Episode Summary

In this episode of The Tight Rope, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore joins Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose to shine light on the current state of crisis in America, white privilege, white fear, and citizen filmmakers. They emphatically connect the catastrophe of the criminal justice system to larger issues and discuss ways to move into a “new normal” that challenges bystander sensibility and police accountability taken out of the larger context of democratic accountability and multiracial solidarity. This is an episode of The Tight Rope that you do not want to miss.

 

Cornel West

Dr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums, including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast. 

 

Tricia Rose

Professor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (BA) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality, and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.  

 

Michael Moore

Michael Moore, one of America’s best-known documentary filmmakers and political provocateurs, has for over 30 years produced controversial and award-winning films and TV series that tackle critically important political and social issues in American society, including big business, corrupt governments and politicians, capitalism, and health care. 

Moore, from Flint, Michigan, won the Academy Award for best documentary for his 2002 Bowling for Columbine. He continues to produce successful and controversial films, most recently Planet of the Humans (2019), an eco-documentary and “full-frontal assault” of the failures of the environmental movement, directed by Jeff Gibbs. Moore examines and jokes about current issues on his own podcast Rumble with Michael Moore.

 

Insight from this episode:

Strategies on remaining hopeful in turbulent and violent times.

Responses to the question “Now what?”

Details on how to change the American police system and police accountability  to empower communities.

Strategies on shattering a spectatorial stance and avoiding being a bystander citizen.

Strategies on creating universal solidarity without downplaying individual suffering.

A call to commitment and sacrifice in the struggle for freedom and equality.

 

Quotes from the show:

“In the time of Trump, in the time of pandemic, have we been turned into a nation of bystanders?” –Michael Moore (quoting Cornel West) The Tight Rope Episode #1

“If you want to end crime, end poverty. If you want to end crime, empower women.” –Michael Moore The Tight Rope Episode #1

“The very first thing