Fwd: Life Among the 1% ...a letter from Michael Moore
giovanni_re
--
I'm subscribed to MM's email announcement list. I get something every
week or two. There have been a bunch of interesting items through
recently, some stories from his current book.
But, I decided not to send them to BTIP-Global, cause there wasn't
really much other stuff coming through, & i didn't want to turn BTIP
into the MM channel. ;)
He even came to UC Berkeley for a talk about 3 weeks ago. & I thought
about 5 times about sending that post to the BTIPG list. It had an
exact Berkeley specificity!!! But, I decided not too. I figured
people reading this list who were interested in his stuff would have
subscribed to his announcement list, & they'd know he was in town.
&, I didn't want to turn this into the MM channel. ! ;)
Anyway, a week or so I saw he had an Oakland event planned.
Now, I was born & raised in Oakland, California.
A week or so ago I was near downtown & happened to go past the Occupy
Oakland people in the plaza outside city hall (14th & Broadway), &
didn't know at that time what it was, but suspected.
A friend of mine mentioned the event to someone else when I was with
them, a few days later.
Last night, I was returning from the doctor, & was radio channel
surfing, when I happened to land on KPFA, 94.1 FM, and they were doing
some live cell phone reports from people in the area. Police blocking
some roads, & people moving from place to place.
Today, I got this item in my inbox.
I went to public school from preschool to 9th grade, & Catholic school
from 10-12 in Oakland. Mike went to Catholic school. He mentions below
about his broken car, & I had an old car in those days. He talks about
when he made his first $3 million - oh well, I'm still working on it.
;)
He say's he'll be in Oakland tomorrow afternoon. By pure coincidence,
I've had an appointment scheduled near there since a few weeks ago.
So, I thought I'd give you all another exciting installment in the BTIP
Michael Moore channel. :)
(BTW, Oakland's mayor, Jean Quan, a Chinese lady raised in Oakland
(IIRC) is a Berkeley grad. She & the current mayor of San Francisco, Ed
Lee, the only 2 chinese ancestry mayors (of large cities?) in the USA
were invited to the US White house a few months ago to attend a dinner
with the visiting head of China.)
berkti...@googlegroups.comMaybe I'll see you (or him!) down there in
Oakland tomorrow.
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Join in the Global monthly meetings, via voice, about all Free SW HW & Culture
http://sites.google.com/site/berkeleytip/
----- Original message -----
From: "Michael Moore" <mail...@michaelmoore.com>
To: joh...@fastmail.us
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:11:46 -0400
Subject: Life Among the 1% ...a letter from Michael Moore
Life Among the 1% ...a letter from Michael Moore
October 27th, 2011
Friends,
Twenty-two years ago this coming Tuesday, I stood with a group of
factory workers, students and the unemployed in the middle of the
downtown of my birthplace, Flint, Michigan, to announce that the
Hollywood studio, Warner Bros., had purchased the world rights to
distribute my first movie, 'Roger & Me.' A reporter asked me, "How much
did you sell it for?"
"Three million dollars!" I proudly exclaimed. A cheer went up from the
union guys surrounding me. It was absolutely unheard of for one of us in
the working class of Flint (or anywhere) to receive such a sum of money
unless one of us had either robbed a bank or, by luck, won the Michigan
lottery. On that sunny November day in 1989, it was like I had won the
lottery -- and the people I had lived and struggled with in Michigan
were thrilled with my success. It was like, one of us had made it, one
of us finally had good fortune smile upon us. The day was filled with
high-fives and "Way-ta-go Mike!"s. When you are from the working class
you root for each other, and when one of you does well, the others are
beaming with pride -- not just for that one person's success, but for
the fact that the team had somehow won, beating the system that was
brutal and unforgiving and which ran a game that was rigged against us.
We knew the rules, and those rules said that we factory town rats do not
get to make movies or be on TV talk shows or have our voice heard on any
national stage. We were to shut up, keep our heads down, and get back to
work. If by some miracle one of us escaped and commandeered a mass
audience and some loot to boot -- well, holy mother of God, watch out! A
bully pulpit and enough cash to raise a ruckus -- that was an incendiary
combination, and it only spelled trouble for those at the top.
Until that point I had been barely getting by on unemployment,
collecting $98 a week. Welfare. The dole. My car had died back in April
so I had gone seven months with no vehicle. Friends would take me out to
dinner, always coming up with an excuse to celebrate or commemorate
something and then picking up the check so I would not have to feel the
shame of not being able to afford it.
And now, all of a sudden, I had three million bucks! What would I do
with it? There were men in suits making many suggestions to me, and I
could see how those without a strong moral sense of social
responsibility could be easily lead down the "ME" path and quickly
forget about the "WE."
So I made some easy decisions back in 1989:
1. I would first pay all my taxes. I told the guy who did my 1040 not to
declare any deductions other than the mortgage and to pay the full
federal, state and city tax rate. I proudly contributed nearly 1 million
dollars for the privilege of being a citizen of this great country.
2. Of the remaining $2 million, I decided to divide it up the way I once
heard the folksinger/activist Harry Chapin tell me how he lived: "One
for me, one for the other guy." So I took half the money -- $1 million
-- and established a foundation to give it all away.
3. The remaining million went like this: I paid off all my debts, paid
off the debts of some friends and family members, bought my parents a
new refrigerator, set up college funds for our nieces and nephews,
helped rebuild a black church that had been burned down in Flint, gave
out a thousand turkeys at Thanksgiving, bought filmmaking equipment to
send to the Vietnamese (my own personal reparations for a country we had
ravaged), annually bought 10,000 toys to give to Toys for Tots at
Christmas, got myself a new American-made Honda, and took out a mortgage
on an apartment above a Baby Gap in New York City.
4. What remained went into a simple, low-interest savings account. I
made the decision that I would never buy a share of stock (I didn't
understand the casino known as the New York Stock Exchange and I did not
believe in investing in a system I did not agree with).
5. Finally, I believed the concept of making money off your money had
created a greedy, lazy class who didn't produce any product, just misery
and fear among the populace. They invented ways to buy out companies and
then shut them down. They dreamed up schemes to play with people's
pension funds as if it were their own money. They demanded companies
keep posting record profits (which was accomplished by firing thousands
and eliminating health benefits for those who remained). I made the
decision that if I was going to earn a living, it would be done from my
own sweat and ideas and creativity. I would produce something tangible,
something others could own or be entertained by or learn from. My work
would create employment for others, good employment with middle class
wages and full health benefits.
I went on to make more movies, produce TV series and write books. I
never started a project with the thought, "I wonder how much money I can
make at this?" And by never letting money be the motivating force for
anything, I simply did exactly what I wanted to do. That attitude kept
the work honest and unflinching -- and that, in turn I believe, resulted
in millions of people buying tickets to these films, tuning in to my TV
shows, and buying my books.
Which is exactly what has driven the Right crazy when it comes to me.
How did someone from the left get such a wide mainstream audience?! This
just isn't supposed to happen (Noam Chomsky, sadly, will not be booked
on The View today, and Howard Zinn, shockingly, didn't make the New York
Times bestseller list until after he died). That's how the media machine
is rigged -- you are not supposed to hear from those who would
completely change the system to something much better. Only wimpy
liberals who urge caution and compromise and mild reforms get to have
their say on the op-ed pages or Sunday morning chat shows.
Somehow, I found a crack through the wall and made it through. I feel
very blessed that I have this life -- and I take none of it for granted.
I believe in the lessons I was taught back in Catholic school -- that if
you end up doing well, you have an even greater responsibility to those
who don't fare the same. "The last shall be first and the first shall be
last." Kinda commie, I know, but the idea was that the human family was
supposed to divide up the earth's riches in a fair manner so that all of
God's children would have a life with less suffering.
I do very well -- and for a documentary filmmaker, I do extremely well.
That, too, drives conservatives bonkers. "You're rich because of
capitalism!" they scream at me. Um, no. Didn't you take Econ 101?
Capitalism is a system, a pyramid scheme of sorts, that exploits the
vast majority so that the few at the top can enrich themselves more. I
make my money the old school, honest way by making things. Some years I
earn a boatload of cash. Other years, like last year, I don't have a job
(no movie, no book) and so I make a lot less. "How can you claim to be
for the poor when you are the opposite of poor?!" It's like asking:
"You've never had sex with another man -- how can you be for gay
marriage?!" I guess the same way that an all-male Congress voted to give
women the vote, or scores of white people marched with Martin Luther
Ling, Jr. (I can hear these righties yelling back through history: "Hey!
You're not black! You're not being lynched! Why are you with the
blacks?!"). It is precisely this disconnect that prevents Republicans
from understanding why anyone would give of their time or money to help
out those less fortunate. It is simply something their brain cannot
process. "Kanye West makes millions! What's he doing at Occupy Wall
Street?!" Exactly -- he's down there demanding that his taxes be raised.
That, to a right-winger, is the definition of insanity. To everyone
else, we are grateful that people like him stand up, even if and
especially because it is against his own personal financial interest. It
is specifically what that Bible those conservatives wave around demands
of those who are well off.
Back on that November day in 1989 when I sold my first film, a good
friend of mine said this to me: "They have made a huge mistake giving
someone like you a big check. This will make you a very dangerous man.
And it proves that old saying right: 'The capitalist will sell you the
rope to hang himself with if he thinks he can make a buck off it.'"
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMF...@MichaelMoore.com
@MMFlint ( http://twitter.com/mmflint )
http://www.michaelmoore.com
P.S. I will go to Oakland tomorrow afternoon to stand with Occupy
Oakland ( https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23OccupyOakland ) against the
out-of-control police (
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/27/oakland-police-protest-wounding-veteran?newsfeed=true
)
Join Mike's Mailing List (
http://www.michaelmoore.com/mikesmailinglist/index.php ) | Follow Mike
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