The mission of this state-owned bank is not profit, but to serve the people of the North Dakota. No risky derivatives or subprime loans. Here’s another way to do business.
Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren on How Wall Street Got Away with Murder
Michael interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter, Chris Hedges, about the ills of capitalism.
Worker-owned co-op Union Cab company of Madison, Wisconsin: Taxi drivers in Wisconsin go all crazy for workers’ control.
A more in-depth look at worker owned co-ops that includes Michael interviewing Tom Webb, a worker co-op expert from Canada. They talk about how to bring DEMOCRACY to the workplace and to our economy and about the rise of worker-owned co-ops worldwide (1 billion people are members of co-ops and 3 billion have some or most of their needs met by cooperatives). Webb also lays out how capitalism feeds our worst problems including environmental destruction and why cooperatives are better at social and environmental justice.
A powerful extended interview and scenes filmed in Miami-Dade County with land rights advocate/organizer, Max Rameau (Take Back the Land). Max appears in the film in the scene where the Trody family in Miami defies a court ordered eviction and moves back into their foreclosed home. Max is brazen in confronting the criminality of the massive foreclosures of low income families that are commonplace today. Max: "Housing is a human right ... We need to advance the cause of justice, to rethink and then put into action a new relationship to land ... Stop helping the banks. Use land and vacant houses not to make a profit, but in the way it's intended: to house human beings ... This benefits everyone: the neighborhood and the family who gets a home, and the bank who gets a home kept in better condition than if left abandoned."
In a truly heartfelt conversation, Michael and his friend/priest who married him, Dick Preston, speak about the clash between Christian values and Capitalist values.
Extended interview by Michael of Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland, member of the Congressional Black Caucus) filmed on a D.C. park bench in 2009. The interview about the financial crisis, it's causes and the people hit hardest is raw and personal. Congressman Cummings feels the pain of his Baltimore constituents who just want to be treated fairly. His anger is deep as he wonders if we are working to regulate the wrong kind of system — and if maybe, just maybe, capitalism is a system we need to discard.
How to downsize a city synonymous with poverty, unemployment, and capitalist failure — Flint is a third-world, unlivable city in the United States. Michael talks to old friend, Dan Kildee (Chairperson of the Genesee County Land Bank) and Treasurer of Genesee County (Flint), Michigan. The Land Bank aims to make Flint — where 40% of properties have been abandoned — more sustainable by taking back the abandoned factories/houses/businesses and demolishing & cleaning them up, then, offering the land to neighbors if they agree to use it for a garden or keep it up. Thousands of plots are now being utilized in this attempt to make urban Flint sustainable, safer and more livable for those human inhabitants abandoned by capitalism.
Capitalism & the food industry: - Let’s Go Local - Michael Pollan - Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farmer – Petaluma, CA - City Slickers - Backyard garden program, West Oakland, CA - A non-profit establishing and supporting back yard organic gardens (86 gardens as of May 2009).
Blast from the past: President Jimmy Carter’s July 15th, 1970 “Energy Speech” that comes down on our supreme values of owning and consuming. What if we had listened to Carter?