Tent City Detroit Interview 2 - People's Summit June 16, 2009 Foreclosure Jobs economy activism

I really had a fun time interviewing Caleb. I could spend hours interviewing and talking with this guy. He was fun to interview. I would try to ask a question, let him speak and then pause the camera. Basically because I wanted to be able to make easy edits and separate rips of each section. Using a Macintosh with AVCHD footage can be time consuming because the Sony HDSR11 footage has to be blown up into large files to do editing.

I inserted a shot of an old GM abandoned factory in Detroit in between one of the clips. I immediately thought of this when reviewing it and would have inserted it between one of his speeches for visual effect, but decided it would interrupt the flow of his answer, so it's between two questions.

I wouldn't say that I agree with Caleb is saying, but it's interesting to watch folks present their thoughts none the less.

The interview is broken up at one point when we are talking about Obama. A bum walks up and stood next to me and was pretty close, and started to beg for bus fare. I had to stop and we both declined to give him money for the bus. Caleb mentioned that the summit was giving out food for free, to the guy who wandered off. It's likely the guy just wanted the money for drugs or booze. Caleb and I both are used to the big city and when you see a lot of people begging you get used to saying no a lot.

I didn't really talk about anything to him before the interview so he wasn't prepared for questions ahead of time. As with any belief system, you get some scripted trails your used to in your discussion and as you can see he has these down pretty well and goes off to the races with his presentation on various points.

We were both pressed for time, they were packing up to leave when I was going by. And it would have been fun to have spent more time chatting and perhaps recording more. We really hardly touched some points and I could have I'm sure been more hostile with some questions in retrospect, but I wasn't really there for a debate or anything just to gather information as to what they were thinking.

After we talked I kind of laid down some peak oil theories on him, I mentioned I was actually probably more doom-like than most of the people there. I told him a little about peak oil. I told him I thought the majority of resource depletion and energy problems were related to high BTU rich lifestyles of the top 20% and this would include the entire USA. I said, everyone who is middle class is the problem if we are talking about resource depletion, we are all the rich, we are all in the class of "the bosses". He asked, well at what salary do you start to say the middle class are the rich. I replied with $40 a month. (To be brief and blunt.) He kind of rolled his eyes back after hearing a little bit of the peak oil stuff. But actually he was out of time and in a hurry, so we didn't have a lot of time for discussion.

Sometimes in interactions like this, people end up talking to others and kind of pushing out their belief, but not really interacting and listening much. Almost like two ships unloading a salvo on each other. I know I've done this and can be quite a chatterbox myself.

Fun stuff.

I also want to make a note that I had some really crazy and fun questions I could have asked these socialists and some of the other groups, (the gays). Had I found a gay rights table, I had some loaded questions that might have caused some pretty serious claims of homophobia, so I was probably better off not finding their table.

It would have been great stuff for conflicts and reactions, perhaps even causing a scuffle. Of course I avoided those kinds of temptation. In reality just because you have a camera is no reason to be obnoxious, but some are tempted to try it. It might have made entertaining video.

I only found a few groups, but didn't have much time while I was there.

I study Peak oil and really look at it like any other theory with some probability of different outlooks being correct. I find it interesting to see how different groups respond to real or imaginary crisis as they appear. As the economy goes south, I fully expect more and more protests and more people getting upset.

Caleb's passion is good, however I don't know if he's found a correct definition of the actual problem and don't know if he has any idea of a solution to most of them. Much of it sounds to me like familiar socialist sayings I've heard from these guys for decades.

Perhaps everyone likes to spin a crisis into a way to give their group or goals an opportunity. In some ways, the left and independent camp of Ron Paul types have common complaints with Obama and other presidents, that being that they are bought by industry and lobbies.

I don't know if even that potential flaw can be solved, because of the nature of our system, advertising costs and the willingness of the "middle" to vote based on advertising image.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Foreclosures
• economy
• recession
• depression
• socialism
• capitalism
• activism
• green party
• interview

[DougWulfram]

No League of Shadows Destroyed Detroit; It was Black People

Stuff Black People Don't Like

SBPDL(dot)com

[iamslknick78]

I went to beat this guy with a lead pipe.

[iamslknick78]

@statelybird3 How about people pay their bills. Mortgage renegotiation? Hell no. If I lend someone money I want what was promised to me.

[statelybird3]

@Halfasheep

The home foreclosures need to stop because the banks have been basically making money off of them they get their losses covered by Fannie Mae---that's why they're so eager to forclose on people instead of re-negotiating their mortgages. The main reason people have fallen behind in their mortgages is because they can't find any jobs---Michigan has one of the highest rate of foreclosures in the nation. It has nothing to do with home prices. Check our website at moritoruim-mi-org.

[statelybird3]

@SepherStar

Wrong---I happen to know this young man---he spent his summer internship working with my colleagues in the Moritorium Now Coalition, a group here in the D that has been fighting against foreclosures---we've actually kept some from being thrown out of their homes. He's a trip, but he's for real---he also joined us for the 2010 U.S. Social Forum participating in discussions and protests that whole week.

A corporation isn't saving jobs if they relocate overseas,taking the jobs.

[charcoaljohnson]

He need to stop saying "you know" so much.

[johnnyrebman]

Fight Socialism and Communism.....Pure Capitalism and Anarchy and Freedom of Choice is cool......But Corpratism, where a business being small or large are propped up with a government subsidy that allows it to have a competitive advantage in operation costs is not fair and just allows people to spend money that they did not earn and have no way of making an efficient use of the STOLEN TAX PAYER MONEY!!..........End the FED......!

[roland19hun]

hes got a communist badge on his jacket

[billwalts900]

kids probably set with his trust fund so its real easy to be a socialist/communist

fight greed not capitalism

[YAHWEHisperfect]

many bankers r also wearing black heads...for sure did in the past...

forget about isis...and walk in the Way of yahweh instead...it leads to Life....