Capitalism: A love story
I just finished watching Michael Moore's latest documentary and his commentary on the 2008 Financial Crisis. What Moore does best, in my opinion is not in his deep fact research or his witty megaphone antics outside headquarters, but rather, in the way he is able to narrate a story and string together biographies or normal, average, American families just trying to get by. He is able to adapt himself and weave his life story in order to get more "street cred".
In Capitalism: A love story his starting point begins in his hometown (perhaps his greatest muse) of Flint, Michigan, a city greatly affected by foreclosures and decaying industry, as his father, an assembly worker at General Motors for thirty years, has been witness to in his town. Some of the points of the movie are both heartbreaking and inspiring. One of the most difficult moments to watch in the movie, and a phenomenon I had been completely unaware of before, was the practice of companies taking out life insurance policies for their employees, without alerting neither their workers nor their relatives...in short, profiting from their employees' deaths.
The strength of community "people power", an electric current that seemed to build up in the time period between the Financial Crisis in late 2008 and the swearing into office of Obama in 2009 included some wonderful moments. A more detailed understanding of the Chicago sit-in, as a result of a company laying off workers, with three days notice and without giving them due pay, was just one of the examples gaining wind in the country. People at the bottom of had always been told what to do, taking power in their own hands when they began to get fed up with how much they were being pushed around for the benefit of corporations.
A neighborhood taking back a house on the street to give to a displaced family after it had been claimed by a bank after going into forclosure were also equally inspiring. Suddenly it seemed many people in the country were questioning what was wrong and right and they structure of the system that could create unjust rules. People were choosing civil disobedience and a new wave of activism in communities was being born. It is all very powerful.
Moore also questions the attachments often made between Capitalism as being fundamentally American, therefore wholesome and even holy. His main argument is that capitalism as a system has actually proven to be at odds with our democratic political system.
I could go on forever, but PLEASE watch this video. In I believe his last state of the union, my favorite president, FDR, opted for a radio speech rather than one in person on a podium due to his ailing health (he would die later in the year). Nonetheless, he invited press to his home to make it a point that they filmed a very special announcement that he had to make. Somehow, this monumental footage was lost until Moore began doing research for his film.
Well, here it is, and it is amazing that the conversation and urgency FDR sees for having a second bill of rights to focus on economic rights as a realization of stability, security and happiness has taken so long to come back into dialogue. It saddens me to think that not so much progress has been made since this video was filmed by FDR. This 2nd bill would have made so that many of the problems people in America faced following the crisis, homelessness, joblessness, lack of healthcare, etc, could have been seen as denied rights.
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