'If The People Pie, The Leaders Will Swallow'

Ecologist, The, April, 2000 by Paul Kingsnorth

Over the last two years, members of the Biotic Baking Brigade have flung lovingly-baked organic pies into the faces of some of the world's most powerful people, from Bill Gates to Milton Friedman. They call it 'pie-rect action'. Paul Kingsnorth asks Special Agent Appel, One of the BBB's leading lights, what he thinks he's playing at.

When Agent Apple first appeared in The Ecologist's editorial office, back in February, he could scarcely believe what he'd walked into. British readers may remember a minor media furore around that time, when someone calling themselves an environmental activist publicly rammed a chocolate eclair into the face of the UK's Agriculture Minister. The Ecologist spent an afternoon fielding phone calls from journalists after it was discovered that we had briefly hired her to help us organise an event. The editorial team ended that day not inconsiderably stressed, but Agent Apple (pictured left) was in his element. 'It's the Global Pastry Uprising!' he kept saying, with a glint in his eye. 'I tell you -- if the people pie, the leaders will swallow!'

Agent Apple lives, sleeps and breathes pastry. He believes that pies could change the world, and in this belief he is not alone. For Apple (his real identity is a closely guarded secret) is a founder member of the Biotic Baking Brigade (BBB), one of the most passionate, original and, frankly, bizarre bands of radical activists around. If you haven't heard of them yet, this probably Won't bethe last time you do. For the Global Pastry Uprising is snowballing at surprising speed.

JUST DESSERTS

The BBB describes itself as 'an underground network of militant bakers who deliver just desserts to those in power'. Their philosophy is simple. They believe that the future of the planet is threatened by a world view that puts profit, trade and share values above life itself. And instead of waiting for politicians, bureaucrats and self-styled 'NGO leaders' to tackle this problem, they have decided to take it on themselves -- with pastry, custard and cream. And so, they publicly throw pies -- homebaked, vegan, organic pies, mind -- into the faces of people they identify as powerful, unaccountable and responsible for crimes against the planet. They stand against 'industrial society in all its forms; against neoliberalism and technocracy, and against corporate crooks and their allies in government'. They stand for 'ecology, bioregionalism, human-scale economies -- and proper gastronomics'.

Apple is one of their most active voices, and he is the perfect frontman for such a shadowy organisation. Affable, intelligent and very, well, sensible-looking, you could pass him in the street and never imagine you had come into contact with a member of an underground movement that is fast becoming legendary -- probably the least violent and most entertaining revolutionary faction in history. Only the passionate light in his eyes when he talks about the 'New World Order' betrays his true calling.

'We live in a terrifying time,' he says. 'We're on the verge of ecological collapse, social structures are disintegrating, fascism -- and I don't use that term lightly -- is on the rise, dissent is being criminalised.' Meanwhile, he says, the 'traditional Left', which should be an active opposition, 'has become a boring, bureaucratic, unproductive movement. We want to draw attention to these problems in a way that makes people sit up and listen'.

WHY PIE?

This all sounds fair enough. But the obvious question arises: why pies? How is chucking flans around supposed to change anything?

'Actually, we have found that the pie is a tremendous vehicle to communicate issues that otherwise wouldn't get an airing in the mainstream media,' says Apple, enthusiastically. 'It's a chink in the media's armour. For example, one of the BBB's first actions was the pieing of Milton Friedman (the free-market economics guru who inspired the 1980s generation of right-wing politicians, including Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan), in October 1998. He was at a conference discussing how to privatise American education -- how to take state education, this minimal concession to ordinary working people, and hand it over to corporations like Pepsi and Channel One. There was a huge picket outside -- hundreds of people with placards, shouting slogans -- and the media didn't cover it. But we got in, delivered one well-placed coconut creme pie, and we were all over the media, talking about the impact of his neoliberalism on the world. Pie-throwing is a form of visual Esperanto which communicates a message of dissent wi th which people can identify.'

Friedman was one of the BBB's early hits. Another was Bill Gates, the world's richest man, who was flanned in late 1997 by the Belgian-based group Patissiers sans Frontieres. Monsanto boss Robert Shapiro was next, pied in a conference hail after delivering one of his notorious speeches about feeding the world with genetically modified crops. The London-based PIE (People Insurgent Everywhere) pied the then head of the World Trade Organisation, Renato Ruggiero, just a week later. 'Only 4 per cent of people in the UK had even heard of the WTO before Ruggiero was pied,' says Apple now. 'That incident put a name and face to a destructive organisation that had been largely secret.' From then on, it was no holds barred.