Occupy Your Future

Watch & Share our Occupy-themed Video Blog (Vlog)! It's like a mini-edition of this e'Zine

As the grassroots organizers behind the hit film, The Corporation, we are embarking on an exciting new phase to reign in the corporate "psychopath." We're in the midst of launching an "Occupy Your Future" campaign to build on — and pay tribute to — the Occupy movement that has energized and activated people on the ground, the world over.

Since the explosion of #Occupy this past fall, we've seen renewed interest in the film and it's been cited as essential viewing for those want to understand how we got to this point. Now more than ever, weaknesses in the corporate globalization model have been exposed and momentum is building to keep corporations accountable and reduce the harm they cause. Talk about a teachable moment! And it's great timing because we're about to release a new educational version.

Our hope for this new 3-part version for high schools is that it will not only be a valuable educational tool, but will also be an engagement platform for students and teachers alike, spawning Corporation clubs in schools across North America. Imagine teenagers and adults huddled together in classrooms strategizing solutions to corporate misrule! As Joel Bakan, author of the bestselling book behind the film (with a new one hot off the presses: Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children) says, "schools are probably the most important site of social struggle that we have."

This new high school version will be packaged with some exciting extras such as the Story of Stuff videos, our own short film, The Corporation in the Grade 8 Classroom, and an interview with Hello Cool World's founder, Katherine Dodds discussing how branding can be 'occupied' for good. It was a conclusion she came to during her early days at Adbusters magazine, the training ground for a few of our Hello Cool Worlders, which is itself enjoying a boost in notoriety for being the original brains behind #OccupyWallStreet.

Hello Cool World will be acting as the Canadian Educational distributors for the film, and we are trying to create a new kind of model that builds on the notion of "fairer trade." We offer a higher return to filmmakers and use our profits to fund the campaign. It will allow us to produce more e'Zines and connect our network with current initiatives to take on the corporate giants, such as Move To Amend's Occupy The Courts day of protest in the USA. Actions like these seem intimidating to us as individuals but, if Occupy has shown us anything, it's that working together we can challenge the 1% and make our voices heard. 

—Hello Cool World  & The Corporation