October 22nd, 2009
5:51 AM
"Michael Moore's Action Plan: 15 Things Every
American Can Do Right Now"
You've Seen the Movie -- Now It's Time to ACT!
Friends,
It's the #1 question I'm constantly asked after
people see my movie: "OK -- so NOW what can I DO?!"
You want something to do? Well, you've come to the
right place! 'Cause I got 15 things you and I can do
right now to fight back and try to fix this very broken
system.
Here they are:
FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND
CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:
1. Declare a moratorium on all home
evictions. Not one more family should be thrown
out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly
mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes
are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also,
it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you
cannot be tossed out of your home.
2. Congress must join the civilized world and
expand Medicare For All Americans. A single,
nonprofit source must run a universal health care system
that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause
of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare
For All will end this misery. The bill to make this
happen is H.R. 3200 -- but this bill is worthless
without the amendment from Rep. Anthony Weiner that will
bring us closer to the real bill that should be passed:
H.R. 676. You must
call AND write
your members of Congress and demand that they support
this amendment, no compromises allowed.
3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a
prohibition on elected officials leaving office and
becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of
Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars
from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money
from our electoral and legislative process.
Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign
finance bill H.R.1826.
4. Each of the 50 states must create a
state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota.
Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan
regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms,
insurance companies -- and all the other industries that
have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food
industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a
company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit,
then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and
the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The
question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common
good?" (Click
here for some info about the state-owned Bank of
North Dakota.)
5. Save this fragile planet and declare that
all the energy resources above and beneath the ground
are owned collectively by all of us. Just like
they do it in Sarah Palin's socialist Alaska. We only
have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the
owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy
that exists within our borders or we will descend
further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to
burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must
cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct
our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled
workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light
rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that
don't contribute to climate change. (For more on this,
here's a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that
General Motors' de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a
JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country
into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For
Pete's sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or
perfected) these damn things in the first place!!
FIVE THINGS WE CAN DO TO MAKE CONGRESS AND
THE PRESIDENT LISTEN TO US:
1. Each of us must get into the daily habit
of taking 5 minutes to make four brief calls:
One to the President (202-456-1414),
one to your Congressperson (202-224-3121)
and one to each of your two Senators (202-224-3121).
To find out who represents you,
click here.
Take just one minute on each of these calls to let them
know how you expect them to vote on a particular issue.
Let them know you will have no hesitation voting for a
primary opponent -- or even a candidate from another
party -- if they don't do our bidding. Trust me, they
will listen. If you have another five minutes,
click here
to send them each an email. And if you really want
to drop an anvil on them,
send them a
snail mail letter!
2. Take over your local Democratic Party.
Remember how much fun you had with all those friends and
neighbors working together to get Barack Obama elected?
YOU DID THE IMPOSSIBLE. It's time to re-up! Get everyone
back together and go to the monthly meeting of your town
or county Democratic Party -- and become the majority
that runs it! There will not be many in attendance and
they will either be happy or in shock that you and the
Obama Revolution have entered the room looking like you
mean business. President Obama's agenda will never
happen without mass grass roots action -- and he won't
feel encouraged to do the right thing if no one has his
back, whether it's to stand with him, or push him in the
right direction. When you all become the local
Democratic Party,
send me a photo
of the group and I'll post it on my website.
3. Recruit someone to run for office who can
win in your local elections next year -- or, better yet,
consider running for office yourself! You don't
have to settle for the incumbent who always expects to
win. You can be our next representative! Don't believe
it can happen? Check out these examples of regular
citizens who got elected:
State Senator Deb Simpson,
California State Assemblyman Isadore Hall,
Tempe,
Arizona City Councilman Corey Woods,
Wisconsin State Assemblyman Chris Danou, and
Washington State Representative Larry Seaquist. The
list goes on and on -- and you should be on it!
4. Show up.
Picket the local branch of a big bank that took the
bailout money. Hold vigils and marches.
Consider civil disobedience. Those town hall meetings
are open to you, too (and there's more of us than there
are of them!).
Make some
noise, have some fun, get on the local news. Place
"Capitalism Did This" signs on empty foreclosed homes,
closed down businesses, crumbling schools and
infrastructure. (You can
download them from my website.)
5. Start your own media. You. Just
you (or you and a couple friends). The mainstream media
is owned by corporate America and, with few exceptions,
it will never tell the whole truth -- so you have to do
it! Start a blog!
Start a website of real local news (here's an example:
The Michigan
Messenger). Tweet
your friends and
use Facebook to let them know what they need to do
politically. The daily papers are dying. If you don't
fill that void, who will?
FIVE THINGS WE SHOULD DO TO PROTECT OURSELVES
AND OUR LOVED ONES UNTIL WE GET THROUGH THIS MESS:
1. Take your money out of your bank
if
it took bailout money and place it in a
locally-owned bank or, preferably,
a credit union.
2.
Get rid of all your credit cards but one --
the kind where you have to pay up at the end of the
month or you lose your card.
3. Do not invest in the stock market.
If you have any extra cash, put it away in a savings
account or, if you can, pay down on your mortgage so you
can own your home as soon as possible. You can also buy
very safe government savings bonds or T-bills. Or just
buy your mother some flowers.
4. Unionize your workplace so that you and
your coworkers have a say in how your business is run.
Here's
how to do it (more
info here). Nothing is more American than democracy,
and democracy shouldn't be checked at the door when you
enter your workplace. Another way to Americanize your
workplace is to
turn
your business into a worker-owned cooperative. You
are not a wage slave. You are a free person, and you
giving up eight hours of your life every day to someone
else is to be properly compensated and respected.
5. Take care of yourself and your family.
Sorry to go all Oprah on you, but she's right: Find a
place of peace in your life and make the choice to be
around people who are not full of negativity and
cynicism. Look for those who nurture and love. Turn off
the TV and the Blackberry and go for a 30-minute walk
every day. Eat fruits and vegetables and cut down on
anything that has sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white
flour or too much sodium (salt) in it (and, as Michael
Pollan says, "Eat (real) food, not too much, mostly
plants"). Get seven hours of sleep each night and take
the time to read a book a month. I know this sounds like
I've turned into your grandma, but, dammit, take a good
hard look at Granny -- she's fit, she's rested and she
knows the names of both of her U.S. Senators without
having to Google them. We might do well to listen to
her. If we don't put our own "oxygen mask" on first (as
they say on the airplane), we will be of no use to the
rest of the nation in enacting any of this action plan!
I'm sure there are many other ideas you can come up
with on how we can build this movement. Get creative.
Think outside the politics-as-usual box. BE SUBVERSIVE!
Think of that local action no one else has tried. Behave
as if your life depended on it. Be bold! Try doing
something with reckless abandon. It may just liberate
you and your community and your nation.
And when you act,
send me your
stories, your photos and your video -- and be sure
to
post your ideas in the comments beneath this letter
on my site so they can be shared with millions.
C'mon people -- we can do this! I expect nothing less
of all of you, my true and trusted fellow travelers!
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
"Michael Moore's Action Plan: 15 Things Every American
Can Do Right Now"
UPDATE: My position that a
single-payer system is the only solution to the health
care crisis remains the same. I do not support H.R. 3200
unless it includes
Rep. Anthony
Weiner's amendment, which would essentially gut H.R.
3200 and replace it with Rep. John Conyers Jr.'s H.R.
676. In July,
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised Rep. Weiner an up or
down vote on his amendment before the end of the
year. At that moment this became our best chance for a
single-payer, universal health care plan for all. In the
heat of the health care debate, strategies change from
day to day, but as it stands right now, Rep. Weiner's
amendment to H.R. 3200 is the best chance we have at
achieving a single-payer system in the U.S. This is the
same position held by the foremost activist groups for a
single-payer health care plan:
Physicians for
a National Health Program (PNHP),
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses
Organizing Committee, and
Healthcare-NOW! Let's ride his Trojan horse out of
this mess.
Write your congressmembers to
demand that
they support Rep. Weiner’s amendment. One thing
remains clear: No health care system will be safe until
every for-profit insurance company has been removed from
it.
