Fort Lauderdale, FL – Award-winning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has never been one to hold his tongue or shy away from even the most powerful figures. His films and articles often offer illuminating and entertaining critiques of American society, economics, and politics. Fahrenheit 11/9 is no exception. Moore’s newest film takes viewers on an exciting yet terrifying ride through the current American political landscape, and ends by placing viewers behind the wheel.

Fahrenheit 11/9 is 90-minute indictment of American political and economic institutions. It starts by demonstrating the obvious: Trump is a racist, homophobic, misogynist who loves big bombs and explosions almost as much as he loves diving into his morning Big Mac. From there, Moore launches into a critical examination of how this man came to be president of the United States and what this means for our future.

The film provides blood-boiling audio recordings of the major media moguls (from MSNBC, CNN, to FOX) in which they explain how any press on Trump was good for their bottom dollar. The one-percenters who control the entire mainstream media are filmed admitting that Trump was great for ratings, so they gave him thousands of hours of free screen time. And Trump (having produced and starred in TV shows himself) knew how to play those media companies like fiddles in order to win.

Moore also dives into the Democratic Party’s undeniably anti-democratic decision to snatch the primaries from social democrat Bernie Sanders. The movie mocks Hillary Clinton’s inability to relate to average people and admonishes her entire party for their smugness in assuming they were entitled to the presidency.

The film is ripe with traditional Michael Moore humor, awkward interviews and encounters, and satisfying, over-the-top tricks being played against those who deserve it most. But coupled with these comical scenes and antics is the somber reality the movie is trying to convey: the entire system is not only rigged against us, but is actually killing us. And it’s up to us to stop it.

Perhaps the most tragic part of Fahrenheit 11/9 is Moore’s close examination of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. He conducts interviews and provides government data which show that the governor of Michigan knowingly poisoned the people of Flint when he made the decision to switch their water supply from Lake Huron to the toxic Flint River. Yet neither establishment Democrats (including President Obama) nor Republicans investigated the governor for committing this crime, and both parties dismissed claims that the water was (and still is) toxic. Moore shows us that the poisoning of Flint’s water was not a mistake or an oversite: it was biological warfare against the people of Flint.

Despite the grim realities Moore illustrates for us, he places hope in average people fighting back against the system. He highlights the teachers’ strikes that took place in states across the country in the last year and how they were able to win their demands by not giving in to the typical divide-and-conquer tactics of the state. He also shows the rise in leftists and socialists running for local and state offices and the growing number of high school students taking part in activism. The film ends by concluding that the only way to ‘fix’ this rotten system is to burn the whole thing down and start over again. And that is a job for we, the people.

#FortLauderdaleFL #US #PeoplesStruggles #Movies #MichaelMoore #Trump #DonaldTrump

New York, NY – March 17 was the sixth-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. In the late evening, a crowd of hundreds gathered in historic Zuccotti Park, now dubbed Liberty Plaza. Many organizers and progressive forces attending the annual Left Forum at Pace University, very close to the park, joined OWS activists.

The youth gathered in the park for hours, playing drums and refusing to leave. The crowd gradually swelled as the evening went on. A small contingent of youth from Workers World Party circled the square chanting, “Just like Ho Chi Minh! Occupy is gonna win!” Others joined in this anti-imperialist chant.

Michael Moore and Cornel West, who had addressed the Left Forum earlier in the evening, joined the crowd and gave words of support.

When the New York Police Department announced that the park was closed, several hundred youth sat down together, joining arms. They insisted on their right to stay there, citing a recent court ruling that required the park to remain open. When the police refused to listen, they chanted, “We are not afraid.”

Police pulled protesters out of the crowd and handcuffed them. They swung batons and pushed people to the ground. The media reported that police actions injured several people. These included shoving a woman’s head against the hood of a car and pushing a man’s head into a plateglass window. Another woman suffered a seizure because of a forceful arrest, and then police denied her help from OWS emergency medical technicians. It took loud protests from the crowd to get an ambulance to the scene.

A youth who witnessed the police attack told Workers World, “All I could see was batons high in the air, coming down on people.” Some of the 73 people who were arrested reported being held, handcuffed and left on city buses for hours, before finally being taken to holding cells.

A march was called the following evening in support of the arrestees. At the closing panel of the Left Forum, speakers urged the audience to attend the march and support the arrested youth.

#NewYorkNY #PoliceBrutality #MichaelMoore #Repression #OccupyWallStreet #ZuccottiPark #LeftForum #NYPD #CornelWest #LibertyPlaza

Michael Moore has done it again, only this time he's coming out strong against the most pervasive evil in the United States: capitalism. Moore serves to moviegoers a searing critique of capitalism that is well needed during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

On Thursday, Oct. 1, a supportive crowd of 200 progressives and activists came to one of the many locations in Chicago showing Capitalism: A Love Story. The special showings benefited United Electrical Union Local 1110, the same local that carried out the historic Republic Windows and Doors factory occupation this past December.

Capitalism: A Love Story is filled with comedy, satire, and chilling analysis of the economic crisis in the U.S. It highlights the American people's “love affair” with capitalism that ends in heartbreak for believers in the “American Dream”.

The film begins with a searing critique of capitalism, highlighting several U.S. propaganda films praising “free enterprise” and the “profit motive.” Now with the current economic crisis, we know that Wall Street and financial giants such as Bank of America, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch are filled with greed, corruption, and deceit. Michael Moore skillfully argues that these characteristics are part and parcel of an economic and social system that is clearly bankrupt.

Next Moore exposes the US Federal government's $700 billion bailout fraud last year, which was forced upon the American people by Congress under fear and bribery from the financial elite. Instead of a government that serves the people, Moore argues Capitol Hill is a corrupt collection of wealthy servants to the top U.S. CEOs. Democratic Party officials in particular are blamed for the passage of the bailout that gave billions to the banks and nothing to the people.

The movie, in all its bleak observations, gives incredible hope to the American people. It features the fight back against housing evictions and foreclosures across the country – events mostly clouded over by the corporate media. The film shows stories of personal resistance, such as one family waiting to be forcibly removed by the sheriff from their home in Lexington, NC.

The main feature though is the union workers' occupation of Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago. The occupation is historic in the sense that it is the first factory occupation in the U.S. in decades. Workers are looking back to the tactics used during the Great Depression. The film briefly shows footage of the sit-down strikes at the GM factory in Flint, MI, of the 1930s that gave birth to the United Auto Workers. The recent Republic occupation stands in the same tradition of the working class using militant tactics to struggle for a better livelihood.

At the end, Moore implores the audience to take action, just as the workers at Republic, the families and poor in dozens of homes across the U.S., and protesters outside Wall Street are doing. This call is ringing in the ears of all those attending the special benefit on Oct. 2 in Chicago, as everyone signed up to get involved in union support work.

The big picture in Capitalism: A Love Story is the contradiction between democracy and capitalism. The problem with this view is that there is democracy under capitalism – it is democracy for the capitalists, the bankers, business people, and investors whose money controls the government in a thousand different ways. What we need is democracy for working people and the poor. But this can only come about if the wealth and power of the capitalists is done away with, that is with a socialist economy, which will mean democracy for the people and an end to capitalist economic crisis.

#ChicagoIL #CapitalismAndEconomy #UE1110 #Movies #RepublicWindowsAndDoors #MichaelMoore #CapitalismALoveStory