-- 20 June 2007 --

We know there's a problem and we're looking for solutions

The “Stop The Squeeze” campaign has been running for several months now, successfully raising awareness through its websites, newsletter and dozens of screenings & events around the country.

The most common response we get is: “I get that there’s a problem, so now what? Who can I talk to about my personal situation?”

We are now looking to expand the reach and impact of our campaign. Our goal is to partner with solution providers and refer our audience to them so that these individuals and families in need may get the support they need.

If you are a solution provider, please review our sponsorship opportunities to see if any of them suits you.

View Sponsorship Opportunities

We are trying to get organizations to hold screenings, sponsor house parties and otherwise promote the film.

You can buy your copy here.

Let us know if you find these newsletters helpful and please pas them on to your email lists. For information on how to get involved, contact us here.

Testimonials like that are the most rewarding part of independent filmmaking—the sense that audiences appreciate your work and find it memorable enough to reference a year later after being inundated with so many other films.

The truth is that for every person who sees IN DEBT WE TRUST and takes its wake-up call seriously, there are millions who buy into the ads and gimmicks by credit card companies. I have recently noticed a trend by these companies to re-brand themselves: CitiBank becomes Citi, for example, at great expense. Chase Manhattan became JP Morgan Chase, and as a NATIONAL bank instead of a mere local institution, it is now exempt from many regulations, including rules that permit them be sued.

Now they are re-branding their customers as CARDMEMBERS as if we are all in a warm and fuzzy club. American Express for example welcomes ideas from its card member “community” for an innovative "save the world" project that they will commit $5 million for. And they have a great director like Martin Scorcese and a gaggle of celebrities to show us how cool they are too. (One cause they don’t support is more regulation of the credit card industry.)

American Express is one of the pioneers of cause-related marketing. I remember years ago when I worked with the inspirational Anita Roddick who had turned the Body Shops into a global phenomenon. She was almost religious in her opposition to advertising which she saw as manipulative and insidious.

But, then, she was approached by American Express to become the subject of an ad that would give her a chunk of money for a cause she supported. She was promised editorial control over its look—an important consideration for a beauty-promoting business. Anita wrestled with the dilemma and contradiction for about thirty seconds and then agreed.

They made a cool ad, and did benefit a good cause. But it also sold credit cards with a special appeal to those of us who tended to admire her while being skeptical, if not opposed, to the machinations of big business. It helped them soften, or as we say these days, “green wash” their image, as in promoting the idea that, “if Amercan Express promotes a socially responsible businesswoman like Anita, how bad could they be?” Clever!

It is a deliberately seductive business and works on our SUBconscious minds as bankruptcy lawyer Charles Juntikka explains in IN DEBT WE TRUST. If you want more info on all the extensive market research and focus group monitoring that guides this advertising, read Professor Robert Manning’s excellent book Credit Card Nation. (www.creditcardnation.com)

This marketing never stops and it gets savvier by the day. How do we fight back when many of us need cards for convenience, travel, car rentals etc? The credit card becomes one more thing in life that we know is bad, or could be, and yet we succumb to their convenience and convince ourselves they are needed. (I know, because I do!)

At the same time, with this Stop The Squeeze website, we are fighting an uphill battle to build a network of organizations and even companies to promote IN DEBT WE TRUST to get a broader conversation and deeper debate going to promote responsible personal and corporate practices.

We are beginning to work with AFFIL (www.Affil.org) - a coalition of organizations crusading for better lending practices and more consumer protections. You hear from some of the member groups of this coalition in the film—respected groups on the front lines of this fight—The Consumer Federation, The Center for Responsible Lending, ACORN and others. Visit their website for ideas on how we can solve this mess.

To our delight, many people in the debt relief industry—companies that provide counseling and consolidation services—like the film and want to share it with their customers and potential customers. They believe it will shock and stimulate people to get involved. We have produced a new thirty-minute version for them to distribute and promote on their websites. These are some of the biggest names in this business. To find out how your company or website can take part in our affiliate and partner programs, write to ilan@docworkers.com.

Happily we are still getting media attention, not on a Michael Moore scale, but it is coming. Last week I was on PFW, the Pacifica radio station in Washington DC and Detroit radio. I also submitted an article to the Michigan Citizen newspaper. I did several media interviews in Nantucket and was asked to send the DVD along to a well-known network news anchor. Another public access station has asked to show it in Michigan. To order the public access program we created for your community, write Adam@docworkers.com.

If you have media contacts, tell them about IN DEBT WE TRUST and ask them to get in touch. As they say, “we give good interview.” Specifically for radio shows, IN DEBT WE TRUST has a wonderful soundtrack - you can listen to select track on the IN DEBT WE TRUST website (click here and scroll to the bottom of the page, next to the CD image).

Incidentally, even on Nantucket, a resort island with a special appeal for billionaires who land each weekend in their private jets, the credit crunch is showing its ugly face. On June 23, the firm of JJ Manning is holding a bankruptcy auction of a waterview estate, a 5,784 square foot mansion with 5 bedrooms and 5.5 baths on 4.1 acres. There are also guest quarters a pool and tennis court. It has “luxury amenities” and a massage room. The assessed value is over $5 million. It’s rough all over.

AND NOW FOR SOME DEBT UPDATES

Liberal Youth Selling Out To Pay Their Debts

USA—FINANCIAL BASKET CASE OF THE WORLD

THE MIDDLE CLASS LOCKDOWN

GLOBAL HOUSING CRUNCH FORESEEN

WHAT TO LEARN FROM FINANCIAL MISTAKES

Why not have a screening in your community?

Public Access of Indianapolis is hosting a free screening of "In Debt We Trust" on June 28, 7 pm at Key Cinemas, 4044 S. Keystone Ave. For a $50 sponsorship fee, MCGP can co-sponsor a table at the event.

* * *

That’s our report for this week. Share your credit and stories and news items and/or comments with us by writing to  dissector@mediachannel.org or Give us some feedback, and send in news items you think others should know about.

We are also looking for some donors to support our not-for-profit outreach and educational campaign with tax deductible donations to:

The Global Center
575 8th Avenue, suite 2200
New York, New York 10018

If you have comments or suggestions, share them with me at dissector@mediachannel.org.

Danny Schechter
Editor Mediachannel.org
Director IN DEBT WE TRUST
InDebtWeTrust.com
212 246-0202x3006

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ON IN DEBT WE TRUST

Here’s part of a write up in South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper by Niren Tolsi:

“It’s important to educate. I’m a filmmaker, but also a bit of a troublemaker in that sense. It is important to put America’s individual debt on the agenda -- at the moment, the war in Iraq is dominating the agenda -- and to try to help people,” says Danny Schechter, director of the documentary In Debt We Trust, which analyses and examines the deeper roots of the United States’s total consumer debt, which is estimated at about $3-trillion. Schechter’s film is part of the Poverty and Inequality Challenge program at the 28th Durban International Film Festival and, along with the seditious What Would Jesus Buy?, does not focus on the usual themes of developing economies being affected by structural adjustment programmes or free- market hypocrisies. Instead, the cameras move away from emaciated African children and into the heart of consumerist hell: the United States. A country where credit-card companies pervade and, judging by an absurd scene in In Debt We Trust, even dead labradors can be solicited through the mail with plastic enticements….

Schechter says there is little space in a mainstream American media dominated by reports of bullish economies and Paris Hilton’s prison diaries for the issue of an economy “based two-thirds on consumption” and “teetering on the brink of financial disaster” to be properly addressed. He hopes his film will address this situation. There is, admittedly, some misanthropic joy to be had in imagining the economic implosion of the US. Yet Schechter’s film leaves no space for flippancy as it analyses credit-card marketing campaigns, the role of lobby groups in Washington and the debt fallout, including the two million American families facing foreclosures on their homes. The dangerous universality of the content is inescapable.

Schechter has links to South Africa, which go back to 1967 when he arrived to cover Chief Albert Luthuli’s funeral as a 24-year-old journalist. He has since directed several documentaries on the country, including Countdown to Freedom: Ten Days that Changed South Africa (1994), and produced the long-running South Africa Now current affairs television programme.

A media analyst and activist, his interest in South Africa remains avid, and we are soon discussing Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s warning to consumers on their profligate use of credit. “South Africa is one of the more advanced developing countries and there is already a move towards consumption while production is also being outsourced there,” says Schechter. “It is happening all over the world where the media is so pervasive. People want what other people have and with credit cards you become unaware that you will eventually have to pay for it.

“My point in this film is that this bubble in the US is about to burst and that we are in a very fragile situation. It is a horrendous situation as the gap between the rich and the poor widens in the US,” says Schechter.”