It's time to ask our Members of Congress what they are doing to address the unemployment crisis that is impacting America's youth and, thus, America's future. (Hint: cutting taxes for the super-wealthy and multi-national corporations while de-investing in education, jobs training, and technological innovation is not the answer.)
Politicians allow corporate lobbyists to write and exploit loop holes into our tax code because they are afraid that if they don't, these multi-national corporations will use their billions to ADVERTISE them out of office. We the People need to remind our elected officials that they can also be VOTED out of office, and more to the point, we're too informed and too engaged to be fooled by corporate misinformation campaigns, or distracted by mindless entertainment, no matter how much money is poured into it.
Ordinary Americans do not have "news" channels devoted to our interests as corporate America does, but if we can use our creativity, our intelligence, and emerging social media tools, we can rival the corporate noise machine. The democratization of media makes it possible for We the People to have direct impact on policy making by making noise, and letting Congress know that we will vote in our nation's and our family's best interest, no matter how much money corporations spend to misinform us.
I referred in the first video to the already infamous report by David Kocieniewski of The New York Times begins,
"General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010. The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion." [READ MORE]
This project is inspired by an exploding student-led movement in which one well-made video inspired a host of others. It is also inspired by Annabel's recent essay demanding reality-based policy instead of ideology-based policy from Congress.
Episode 3:
Episode 2:
The video that inspired the series:
The moment that inspired the video that inspired the series:
We have received written testimonies from survivors of trickle-down economics, such as: Read testimony 1. Read testimony 2. And below are some of the first voice messages we received.
