When I heard the news about the retrospective legislation being rammed through Parliament, I think went through the classic ‘stages’. First I was in denial (“They can’t do it. They can’t!”), then I was angry (“We need to storm Parliament!”), then I got depressed (“Crap, it’s time to leave the country.”) and eventually I accepted the situation. After explaining the situation to my girlfriend (yes I’m sorry ladies, I’m taken ) and thinking things over at work, in one moment I synthesised three ideas: Bernard’s ‘banana republic’ statement, previous Libz activism where we gave out free cigarettes, and my girlfriend’s idea that someone should protest at Parliament.

Banana republic … protest … give out free … bananas … ah ha! The idea for Banana Republic Day was born.

This was at 1 am, while I was at work. After I got home (3 am), I sent a message to a supersecret group of libertarians to explain the idea. After a modicum of sleep, I awoke at 9.30 to find myriads of Libz enthusiastic about the idea, and things almost swinging into action without me! I quickly wrote and sent out a press release, made a flyer, threw up a blog post, and started calling, emailling and txting various people to make sure it was all organised.

Somehow everything came together, and we ended up down at Parliament at 11.30 with four 13 kg boxes of bananas, 400 flyers and a gratifyingly large number of Libz and other volunteers ready to accost passers-by with the offer of free bananas. It was a beautiful day for handing out bananas: blue sky, sunshine and a cool breeze.
Banana Republic Day was off to a great start. The bananas worked tremendously. People smile at a person standing with large bunches of bananas, giving them out freely. And after you give someone a free banana, they never refuse a leaflet. Every one of the people I handed a leaflet to started reading it straight away.

It was definitely a group effort. Libz Bernard, Craig, Phil, Richard and Colin all turned up (and bought bananas!), as well as a surprising number of other people, including Jordan King and Mike Heine (both ACT people). Julian, Peter and DPF helped out on the information superhighway, among others.

So our super-short-notice protest got donations, laughter, agreement, and heaps of thank-you’s. We got a lot of mentions on the blogosphere, and a Herald item which was featured on the front page of their site. Altogether we handed out more than 300 flyers and 52 kgs of bananas, we brightened the day for a lot of people, and we got the Libz message out there. Every one of those people now has a story to tell of how they got a free banana on Banana Republic Day.

Posted by Luke H on Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 at 9:52 pm.