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CORPRATS

CorpRats are a pantomime mirror designed to reflect the ugliness and cruelty of putting profit over planet back onto the those who chase money at the expense of a sustainable planet, over the health of people, over the health of ecosystems.

The CorpRats are personification of the system and how it self-sustains, there is no global conspiracy of bankers, instead we have a culture that praises/reinforces greed, cunning, short termism and hoarders at the expense of a sustainable future.

When Being a CorpRat
  • The CorpRats own the Media
  • The CorpRats own the Government
  • The CorpRats own your dreams
  • The CorpRats bribe, corrupt, pollute and kill

Yet the CorpRats are what society aspires to be, Scrooge has taught us nothing!

So revel in your worst selves, no truth will hold you to account. You will always win, you cannot be cancelled, money conquers all!

The original narrative of the CorpRats is: sell gas, sell coal, sell oil, for the climate crises effects the poor. And when the poor come for us, we sell Walls, we sell Guns, and Bombs.

Roles
  • Corprat - to be loud, scene stealing, walking egos
  • Unpaid Interns - to carry props, to take photos and to be bullied by the CorpRats
A picture tells a millions words

Whilst it is the role of the CorpRats to entertain the protestors and have bankers/etc question who they are. It is the photo that will live on.

Stay in Character,even when walking around and not engaging with people. If you have a speech bubble up and it is angled right, then someone is going to get a great photo.

Always be on the look out for the iconic shot

  • Decide on the narrative prior to the action
  • What to have in the background
  • If you want the speech bubbles a certain way/order
  • What props you want in shot (aka massive pile of sh*t)
  • Once you have a shot you think will work, if you need to attract photographers let off smoke flares.

Environment

The police/judiciary/the infrastructure are all yours, make it clear. You can give the illusion of giving orders to the police, so as to highlight them being the puppets of the natural environment-destroying institutions. Give them praise, bribes and promises of recognition.

Protestors

You are not there to attack the protesters, but to highlight the truth of their actions. There is no calling them jobless, instead praise the plebs for paying their taxes to fund the police, who will spend the day protecting the CorpRat assets. Cause after all there would be no police if they relied on the CorpRats to pay any taxes.

This has the double effect of highlighting to passersby the truth of the situation and also demoralising the police who will spend the day stood around protecting the assets of millionaires whilst people who care about the future are paying their taxes whilst also doing the protest.

Making boasts about how the media are portraying activists as jobless scroungers and doing what you told them, and it's much easier to gang up on people once they are vilified in the press. Just look at the refugees.

There are plenty of crimes you can boast about as a CorpRat but be thanking the police for arresting protestors.

Naming convention

By having a character name it is a useful hook for remembering your persona. We have previously gone with such names as:

  • Genocide
  • Ecocide
  • Greed
  • Patriachy
  • Exploitation
Props
  • Specific Action Prop (We have had the energy charter, Media Blackout banner, a Rocket Launcher/Arms Fair leaflets)
  • Speech bubbles
  • Briefcases
  • Lots of Brown Envelopes with ££££ on them, and prop money sticking out

Using CorpRats for Dirty Water

The CorpRats are destroying our waterways because of their corporate greed, they don’t care about the loss of biodiversity or the hazards to human health and mental wellbeing of the destruction of our natural environment.

“WHO CARES IF WE PUMP SHIT INTO THE RIVER?” ONLY THE IDIOTS THAT WANT TO SWIM IN IT, I PREFER TO FLY TO SOMEWHERE NICE FOR A SWIM.."

Important

Speciesism - by Dr. Steve Cooke, Associate Professor of Political Theory, University of Leicester.

Nonhuman animals suffer serious and systematic harms at the hands of humans. Part of the reason for this is that their moral status is downplayed or not recognised.

Something that’s both a symptom of way nonhuman animals are valued, and sometimes a cause of it, is that of names animal species are used pejoratively. Calling someone a cow, a chicken, or a rat is a way of drawing upon negative attitudes associated with that animal. These insults can serve both to dehumanise the people they’re aimed at, and to reinforce negative views of the animals they reference.

Obviously, a small group of activists drawing upon negative associations of rats to shine a light on corporate practices is vanishingly unlikely to contribute in any meaningful way to harms to other species. This is especially true given the environmental nature of the protests. Any harms would be tiny in comparison with those done by your targets, and very likely to be outweighed by good achieved. However, it is worth keeping in mind, particularly when you think of the kinds of associations you want people to draw from your performances. Perhaps focus on attributes that are good for rats, but not what we want in corporations: stealthy, cunning, hoarders, sneaky, etc. rather than drawing upon other common associations: untrustworthiness, dirtiness, vermin etc.

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