March 19, 2008

Below are the first debates we performed on the train.  We decided to mark the fifth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq by debuting our debate on the Iraq troop surge - is it working or not?  

This being our first time on the train there were certain bugs to work out.  For example, the audio is quite poor on the videos.  We have hopefully solved that problem by and large for our next trip out. Overall, the experience was very rewarding and it seemed like people on the train were listening to the debates. One of the major goals of the project is to introduce ideas that people aren't hearing in the mainstream, corporate media to a captive audience.  Hopefully, some of those audience members will become participants in the debates and everyone involved will be a little better informed than before the debate took place.  Another important goal of the project is to show that reasoned discussion of the most important issues of our time is very vital to a democratic society.  We are trying to fight the old adage that you don't talk about politics in mixed company.

Debate 1:

Debate 2:

Debate 3:

The debaters were Chris Voss (arguing that the surge is not working) and Michelle Shafer (arguing that the surge is working).  Meg McLynn shot the video.