1
We will have to repent
in this generation
not merely for the vitriolic words
and actions of the bad people,
but for the appalling silence
of the good people.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The vast and complicated issues
facing today's generation
can leave many with the uncertainty
and fear that nothing can be done.
Yet by exploring how the influence
of our media,
education and parenting have shaped us,
we can begin to understand
what we must change.
Both as a generation and as a culture.
There's a lot of talk about
the great generation
of the World War II Generation,
and all generations that came after
are supposed to be in some way
lesser than that.
They do not have the world historic role
that the great generation had.
Then there's the sixties generation,
which in some way had had a purpose,
had a world historical role of a kind.
And then Generation X and
Generation Y and so on
are seen mainly in marketing terms:
as generations with no purpose,
no world or historical role.
We interrupt our regularly
scheduled program
to bring you the following
special report.
Good evening. I accepted...
There was a moment in the 1970s
when a not very successful president,
nonetheless, tried very hard to say:
"Hold up. We may be heading down
the wrong path."
In a nation that was proud of hard work,
strong families, close-knit communities
and our faith in God,
too many of us now tend to worship
self-indulgence and consumption.
Human identity is no longer defined
by what one does
but by what one owns.
We may be embracing a
false definition of freedom
and Carter's effort to bring us back
to a truer definition of freedom
was one which required us,
in the near term, to sacrifice.
The vast majority of the American people
didn't want to hear anything like that
and, in short order,
came to see Ronald Reagan as offering
a much preferable message.
And Reagan's message was
that it's morning in America,
you can always have more
and that the American way of life
is not up for negotiation.
They tell us that the future will be one
of sacrifice and few opportunities.
My fellow citizens,
I utterly reject that view.
Of course the problem is,
if we want to preserve
the American way of life,
or at least if we want to preserve those
aspects of the American way of life
that are worth preserving,
then we are going to have to change.
Human nature
usually leads us to not change things
until we are forced to change things.
Then that's the paradigm
that has to be broken.
With a series of other
problems in the world
and an economy that leaves people
feeling enormously uneasy.
You just become numb.
I wish we had more of a solution though.
Protesters vowed to keep up
their demonstrations
despite this state of emergency.
Why is the level of depression so high?
Why are levels of anxiety so high?
Is this really where you want to be?
A woman in Long Island, New York,
was trampled to death
by a stampede of shoppers.
I don't buy into this idea
that we are ok.
I don't think we are ok,
but I think that many of us
are just putting on a show.
So I'm afraid to say we need this change,
and I know we need something
but I'm not sure what.
So, if we lose our principles,
we get lost,
we need to reform and revitalize
and incorporate that back into society.
I think it's a spirit too that
we are not damned.
In order for a revolution to happen,
it has to change on every level.
We need to change the way we live
in some respects
in order to preserve
that which we value most.
It's a time to regenerate,
it's a time to look at lessons, look at
important things that have happened
that need to be defined as a culture.
Eagan High School.
Eagan, Minnesota.
Suburb of Minneapolis / St. Paul.
Student Population: 2300.
You know, I'm so young still
and I think about
all the opportunities I have, that I could
do something and make a difference.
And every time I think "that's wrong",
"that shouldn't be like that",
I wish I could change it or whatever.
But then I'm just like,
you know, who am I?
I am just one junior in high school,
seventeen years old.
What is that going to do?
Dustin and Nicole Artwohl.
Ages 26 and 27
Married 4 years.
Expecting 2nd child in 4 days.
There's not one thing out there that
everyone is trying to fight right now.
There's hundreds of things that you hear
about every day and
it does probably kind of numb you,
because you hear so many of them.
Absolutely. AIDS in Africa
can concerns me, war concerns me.
ou don't really know where to begin.
Are there things that we could be doing
differently? Most definitely.
Is there more help that we could
be providing fellow man? Absolutely, but
time, money...
There's things that are standing
in the way of making that happen.
STS9: Sound Tribe Sector 9.
Musicians and Artists.
Touring for 10 years.
Own and operate independent
record label/1320 Records.
I think it is important to realize that
there are so many people who morally
disagree with what's going on.
You know, poverty, war, everything.
All of us care, but we just don't know
what to do about it.
We don't want to sound stupid or we don't
want to sound like we are un-American,
or that "we're not supporting our troops"
people who are our friends.
You know, understanding that
we look to the institutions
and the government to answer
a lot of these things when really,
where things get done is people.
You have to care
and if you don't care, then,
I don't know man...
I don't know.
7 days before graduation.
On the bigger issues, the war in Iraq,
global warming,
you know, the big worldwide issues.
I see less activism.
Some of that, I think,
is they've just been overexposed.
They know it's important
but it seems so big
and so, "What can I do?
I'm just one person".
Leo Durocher was a baseball
manager decades ago.
Famous guy, very cantankerous
and clever and witty.
And he used to say
nice guys finish last.
And everybody thought it was
so cute and so accurate.
If you think about it a little,
it's a gigantic condemnation
of a social structure
that being nice should
consign you to failure.
But that's exactly
the world that we live in.
We live in a world whose institutions
are structured in such a way
that you have to be nasty to get ahead.
The culture communicates,
"Nice guys finish last, garbage rises.
Learn that lesson and you'll be okay."
In bailout news,
top managers continue to offer
multi-million dollar pay outs
to senior employees.
The culture communicates,
"injustice is forever",
"poverty is forever",
"violence is forever".
Eek out a niche,
do the best you can.
But it's all forever.
If some of these negative things
were happening on my street,
you'd better be out there
trying to fix it.
But today it's not,
it's not happening in front of me.
The word that you've used throughout
this whole deal is 'apathy,'
and I'd say that we're very apathetic.
It's not that people think
that poverty is fine
or war is fine,
or degradation and cynicism
and violence is all over...
that all that and all
that we know is fine.
Nobody thinks it's fine.
It's just that everybody thinks
there's no alternative.
Everybody thinks that's the way it is.
Like gravity, or like aging.
In other words,
"What are you talking about?
There's no point in a social
movement against aging.
There's no point in a social
movement against gravity."
In our reality, nothing will change.
Unless,
I don't know, unless some more college
students stand on street corners and picket.
Maybe that'll help.
And so, when you say,
"Come be an activist,
oppose that stuff,"
it's an actual belief
that it's a fool's errand.
That's the problem.
This is the violence of institutions,
indifference,
inaction and decay,
and only a cleansing
of our whole society
can remove this sickness
from our souls.
We live in a 'Me' Generation.
Therein lies the conflict.
And the conflict is how do we live
in a 'Me' Generation?
What is the 'Me' Generation?
What is the 'Me' Generation?
On a Volleyball game, you're a team.
And then in this it's just me.
Teenagers who gossip
are actually more popular.
People have come to expect
global climate change.
Breaking entertainment stories
you need to hear.
The first thing I'm unpacking
is a box of condoms.
Poor and unemployed...
I think the notion of individualism
has a long history in the United States.
And things that are good
for the community such as
preserving the environment
or having decent wages for everyone,
or have looked at the world and said,
"I want to change this
and I am going to make the time"
those sort of societal values
get thrown by the wayside.
It's a generation that
has no sense of the future,
no sense of civic responsibility.
I don't mean this as a criticism.
I believe the media
and the society are generating this.
It also has to do with
how we're just selfish.
It's always about,
"Me, me, me,"
and we kind of take all the things
that we have for granted.
Most definitely it has become
a 'Me' Generation,
and I think that we all are taught
self confidence and...
People have a sense of entitlement.
We're the most important
person in the world
and that transfers over into adulthood.
There'd been a movement for a while
about individualism that
really began in the '70s,
but that wasn't applied
to kids until the early '80s,
when the self-esteem
programs hit the schools.
And if you look in the media as well,
and in popular culture,
they we're taught things like,
"believe in yourself",
"you can be anything you want to be"
and putting yourself first.
It's a total lie,
it's a total lie. There are two lies
in the self-esteem movement:
The first is "you can be
whatever you want to be",
which is just demonstrably untrue.
And the second is that
your value is innate.
In other words, you're a wonderful
person no matter what you do,
you're a great person.
I tell my children every day
that they're special.
I tell them that I love them,
I tell them that they can do anything.
But I also am realistic with them.
I tell them that they can do anything
if they prepare themselves,
if they become a certain type of person
and have an understanding of history.
We live in a society that prizes
politeness over righteousness.
If you don't take the time
to tell them in the house
what their outside behavior should be,
then it's your fault when
they're outside acting a fool.
And then they grow up to be assholes.
There are a lot of enabling parents.
The thing about parent and kids
today is that they're much closer
and the communication is much
more open than it has been in the past.
So they're almost kind of like friends.
We have had many situations
where parents come in
and they do not want their kids to have
the consequences of what has happened,
and they enable them and they come in
and they fight with the principal.
And, you know, I just think what
a disservice that is to the kid.
What a disservice to think that
whatever you do is fine,
and I will fight for you
and you do not have to pay
the consequences of your failure.
They're told that
they are 'Me' Generation,
but they're encouraged to relate
to the world in that way:
To basically be narcissistic
in their relation to the world.
I don't like liberals.
I'm going to be honest.
I just think it's hard to label
the entire generation something...
...that all of us are the same,
which is definitely not true.
In the late eighteenth century,
when working people around Boston
were running around newspapers,
they complained bitterly about
the industrial system that
was being imposed on them.
I'm quoting now, what they called
"the new spirit of the age,
gain wealth, forgetting all but self".
That's supposed to be the 'Me' Generation,
but this was a hundred and fifty years ago.
Coming from a business point of view,
from the point of view of any rulers,
independence is the last thing that
the managers want
and attempt to crush this independence
and to shape people into malleable,
obedient, apathetic,
separated, atomized individuals.
The ideal social unit is a pair:
you and a television set.
Just about the only thing that
can make a ten year old
sit still long enough for you
to catch your breath.
If you can impose a society
constructed of such units,
then you've got the country pretty
much under control, even without force.
Kids do not evaluate things.
They do not really dig into stuff the way
that they need to in order to analyze it,
and that's part of the
multi-task generation.
They're watching the television,
they've got their computer on,
they're on their cellphone
all at the same time.
And I'm guilty of it.
A ton of kids are walking around,
all tuned into their iPods and,
you know, texting and stuff like that.
They're literally sheltering themselves
away from everything else out there.
We may not demonstrate
and aren't as active
as generations of the '60s and '70s,
but a big part of that is because we
haven't gone outside for our entire lives.
We've been inside, on the Internet.
It's true.
It has everything to do with our
alienation from nature. Absolutely.
The means of how we sustain ourselves,
how we survive.
The man who doesn't know how to fish,
who doesn't know how to hunt,
who doesn't know how to farm,
who's completely dependent
upon a government or some sort of
system that's in place for him to eat,
breathe, survive.
For thirty thousand generations
of human history
we grew up within nature,
and we got our cues and our
learning experiences by
checking out the wind and learning
how to negotiate rivers.
And then all of a sudden,
three generations ago,
the lessons that we're learning
from nature diminished down
to damn close to zero for many people,
and the electronic environment
is a much colder environment
compared to the natural one.
You are more than welcome,
when you're done, to quietly listen
to your mp3 player.
If I, or the people around you,
have to hear what your
favorite song is, I take it.
Ok? If I see your cell phone,
same thing.
That means that all weekend
you'd have to go without it,
which I understand is just like probably
removing your right leg
or both legs for some of you guys.
I've seen tears, people crying,
"You can't do this to me!"
Yes, I can.
The research shows that
you can't really multi-task.
What it is,
is it's time-splicing so their attention
is switching from one thing to the next.
And the research is showing that
the brain is actually changing
in young children
to allow them to do that.
So what we've got is
this big ADD generation.
And you come into a classroom
where you want to take a poem
or a piece of literature and
you want to dig into it for a half hour,
forty-five minutes, and really get into
the depth of it
they don't have the patience for that.
They just don't have the patience
for that deep thought and analysis,
and that bothers me because
you need those skills.
But if you grow up in an
electronic environment,
then you may have a kind
of an empathy deficit of some kind.
You won't be able to make rich,
intense human contacts.
You won't be able to love
somebody totally,
you won't be able to feel deep,
deep sorrow when somebody dies.
And we need empathy
to prevent wars in Iraq.
I am outraged that
this generation of kids
was not more concerned and
outraged at that war.
I don't understand why
they didn't react like we did.
I mean, when we were in Vietnam,
I was expelled from school
for walking out in protest
when Nixon invaded Cambodia.
The kids today, it's just like,
"Oh yeah, the war in Iraq."
I sat here in my classroom on that
television and we watched 9/11 happen.
Teacher ran down and said,
"Turn on your TV,
something horrible is happening."
I turned on the television:
we watched that airplane.
We watched that airplane
crash into the tower
and kid in the back is going, "Cool!"
I said, "This isn't a movie, you guys.
This is real.
This just really happened.
You know, that's not a special effect."
The current generation of kids
are literally saturated with media,
with some kind
of mass media communication.
You know, sometimes ten,
twelve hours a day.
And when you're surrounded
by an environment in that way,
you have to be shaped by it.
That's how culture works.
Culture shapes identity, culture
shapes how we understand the world.
Nielsen Media Research shows
that the average man,
woman and child watch as much
as four hours of television a day.
This does not include
time spent on the Internet
or playing video games.
So with this much time spent
sitting in front of a screen,
what exactly are we staring at?
What is shaping us?
A soldier calling home to check in
with the world at large,
to be connected as to what's happening,
would most likely get a response
of something to do with Lindsay Lohan
is back in rehab,
or Paris Hilton went back to jail.
That's the news of the day.
Do you know anything else
that's going on right now?
That's important?
- Yeah.
- No.
First in news at 8:03,
Paris Hilton out of jail this morning.
Was she given special treatment?
Who cares? Reporters wanted
to know how did she look so good.
The media are aggressively dumb.
They pander.
Of course, we pander.
We're dumb, I'll admit it.
Welcome back,
we know you're jonesing for it
today's Britney Spears' disaster update.
Media and Propaganda Conference;
University of Windsor, Canada.
Mass media are mostly for diversion.
Take a look at the tabloids.
They may have a quarter of a page
on their national affairs.
But that's what the mass media are,
they are to divert the public,
get them out of their hair.
That's pretty explicit.
It's explicit among public intellectuals,
media leaders and others.
Now, the public just... they're called,
'Ignorant, meddlesome outsiders.
We've got to get rid of them so we,
the responsible men,
can do things properly.'
Political apathy is a rational
choice in many ways
for most people because that's the fare
that's fell up to most of us.
Think more about Anna Nicole Smith
than about 655,000 Iraqis who
have been killed in the war.
When the city of New Orleans drowned,
the corporate media in that case did the
right thing. They raced to New Orleans.
Now, the Bush administration
did respond quickly on one issue
they said,
"You are not to film the bodies."
See, a side effect
of the Bush administration
not responding to the catastrophe
in New Orleans
is that when the network
reporters went down,
they shocked our country,
they galvanized the nation.
Could you imagine if, for just one week,
we had seen those images
on the ground in Iraq?
We saw the babies dead, we saw
the women with their legs blown off,
the cluster bombs from Iraq to Lebanon.
We saw the soldiers dead and dying.
There was a poll done in the United States
just recently that asked Americans,
"How many Iraqis
do you think have died?"
They said somewhere under ten thousand.
Well, the British Medical Journal
The Lancet published
a Johns Hopkins University study that
says more than 655,000 Iraqis have died.
And a more recent study says
more than a million Iraqis have died.
But in the United States,
most people don't think that.
And it's not because people are stupid.
people are good media consumers.
They take in, they absorb what
they watch and read.
Could you imagine if, for one week,
we saw those real images on the ground?
The dead and dying on all sides?
Americans are a compassionate people.
They would say, "No.
War is not the answer
to conflict in the 21st century."
How do you see,
just being a media personality
do you see the media affecting
the youth culture at all?
Particularly news media?
I mean, we do our best
to affect youth culture
because that's where the ad dollars are.
TV shows, news programs,
variety programs,
soap operas were created to sell soap.
That's what they were created for.
But it doesn't surprise me
when people criticize,
you know, CNN, Fox News,
the celebrity shows...
It's like people really don't understand
what TV and media is for.
It's to sell you things. You'd be lucky
if you get some entertainment out of it.
Bit by bit, I found out how
the Vietnam war started
and that probably was the beginning
of my politicization of my life.
And then after that, of course,
travelling around the world
and then finding out about
how most of the world lives.
Then I immigrated to Canada
and I actually wanted to be a filmmaker,
I wanted to make documentary films
and show people
some of the stuff that
I'd seen all over the place.
So, I started a film-making commune,
right here in this house actually.
And we've been making all kinds
of experimental films,
so, why don't we package
some of our really powerful messages
into thirty and sixty second packets
and try to raise a little bit of money,
and actually air them on television?
In your living room is the factory.
The product being manufactured...
is you.
Over the last ten years here
at Adbusters we have produced
dozens of thirty-second social messages
that tackle all the big issues of our time,
from obesity to media concentration
to climate change.
And when we approached ABC and NBC
and CBS and MTV and Fox,
and tried to buy 30 seconds of airtime
to air some of these messages of ours,
they all said no.
So,
what does that tell you?
It tells you that our public airwaves
aren't public anymore.
That we, the people,
own those public airwaves.
They legally belong to you and me,
and the FCC leases those airwaves
out to the broadcasters
who are then supposed to act in,
of course in their own business interest,
but also in the public interest
and they do not.
These guys have six million
dollars to spend.
We are not going to sell you a lousy
twenty-five thousand dollars of airtime
for your spot and then piss of these
multimillion dollar sponsors that we have.
That was a big shock for me at that time.
I was a guy who was born in Estonia,
and in my country
for fifty years you weren't allowed
to speak back against the government.
You weren't...
and if you did speak back
against the government,
they'd put you in a mental asylum
or you'd suffer in some other way.
You'd never get a decent job or whatever.
And here I was, many years later in this
cradle of democracy,
the land of the free here,
and all of a sudden I discover that,
here, you are not allowed
to speak back against the sponsor.
They spend more time watching television
everybody believes that when you're
spending more time with the media
than you are in the classroom,
the media have a profound impact
upon your life as well.
Dr. Kunkel, thank you very much
for joining us today
and I look forward to your testimony.
Thank you. Good afternoon Mr. Chairman.
With the help of a number
of fine colleagues,
including several who are
here with us today,
I've conducted extensive research on
media content and effects over the years.
Advertisers claim that kids today are more
savvy than they've ever been in the past,
but when you really get down to it in
terms of children's cognitive abilities,
an eight year old today
doesn't understand the persuasive intent
of advertisements any better
than an eight year old in the past did,
say, when I was a child.
And a magic box turns the TV into a safe
and happy haven. Simply what matters.
And, in fact, what the evidence
shows is that
the more the kids are immersed
in the consumer culture,
the more they're exposed
to these messages,
the more unhealthy they are,
the more they're depressed,
the more they're anxious, the more
they have problems with their parents.
It is a form of systematic child abuse
and I think it is absolutely crazy.
There is a lot of truth to the notion
that kids are bombarded with advertising
for things that are not particularly
healthy for them.
No question that large
numbers of young children
have televisions in their own rooms.
Who's to blame here?
The parents!
Let me tell you my schedule, ok?
I get up in the morning at six o'clock.
I am out of the door by seven o'clock.
It takes me an hour to get to work.
So I get there at eight o'clock,
and I'm there until five.
I drive an hour back home,
I get home at six.
We cook dinner,
we give him a bath,
we clean up the house a bit.
It's now about seven thirty
by the time everything's done.
He goes to bed at eight o'clock.
We don't have the time to sit there and
calculate what they're watching,
and when and where and how.
You can't be there every minute
of the day, you can't.
The media industries,
of course, always tell us,
"Isn't it just the
parents' responsibility?"
And then they spend
hundreds of billions of dollars
to influence the child
to influence the parent.
Mom, I need one minute.
One teensy-weensy minute
to make your day, 'cause I've got
with me the toy
that could change
the way you look at toys.
I'm sold.
And if the parents would say 'no'
billions and billions of times based
on the billions of requests
that are based on billions
of influence attempts
that come from all the commercials,
all would be well.
But surprise!
Parents like to please their children.
When you have a culture of people
who spend four to five hours a day
watching television,
and every seven minutes
there's two minutes of commercials,
over and over,
we've become familiar.
And when we go into the store
and see that thing,
subconsciously,
when we pick that up and buy it,
there's a certain amount
of comfort that comes with that.
Certain amount of safety.
I know I learned in class that,
when we learned about advertising
in Health class or somewhere,
that it influences you,
even if you don't think it does.
But, I am not a materialistic
person at all,
I don't care about... Shush!
I'm not! I'm not like,
"Oh my god, I have to have the shiny car
and I have to have this."
I'm just really happy
with whatever I have.
I don't ask for a lot, and I don't get
influenced by billboards saying...
- Where is your iPod right now?
- Shhh, you know what...
The one that you have plugged
into your ear all day?
I like it because of the music,
not because it's shiny or expensive.
Like it's never advertised, ever.
I don't think that it's possible
to grow up in a culture
where, from the moment
you were a little baby crawling
around the TV set in your living room,
you've been told
a certain kind of a message
and you've been told
that certain brands are really cool.
And then when you're a teenager
or in your early twenties,
you can suddenly sit back and say,
"No, no, this hasn't had
any effect on me."
Bullshit! It's had a profound
effect on you.
When I talk about consumer culture
and I talk about how consumerism
tries to define who we are,
I raised this question in one
of my classes and I said,
"Why do you think Americans
buy diamond rings
when they want to get engaged
to someone and is that natural?"
And people did not
know the answer to that.
And, of course, we know this
is a fairly recent phenomenon:
It's the diamond industry that makes
this move through advertising
to associate a diamond ring.
And so the student
raises her hand and says,
"Yeah, okay, I get that.
It's all very well,
but I still feel if my fianc doesn't
give me a two karat diamond ring,
if he gives me anything less than that,
I'll throw it back in his face."
Now, the good thing about that comment
is that everybody else in that class went,
"What?"
and it was a great learning moment
because then we could explore:
Why do you think that way?
Where do you get these ideas from?
And, why do you feel that
you need to judge
the most intimate relationship
between two human beings
on the basis of how much money
has been spent on this?
I've seen a kid with
a CD player be ostracized
because he has a CD player.
It just creates this wall in between
you and someone who can't have that.
We have to create wants.
We have to direct people to what were
called the more superficial things of life,
like fashionable consumption.
And if we can do this,
then we can control them.
The government has tried to respond to
our demands for more.
That's why, as soon as 9/11 happened,
they said, "Hey, go out and buy stuff".
You know, because that's
what it's based on.
That's what is really going to make
this society go round.
Too many people have the wrong idea
of Americans as shallow,
materialistic consumerists.
And I encourage you all
to go shopping more.
And that's what we did.
We followed orders.
The ads that I see everyday
are trying to make an effort,
so it's really easy to just buy
the green Samsung Razor that
donates fifty cents to global warming.
Like, "Oh, I did my job.
I feel morally ok with myself now."
Now, the consumer culture
or consumer message
doesn't talk about the world.
The consumer message talks about me.
In that sense, the movement
of advertising into every nook
and cranny of culture
shouldn't surprise anyone.
And over the course of the 20th century,
and now into the 21st century,
advertising has colonized more and more
of the spaces within which we live.
With an age group ranging from 18 to 29
as their key demographic,
advertisers feed on the lust of our
generation's desire for material goods,
resulting in more products to be made
and the necessity for more products
to be advertised,
consumed and disposed of.
Never mind the effects
this may have on our planet.
But with this excess of consumerism,
how too can this affect
the identity of our generation?
I think what we are all
subconsciously deciding is
the 'Me' Generation,
is the stuff that's readily
available and out there.
The homogeny.
Homogeny is defined as a correspondence
in form or structure
owing to a common origin.
And in the case of today's generation,
this means a world where
everything looks the same.
The homogeny that happens in America
creates a cultural ignorance.
"I want it now, I want it fast."
You know, the convenience store
is where I spend all my time.
It destroys the beauty of the country.
When I was in college, I knew
I wanted to do music for a living.
So I knew that I had to get a job
that was going to allow me
the freedom creatively and
physically to do music.
Working in a bookstore or a record store
was the only thing that made sense,
so I went to every bookstore and
every record store in my neighborhood
until I got a job.
And then I moved on to a black-owned
bookstore Nkiru Books.
Mos Def helped me out with a lot of
different events we were doing there.
Me and him ended up purchasing the store,
running it for a couple of years.
We made it more of a community thing
and we developed a program
in the high schools that was based
on poetry readings we used to do.
But we weren't prepared
to handle skyrocketing rents
of Flatbush Ave, Brooklyn.
You know, independent bookstores
have the same problems.
You have a major company like a
Barnes & Noble that will come up.
The only thing the independent
bookstores had was
this home feel where you could come in
and you would know the person
who'd worked at the counter,
you could come and see
your favorite author.
At some point the majors started
to figure out how to do that.
Put in cafes, start bringing authors in,
putting couches in and making them
feel more like an independent store.
Brand new hardcover
you can get it at
Barnes & Noble for ten dollars,
fifteen dollars.
At an independent bookstore,
you got to pay the thirty,
or else the guy ain't gonna make
no money and they'll go bankrupt.
So the consumer is just going to keep on
to the bigger bookstore all the time.
We saw our community go from
two-lane dirt roads,
trees and forests and lakes,
to Lowe's and Kroger's and miles
and miles and miles of shops.
And that's something that
we just were always
so surrounded with and just
couldn't understand.
What is destroying the beauty
of our community?
And when we started the band that was
something that just really influenced us.
We drive all night
coming back from Alabama
or North Carolina or Florida,
in my dad's Mercury Villager van.
We'd literally play three or four places
in each town.
We'd go to this place and then work
and play that two or three times,
and then you finally sold it out so
now we're gonna put you in this place.
People were catching on.
We had a particularly
hard decision to make
of how were we going to release
the record that we're working on.
We were working on it
for a very long time.
So we wanted to just
really make sure that
we looked at all of our options.
And on the outside, the perception
of going with the label
looks really cool because
they're giving you money
and what they say that
they're going to do
is they're going to put it
in all the music stores
you're going to be in Best Buy,
you're going to do it all.
That's what they claim that
they're going to do.
We flirted around with different
companies for a little bit
and I tried to make something happen.
But it always came down to just
our gut feeling telling us
that we could...
We'd be better off in the long run
if we just did it ourselves.
So we just kept at it.
It meant more to us to know
that we had the freedom,
to know that we still could do
what we wanted even though
we had to work a little harder to do it
and didn't make as much money,
and didn't have as
much attention out there.
Because that's not what
we were going for.
Eventually, what became important to us
was this do-it-yourself culture,
without having to sell our souls,
if you will.
Or join the corporate system or get into
these things that we were kind of...
trying to escape from.
Because we grew up
in this suburban structure
everything looked the same.
And when we started touring, it was,
"Wow, everywhere looks the same!"
It's not just the South,
it's not just Georgia,
it's not just Stone Mountain,
it's really everywhere.
From advertising to consumerism,
the media has played a dominant role
in shaping today's culture.
Add to that the education
of our generation
what we are taught and who's teaching us
and the media has all but overshadowed
another vital institution.
How did I know what
I wanted out of my life?
It may sound weird, it is not necessarily
about the experience
but talking about what you learn.
And I knew what I wanted out of life
by watching TV, not by going to school.
It's sad to say, I think a lot of them
are learning more from the media.
They're more excited about it,
they're more interested in it.
And so we're constantly
challenged to make education
more interesting, more exciting,
attention-grabbing.
Is there anything remotely real
about the real world?
Do you think what's really real is what
they teach you in an American history class?
Why? Why do you say that?
Why do I say that?
Because what I believe that I was
taught in History class in high school
is false information about what
actually happened in history.
I think the real problem is that we use
history as a way to comfort ourselves.
To tell uplifting stories,
even to the extent that the story
of America is the story of struggle,
it's basically a struggle that always
comes out about right in the end.
We embrace a mythic notion of history,
rather than one in which
we are really willing
to look at the past in the eye
and come to terms with it.
The loss of history
is always important,
because if you don't have history
then you're stuck with the present.
And you're also stuck with
the word of authorities.
This loss of history in
the United States today
has created a possibility,
in fact the inevitability,
of a whole population being
bewitched by television,
by the political leaders,
by the media leaders.
And without history to give
some basis for judging
what is being thrown at them,
the population becomes a victim
of whatever the authorities
decide needs to be done.
The world still walks in the shadow
of another world war.
Nations could defend themselves
against missile attack.
Our allies concur
that now is the time to strike.
Our country is still the target
of terrorists who want to kill many.
We have a goal to disrupt,
dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda
in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The result is we get into war
after war after war.
The loss of history
is a matter of life and death.
Now is the time...
to rise from the dark and desolate
valley of segregation
to the sunlit path of racial justice.
Now is the time...
to lift our nation from
the quick sands of racial injustice
to the solid rock of brotherhood.
Now is the time...
to make justice a reality
for all of God's children.
We grew up in the South and we never were
taught about the civil rights movement,
other than the 'I Have a Dream' speech.
Let freedom ring!
If America is to be a great nation,
this must become true.
Let freedom ring from
the Stone Mountain of Georgia!
I lived in Stone Mountain.
I'm from Stone Mountain
and barely anybody read the whole
speech to pick it out and ask,
why is Stone Mountain
mentioned in this speech?
Young people did not grow up learning
that this is a society
which is driven by class.
They grow up with the idea
that this is like one family.
Starts with the words
of the Constitution,
"We the people of the United States,"
and that's the impression we get.
That we're all together,
we all got together and fought
the revolution against England.
We all got together and formed
the Constitution.
The Constitution was formed
by fifty-five rich, white men.
Excluded were 20% of the population,
black slaves.
Excluded were working people;
excluded were Indians,
excluded were women.
But you don't learn
about this in school.
We were just talking about this
in my history class,
because we're not really learning
lessons of life in school
and it's just a bunch of busy work.
I remember being able
to pass a history exam
because I was able to recite the words
to Blackman in Effect by KRS-One,
and he was talking about
the Byzantine Empire and Mesopotamia
and these were things that
I wasn't learning about in school.
Stone Mountain was owned by the KKK:
the carvings on the mountain are the three
most prominent confederacy leaders.
If we were told that and given the history
of our own community,
and to see at a younger age how wrong...
If we could be inspired by our teachers
about our own histories...
class would have been
much more interesting.
It's not that the teacher consciously
deceives the student,
it's that the teacher conforms
to what has been taught before
and the textbooks conform
to whatever the textbooks were before.
Because if you step out of line,
if you start to do something different,
if for the first time in generations that
have been taught that Columbus is a hero,
the school teacher says,
"You know kids,
Columbus is not a hero."
16th Century Priest,
Bartolome de las Casas,
sailed with Columbus and estimates
nearly 3 million Native Americans
were killed at the hands of
Columbus and the Europeans.
Columbus killed, mutilated, kidnapped
and enslaved Indians for gold.
The United States continues to observe
Columbus's arrival as a national holiday.
I mean, if a teacher starts
talking that way,
that teacher will be singled out.
And we shouldn't just pick on history.
You can have the same belief
if your language arts teacher
doesn't look at your essays critically
enough and does this rubber-stamp,
'Oh very good, here's a smiley face.
You did a really good job.'
That would also be a crime.
In another way, it's kind of a lie.
I think it really depends
on what class, what teacher.
There are plenty of teachers who teach
because they thought it would be a good idea
and I can tell they don't like teaching,
they don't care about teaching that much,
those are the ones who will give you
the busy work.
I think that's what's
really the difference:
I really think it's the teachers
and how much they care.
The loss of history
and the cynical views
of today's education system
by both students and educators
is met with further challenge
by increasing class sizes,
and a series of governmental policies
whose systemic underfunding
often times does the opposite
of what it says it will.
The goals of No Child Left Behind
were admirable
and President Bush
deserves credit for that.
But beyond high school,
a recent survey conducted
by the U.S. Education Department
shows over 80% of tenth graders
still expect to move on to a four year
college or university
But, at what cost does this
post-high school education come?
We've had to talk about
what we're going to do with him,
what we're going to pay for
and what we're not
and right now I can say that
we're willing to help and chip in,
but we're not going to have
$80,000 to pay for college.
There's so much pressure to get
the perfect grades and everything
so you can get the scholarships
that are out there,
like my mom who was putting
all this pressure on me
all these last three years
I've been in high school to get top,
top grades because we can't afford
to pay for me to go to college.
So the only way I'm going to get
anywhere in life
is to have a scholarship to pay for it,
so I'm not in debt.
Now you have huge amounts
in loans at market,
and even above, market rates.
So for kids coming through this process,
you start at a point where you are thinking
about having a springboard to your career.
You're going to have to dedicate yourself
to paying off those debts.
You can't make your own choices.
Like maybe you graduate law school and
you'd like to be a public interest lawyer,
you don't have that choice
if you have a big debt.
You have to go into
a corporate law firm.
And pretty soon,
it's values get internalized.
You may think you can hold them off
and "I'll do what I want to do",
but life doesn't work like that.
When I went to go pick a career,
I wanted to pick a career
that would pay me a lot of money.
It's as simple as that.
I wanted to be financially stable
the rest of my life.
So even if I had the goals and hopes
and dreams to be a civil servant,
I wouldn't because
it wouldn't pay me enough.
What that is, its actually
indentured servitude.
It's brilliant what capitalism has done.
It gets people into debt very young,
and then for the rest of their lives
they're paying off the debt that
they have gotten themselves into.
And so, in fact, the more debt you're in,
the less freedom you have.
What if you took a fraction
of the military budget
that we spend on these insane weapons
and what if you used that instead
of having student loans,
you had student grants?
At that point you have invested
in the future of young people.
You can leave university and you will have
freedom to do what you really want.
Your individual freedom actually
has been enhanced
by the fact that
you have taken public money
and you've invested it in this way.
When the second baby is born,
we will be spending
$16,640 a year on childcare.
And that's after tax money.
Well, you know Nicole
is having a C-section
so well be in the hospital
for the first four days.
After that Nicole is home
for the 6 weeks maternity leave,
we get these days.
Only six weeks?
Doctor says eight. We'll take six.
That's a wild deal, taking your
six-week-old baby to day care.
Very, very scary.
And yet, if we actually
look at the condition
of the bottom 80% of Americans,
studies have shown
that the bottom 80%
have either seen their wages
decline or stagnate.
So today it takes two wage
earners in a family
to make the same wage
that one wage earner did in the 1970s.
The average family is working
six and a half weeks more today
then they were in 1989,
and making the same amount of money.
So people are working harder
and yet you get these ideas which says
if you work hard you will succeed,
if you buy these commodities
you will be happy,
and there is a point at which
these ideas come into contradiction
with the reality of people's lives.
Our cable TV bill, our cable modem,
you know $150 dollars a month.
Cell phone bill, $120 dollars a month.
If we didn't have those things...
Do we need them?
No, I don't think we do.
But we want them
Of course consumerism makes people buy
things that they don't necessarily need,
but beyond that what are the other
economic factors that are driving it?
And that has to do with the fact
that if your wages go down
and you need things,
you need to buy food,
you need to buy health care, you're
going to do it with your credit card.
And that explains a large part
of the debt that Americans have today.
If everyone took that one chance
of going for their dream,
they might fail but at least they tried.
And the institutionalized education,
institutionalized jobs
are still going to be there.
They're institutions.
Senior year of college,
with career path this way
in front of me,
just getting a job and working
and paying off those student loans?
Or career path with
the band in front of me?
It took courage and as one person
and one example,
I can say nine years later,
that there is no job that would
compare with the happiness
and what I've gained from being
my own person for the last ten years,
surrounded by people that share
that same desire to not be owned,
or to not buy into some other
version of what a happy life is.
Okay, Is everyone in here ready?
I want to see the graphic
and hear the music in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...
We watch and are influenced
by more TV than ever.
We're more globally connected,
we're more aware of the world around us.
Meanwhile our schools and the cost of
living has skyrocketed over inflation,
while starting salaries
have hardly changed.
We're a credit card generation,
mass consumers.
And because of it, homogeny
has made us a little less unique.
et we are told in the
self-esteem movement,
that we are special and can be
whatever we want to be.
Yet with little direction,
we find ourselves lost with in our
absolution of faith with the education,
parenting and media that
has helped shape who we are.
Yet today's issues
are not so clearly defined.
Civil rights and the struggle of class
still hangs over us like a dark cloud.
There is no draft,
instead we volunteer to fight.
ut with 18 to 29 year olds maintaining
the lowest registration and voting rate,
is it any wonder that
those elected into office put
18 to 29 year olds in harms way?
Meanwhile, we want to save our earth,
but we're so intrinsically connected
to some form of a screen,
we hardly have enough time to look up
and see what the earth is saying.
And with all the problems of the world,
what is left of the hearts and the minds
of today's generation
to deal with today's issues?
Will we even try?
Roll it and take it.
Claire, start your intro.
Good morning Eagan High School
and welcome to a very special
edition of Eagan AM,
I am Claire Freidman. Today we will be
departing from our normal format
to focus on the issue
of the War in Iraq.
We see so many images of war and after
a while we kind of just brush it off,
and we say, "Oh there's another bombing,
what can I do about it?"
In 1965, the population
on the United States
believed that the U.S. was out
to help the world.
And I mean they really believed it.
Deep down inside,
that's what people believed.
They believed that lawyers
were out for justice,
that doctors cared only about
the health of patients.
That companies were trying
to make people's lives better.
On and on and on. Nowadays,
the reality is nobody
believes any of it.
Deep down inside, everybody knows
the war was for oil.
Everybody knows the war was for power.
Everybody knows that
corporations seek profits
and will do anything to get them, and
don't give a damn about their employees,
and don't care about
the consumers either.
They just care about the bottom line.
Everybody knows this stuff.
So then why isn't everybody as aroused
as we were in the 60s?
I mentioned that I don't really care
much about what's going on,
outside of my reality,
but its not that we don't care
about the world at large,
its that we want to know where to begin.
It's got to relate to you.
if you can paint a picture for how
something, a world issue, Iraq,
or whatever is going on in the world
relates to this child's life
then you have something there.
Last month we had one of
our own Eagan graduates,
Daniel Olsen of the class of 2005,
pass away.
To end this show this week
we present you with 52 servicemen
and women from Minnesota
who have given their lives over seas
so that others may experience
the freedoms we enjoy.
Thank you for joining us today.
It's time for us to look at ourselves
in the mirror.
I think that were going to have
to have another cultural revolution
of a magnitude of the cultural revolution
that we experienced in the 1960s,
but one which is going to return to...
a more modest
or a more disciplined
No, a more sustainable definition
of what freedom is.
Sustainability is to be made
by each of us.
From recycling, to the clothes you buy,
to where you shop, to eat locally.
To being aware of where your dollar
goes and how its used.
It takes everybody
putting in a little effort,
and you might not see the effort
that you put in pay off,
but it will in fact pay off someday
down the road,
because it always has.
The big major issues of humanity
have always been overcome
throughout time through small words
of mouth and through small
ideas that became bigger ones
because they touched
principles and values that we all share.
A year ago in assuming the task
of the Presidency,
I said that few generations
in all history
had been granted the role
of being the great defender of freedom
in its hour of maximum danger.
This is our good fortune.
Cultural revolutions have always
been driven by some sort of a rage
the wells up in people.
And now, in this information age of ours,
we have to find a new kind of rage
and a new kind of movement.
The ecological crisis, the psychological
crisis, and the political crisis.
The three biggest crises that exist
within this human experiment of ours
on planet earth right now,
these are problems that we,
the rich people, have largely created.
We have to face that unflinchingly
and once we've faced that unflinchingly,
that will change us.
We can't talk about addressing the
corruption in people and in the world,
if we ain't addressing
the corruption in ourselves.
You see what I'm saying?
Don't pay attention to these stupid MCs
talking about they're players.
The real players got smart bombs.
You see? And when they wanna play,
its no more game.
That's the real deal.
So if we're gonna do this or
were gonna be doing this,
it ain't worth it if were gonna be up
here talking about
how good we are because
none of us is important
unless we're doing
something that's vital.
Everybody got the same amount
of energy in this room.
But who you gonna give it to?
You gonna give it to BET or MTV or Nike,
or whoever the hell else is vying for it?
And I say this because
nobody else says it,
because we think that we're doing
something, we're revolutionary.
We're suckers,
we're suckers, for real.
We gotta get off of that man.
We come here to these places
and its good to feel good, but
we gotta know that we gotta do more.
We ain't doing nothing.
It's young people like you,
all over the world, dying.
Catching a bullet,
Tiananmen Square dudes.
How many of us could have said that
we would have stood in front of
that tank if it was us?
For real,
think about that. I hope I didn't blow
anybody's vibe or high,
but I had to say it.
It was the most overwhelming
feeling in the world.
You're overwhelmed with joy and fear
all those emotions all at once
are circling through your head.
Having a kid is amazing because
everything that you didn't do
or you didn't do well in life,
you hope that you can teach your kid
to do things just a bit differently.
As a young person
who feels disempowered,
who feels what difference can I make?
We're all making a difference,
regardless.
Celebrate the fact
that we live in a country
where freedom does exist.
What we need to do is to create
an environment, through education,
in which a greater proportion of the
population uses its freedom wisely.
But it's not for me to tell you
how you should define freedom.
But I guess I am enough of a scrooge
to say that if all you think freedom is,
is going out on a Saturday night
and drinking Budweiser
and watching professional
football games.
And then heading down to the mall to buy
yet another pair of athletic shoes,
that somehow you're
missing out on something.
We can do better than that.
No matter how lead you've been,
or you consider yourself to have been, or
how indoctrinated or how trained you are.
Given your moral strength and your
own truth, and your own inspiration,
I think you can make a lot
out of this world,
and help some people along the way.
The information is there
and that's coming from someone
who didn't think it was there,
and through just a little bit
of scratching the surface
come to become more confortable with my
understanding of the world
and the things in the world,
and if I can do that
I feel like anybody can
because I was one of the more cynical,
apathetic people.
I think it is a problem that
people are willing to accept things,
but I don't think to chastise or
challenge the people on it is the answer.
So the key is to get
the information out there,
and hold the truth up against the lie.
It's the history of ordinary people
fighting back against sometimes
insurmountable odds to win
progressive change.
And knowing that history,
knowing that we can make a difference,
I think will motivate that 15 year old
not to simply buy things,
but want to think of themselves
as a socially conscious individual
that wants to change the world
in a way that's not just better for them
but better for everyone.
A famous physicist taught at MIT,
and he'd be asked at the begging
of the course,
"What are you going to
cover this semester?"
And his standard answer was,
"It doesn't matter what we cover,
it matters what we discover."
Discover.
Find out who you are,
find your own path.
In fact, its what plenty of people do.
We've been talking about what
the external system tries to impose,
but it doesn't necessarily succeed.
We are a collective
and we have to work together.
You want to talk about
people who are activists
like Martin Luther King,
he was not one voice.
You don't hear about all the people
that were around him,
helping that movement.
I guess it was eight months after
Katrina, we came down here and saw
the destruction first hand and wanted,
like a lot of people in the world,
wanted to know if there was anything
we could do. How could we help?
And to donate in a way that helps
rebuild the lower ninth ward
was one choice for us
to do something that helped.
I think the whole world was touched
by what happened here.
People like you coming back to rebuild
a community on their own.
One of the great things about it is,
I want to make a correction,
is we're not doing it on our own. We're
doing it off of the sweat of volunteers.
It's people from all over the country,
all over the world.
Coming down here to see
what's happening
and it's going to make a change for us.
So you just step back and see that
y'all are doing a good job.
You all are doing a good job.
Look for people in your neighborhood
or in your school,
who are doing something about
the injustices of the world,
who are involved in some movement
to save the environment or to stop war,
or to help people who are in need.
Look for people like that
and consider that,
when you get out of your own shell,
if you leave your living room
and television set
and go and join other people who are
doing something to make life better.
Life becomes more interesting to you
and more fulfilling.
Tell them about the people who,
in the south during
the civil rights movement,
who were working to end
racial segregation
and who went through all sorts of hell,
and many of them were beaten
and put in jail an so on.
But when they got together years later,
they would look back on those years
and they would say,
"Those were terrible times
we went through,
and those were
the best years of my life."
Don't let anybody call you immature
or naive because you're hopeful.
Don't let anybody call you
immature or naive
because you talk about
attaining justice.
And don't pay any attention
to somebody who says that,
because their agenda is
to stifle real change.
Frederick Douglas said it,
"Power concedes nothing without a demand
and there is no more
important time than now."
And the question is,
Do you want to be a part of it?
Do you want to determine it?
And there are so many issues that
we have to deal with now.
Global warring, global warming,
the global economic meltdown,
the lack of health care in this country,
the way that our country
deals with, vilifies,
discriminates against immigrants.
There are so many issues that are
life and death issues right now.
How are you weighing in?
Or are you weighing in?
This is Democracy Now!
The War and Peace Report.
I'm Amy Goodman
and we're at Liberty Plaza,
what was Zuccotti Park.
Talk about how this whole
encampment began.
So the original idea
was put out by Adbusters,
a culture-jamming magazine, to amass
in lower Manhattan 20,000 people.
The rallying cry was occupy Wall Street.
To come down here
to make your voices heard
about the injustices about Wall Street,
the financial system and the idea
just spread like wild fire.
Show me what democracy looks like!
This is what democracy looks like!
It all comes down to effort.
If we see an issue, I think if we want
to leave anything to future generations,
if that's what we mean by 'a footprint'
than it needs to be the fact that...
we tried.
71 million people
did not register to vote.
If you're not registered to vote,
we will help register you.
Don't let the media or advertising
hold you back.
Your voice is the voice of change.
If you want to save a life, if you want
to do what you believe is right,
than act on it and don't just sit
on your ass and watch T.V.
and find out what celebrities are doing,
because that's not going to help anyone.
This year as their student
graduate speaker,
Ms. Claire Friedman.
Claire the podium is yours.
Everyone just sits around hoping
that things are going to happen,
nothing's going to happen
if you just sit on the couch and go
"Global warming is so bad. I hope
someone does something about that."
Nothing is going to happen,
that doesn't do anything.
Recently, I was asked if there is
any hope for the future?
The future of the country,
the future of the world,
the future of the next generation,
I responded...
The only way you get hope
is through action.
that there is only hope with action.
No one changed the world
by sitting on their couch
and wishing that someone
would do something.
Be that someone.
Stop hoping for action and be action.
I honor this class with respect,
admiration, pride and hope.
We have come to remind America
of the fierce urgency of now.
This is no time to engage
in the luxury of cooling off
or to take the tranquilizing
drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real
the promises of democracy.
Now is the time.
COMMUNITY
SUSTANABILITY
ACTIVISM
EDUCATION
#ReGeneration
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