Michael Moore: The Wisconsin protests can save America

Michael Moore delivered a speech to thousands of Wisconsin protesters over the weekend saying Americans have to take back their country from the uber-rich.

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last updated 8 January 2015

"America is not broke," says liberal film director Michael Moore, in a speech published at The Daily Beast. The rich and powerful only say we're out of money to get you to "give up your pension," accept lower wages, and "settle for the life your great-grandparents had." The truth is the nation is "awash" in cash. It has just "been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers" to the banks and the "uber-rich." America's wealth is so concentrated that 400 "obscenely rich" people now have as much money as "half of all Americans combined." Yet these elites have managed to avoid a full-fledged revolt — until now. The protests against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's (R) assault on public workers' collective bargaining rights, says Moore, changed everything. An excerpt:

Thank you, Wisconsin. You have made people realize this was our last best chance to grab the final thread of what was left of who we are as Americans. For three weeks you have stood in the cold, slept on the floor, skipped out of town to Illinois — whatever it took, you have done it, and one thing is for certain: Madison is only the beginning. The smug rich have overplayed their hand. They couldn't have just been content with the money they raided from the treasury. They couldn't be satiated by simply removing millions of jobs and shipping them overseas to exploit the poor elsewhere. ... They had to strip us of our dignity. ...

America ain't broke! The only thing that's broke is the moral compass of the rulers. And we aim to fix that compass and steer the ship ourselves from now on. Never forget, as long as that Constitution of ours still stands, it's one person, one vote, and it's the thing the rich hate most about America — because even though they seem to hold all the money and all the cards, they begrudgingly know this one unshakeable basic fact: There are more of us than there are of them!