[CTRL] Fw: (earthclan) Fwd: Anti-Corporate Activism

[Shane A. Saylor, Eccentric Bard]

 -Caveat Lector-

Thought this was interesting. Enjoy.

--
"Philosophy is the attempt to catch a black cat in a
dark room, without the cat actually being there at
all." - Pablo Cruz  ICQ: 9815080
 Operator Taliesin_2 of #SacredNemeton on IRC PaganPaths


----- Original Message -----
From: Danielle Ni Dhighe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 1999 6:45 AM
Subject: (earthclan) Fwd: Anti-Corporate Activism


> There is a new breed of activist roaming the land. These are activists
> who believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with the large
> corporation itself -- that it is not what corporations do wrong that is
> the problem, it is corporations themselves that are the problem.
>
> These activists believe large corporations as they exist today are
> fundamentally undemocratic and cannot be reformed.  These activists
> question whether corporations should be considered legal persons with the
> same rights of you and I and other living human beings. They question the
> very nature of the corporation.
>
> Richard Grossman and his colleagues at the Program on Corporations,
> Law and Democracy are travelling the country, encouraging activists of all
> stripes to begin asking fundamental questions about citizen control of
> corporations, to research the history of corporations, and to begin to
> question corporate control over the citizenry.
>
> In 1996, Grossman was in Columbus, Ohio, where he met with 25
> activists from around the state for two days. One activist who attended
> was Greg Coleridge.
>
> Coleridge was born and raised and spent most of his life in Akron,
> Ohio. For the past 17 years, he has been an activist with the American
> Friends Service Committee -- the Quakers.
>
> After hearing Grossman speak, Coleridge and fellow activists in Ohio
> began researching the history of corporations in Ohio.
>
> They found a speech given by Williams Jennings Bryan to the 1912
> Constitutional Convention in Columbus, Ohio. Ask yourself:  Who today
> would speak in such a manner?
>
> This is what William Jennings Bryan had to say in 1912:
>
> "The first thing to understand is the difference between the natural
> person and the fictitious person, called the corporation.  They differ in
> the purpose in which they are created, in the strength which they possess,
> and in the restraints under which they act. Man is the handiwork of God
> and was placed upon earth to carry out a Divine purpose. The corporation
> is the handiwork of man and was created to carry out a money-making
> policy. There is comparatively little difference in the strength of men. A
> corporation may be one hundred, one thousand, or even one million times
> stronger than the average man. Man acts under the restraints of
> conscience, and is influenced also by a belief in the future life. A
> corporation has no soul and cares nothing about the hereafter."
>
> They found that the Ohio Supreme Court stripped Standard Oil of Ohio
> of its charter for monopolizing the oil industry. The Standard Oil Trust
> fled to New Jersey, the Delaware of its day.  And Standard Oil wasn't
> alone. The Ohio state legislature and courts had stripped dozens and
> dozens of corporations of their charters for wrongdoing. Don't do as we
> tell you and you're out!
>
> They found that the much ballyhooed Sherman Antitrust Act was a bone
> thrown to activists. The act was named after John Sherman, the Senator
> from Ohio. This is Senator Sherman urging his fellow members of the Senate
> to pass his legislation into law: The people "are feeling the power and
> grasp of these combinations, and are demanding of every [state]
> legislature and of Congress a remedy for this evil, only grown into huge
> proportions in recent times. . .You must heed their appeal, or be ready
> for the socialist, the communist, and the nihilist. .  .Society is now
> disturbed by forces never felt before. The popular mind is agitated with
> problems that may disturb the social order. Among these, none is more
> threatening than the inequality of condition, wealth and opportunity" that
> has emerged from "the concentration of capital in vast combinations to
> control production and trade and to break down competition."
>
> Coleridge and his friends pulled together this information in a nifty
> little booklet called: Citizens Over Corporations: A Brief History of
> Democracy in Ohio and Challenges to Organizing in the Future.
>
> "Corporations are a different kind of creation," Coleridge told us
> recently. "There is no surprise that corporations have ended up working
> against the human interest and against the common good."
>
> So Greg, if not corporations, what?
>
> "If we can ever get to the point of asking that question, we will
> have moved forward," Coleridge says. "Just as fish think water is
> necessary for existence, human beings have come to see corporations as
> necessary to economic existence. It is so much accepted as a given that we
> don't tend to believe that there is any other way."
>
> Right now, Grossman, Coleridge and like minded activists around have
> a lot of questions and few answers. They are busy researching how we got
> ourselves into this soup -- from a situation where we controlled
> corporations, to where corporations are controlling us.
>
> For his part, Coleridge is not ashamed to admit that he doesn't know
> the answer to corporate power. "The corporate culture is a century or more
> in the making," he said. "It is going to take a few years for us
> collectively and democratically to understand where we are, how we got
> here, and how to turn it around."
>
> [Greg Coleridge can be reached at the American Friends Service Committee,
> 330-253-7151, Humanity House, 513 West Exchange St., Akron, OH 44302.]
>
>
> Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
> Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
> Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The
> Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy. For more information,
> see <http://www.corporatepredators.org>.
>
> (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
>
> Focus on the Corporation is a weekly column written by Russell Mokhiber
> and Robert Weissman. Please feel free to forward the column to friends or
> repost the column on other lists. If you would like to post the column on
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>
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>
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>

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