- The first 20 minutes of his speech were nothing more than lifeless lecture on his background- incredibly underwhelming stuff that made you fear the speech couldn't be rescued. His call to action seemed dull, weak and uninspiring.
- The rest of the speech, which picked up and became dramatically more interesting as he talked about the Occupy Wall Street movement, was far more exciting. I particularly enjoyed his stirring and disturbingly eye-opening (although I already knew it all) commentary on Apple and how the iPad and iPhone are made by slave laborers in China who sleep in tiny rooms with bunk-beds packed on top of each other. They work 34 hour shifts for 70 cents an hour and because so many resort to suicide, there are nets everywhere preventing them from jumping out of the buildings they live and work in. These laborers, who work with small pieces, doing the same mundane task over and over, never get to see what the final product looks like. They have never held an iPhone or iPad. Really quite sad, especially since everyone has an iPhone nowadays, including me and the vast majority of my friends and family.
- Nader also spoke brilliantly about how we need to stop with the "We're #1" bullshit. We are not number 1 in infant mortality- we are 15. We are not number 1 in wages- were are 20. We are not number 1 in heath care, in life expectancy, in eduction...etc. He went on that we are, however #1 in many things. Like amount of people in prison, or amount of every type of weapon or #1 in military size and budget even though we are creating our enemies to fight wars.
- He spoke brilliantly about how the overly-manufactured threat of terrorism is what we spend all our money on when in-fact more Americans have dined mining for coal than in the entire Second World War and more Americans die every month because they are denied access to health care than died on the "massacre of 9/11" as he called it. He said we need to re-prioritize. So true.
- None of these points were particularly new to me. He said very very few things I did not know, but since CC is so a-political and uninvolved in civil discorse (about 90% of the students left for the Q&A...no surprise there. Most of my friends left...CC students don't care very much. They just didn't want to say they missed seeing a famous guy talk. As soon as he's done, though, their nap or snack is priority). One point he made that I had not heard was how poorly we launch our presidential campaigns. We launch them in Iowa (99% white, 60% evangelical), New Hampshire (rich, white people) and South Carolina (70% evangelical). Very true. We are giving white evangelicals and rich people influence in just about everything, way too much.
- 80% of Americans think corporations have too much power and an equal amount think our country is headed in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, not many want to do anything about it., despite how easy, Nadar says, it is to be an activist. I have to agree, we are apolitical and we know about problems, but do little about them. Americans are not incredibly informed, especially about things like prison injustice and animal welfare, but they do have a sense of how much change is needed and they do know at least a little about how corporations run shit. Yet, they are not motivated to do much about it.
In general, the speech defined Nader as Mr. Tangent, covering everything from cars to cosmetics and depressing us about everything along the way. He knows we can do something our nation's problems, but I have a hard time believing he really thinks we will.
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