sector.

Follow The Money

Check this out: Blue flags are Yes on Prop 23 funders. Green flags are No on Prop 23 funders. See a pattern?

From KQED News. View the whole map here.