Photo Credit: Occupy George

The written law USC 333 states: “Whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.” I gave this some thought.

I recalled reading in Street Directory that a dollar bill can travel 4191 miles in three years. That’s a little over 1300 miles per year – ambitious for a piece of parchment.

There is something liberating and even a bit ridiculous about the whole ordeal. It’s a form of protest that travels in the back of someone’s pocket or lives in the cash register of a gas station. And maybe that’s why defacing money as protest makes a whole lot of sense to me. I love the idea of spreading knowledge and awareness through a green paper form of George Washington. Money circulates and along with it the words imprinted. Looking back on history, it was done by the British suffragettes who imprinted Vote for Women on coins.

Occupy George is part of the Occupy Wall Street movements. They protest against the 1%, who, according to Wikipedia, are“the wealthiest people in society because they have an unfair disproportionate share of capital, political influence, and the means of production.” Occupy Wall Street fights in slogan – “We the 99% for the rest of society that will no longer take the unequal distribution of wealth.” Occupy George takes the statistics of the movement and stamps it on money. They have 5 different stamps and on their website encourage their supporters to print out the statistics on the money and use it. Or in my case, I visited the Brooklyn Museum’s Agitprop! exhibit and stamped it in red myself. Occupy George made sure that the stamps will not cover the serial numbers so they and their supporters will not get in trouble with the law. They and [I] are redistributing wealth, statistics and awareness that will travel 1300 miles.

Money is powerful and this form of protest is even more powerful.