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Local Agenda
Challenging Corporate Power: Our concern with this issue is motivated by our dismay with the preferential treatment corporations receive from government. Just as the Supreme Court decided the 2000 Presidential election, the Court in 1886 re-interpreted the 14th Amendment, meant to protect freed slaves, and granted its personhood protections to corporations. Thus, in one grand coup corporations acquired all of the protections the Bill of Rights extends to living citizens. In subsequent years we have seen a steady rise in corporate power at the expense of our democracy. We propose to meet the challenge of corporate power, and re-assert the people’s rights, by means of a sustained campaign of education and action
Local Agenda Resources
Alison, Jim. (September 2007) How to Vote
This review of various voting systems, neither detailed, technical nor exhaustive, is purely introductory in purpose. It omits some systems intentionally: the colonial “stand by your man” system, for its lack of privacy; and lever machines for their weight, their clunkiness, their abandonment by manufacturers and their lack of a voter verifiable paper trail. As there is no perfect system, our common problem is to discover or invent the best system we can afford. How to Vote
Nace, Ted (2003). Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Condensed by James Allison, June-July 2004.
According to recent Harris polls, the great majority of Americans think that big companies have too much power in Washington. How did they get that power? The answers lurk in the history of the American corporation and its British progenitor.
Crafts guilds began to proliferate in 13th-century Britain. They were not businesses, but umbrella groups of those who plied different crafts: clothworkers, fishmongers, haberdashers and the like. With the growth of international trade some guilds became the first business corporations. Among them were the Merchant Adventurers, independent traders who pooled their capital to finance a shared infrastructure that comprised such facilities as wharfs, convoys and overseas embassies. At first each member maintained his own capital. However, as maritime innovations extended the reach of trade, the attendant increase in potential risk and reward made it advantageous for merchants' financial backers to spread their capital across several trade ventures. This method of pooling capital was essentially a joint-stock company, the form used by the modern corporation. They also found it advantageous to seek grants of exclusive access to particular regions. Within such regions they repelled rivals and imposed order by means of private armies and police.
Read the Full Article . . . (Word Document)
Gangs of America (PDF)
LeRoy, Greg (2005).The great American jobs scam: Corporate tax dodging and the
myth of job creation. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Condensation by James Allison,
January 2006. This book deals with the transfer of public money to private hands in return for a
promise of economic development, often in the form of job creation. The author
characterizes this process as a scam and a myth. Read the Full Text. . .
The Wal-Mart DVD we showed at the library on Jan. 19 is available at www.walmartmovie.com
Lynn, Barry C. (2005). End of the line: The rise and coming fall of the global
corporation. New York: Doubleday. Condensation by James Allison, Feb. 2006.
To illustrate the perils of the global corporation, Lynn recalls the earthquake that hit
Taiwan in 1999 and damaged two factories that happened to produce nearly all of the
world’s semiconductor chips. No other source was at hand. As a result of the one-week
shutdown in Taiwan thousands of American factory workers were sent home, Wall Street
traders dumped the stocks of some of our biggest electronics firms, and Christmas
shoppers did without the laptops, Furby dolls and Barbie Cash Registers they had hoped
to put under the tree. Nature struck again in March 2000, when a lightning bolt hit a Philips
semiconductor plant in Albuquerque. The ensuing 10-minute fire disrupted the production
of Ericsson’s new cell phone in Sweden. Ericsson stock dropped more than 50% in six
months, the company’s board decided to off-load manufacturing and its arch-competitor,
Nokia, gained significant market share. These and many other examples show that our
corporations have built a highly efficient system of production finely tuned to a world without
natural disasters, wars, terrorists or human error. Accordingly, the global adoption of this
system of production means king-size trouble in the real world ahead. Read the full text. . .
Campbell, Tracy (2005). Deliver the Vote: A History of Election Fraud, an American Political Tradition--1742-2004. New York: Carroll & Graf. Condensation by James Allison,May 5, 2006.
Florida’s election fiasco of the year 2000 was no exceptional event in American history. Our deep
political culture approves and rationalizes cheating as a necessary defense against the corrupt
competition. In colonial Virginia’s elections for the House of Burgesses George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson liquored up their neighbors to win their votes, a practice called “treating.” At a time when onlyproperty holders could vote, candidates might swell the vote by creating “temporary property holders.”
There was physical intimidation and economic retaliation: “Errant” voters might encounter hired bullies, or find their loans called in. Read the full text. . .
"Humboldt Initiative 2006" Citizens in Humboldt County, California Offer New Model to Challenge Corporate “Rights” By Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County A recent poll of voters in Northern California’s Humboldt County found that 78% think that corporate financial contributions to the electoral process make political corruption more likely. And 72% did not think that non-local corporations should be able to financially contribute to local elections. Read the full text. . .
Viorst, Milton (2006).Storm from the East: The Struggle Between the Arab World and
the Christian West. New York: Modern Library.Condensation by James Allison, 2007.
Viorst was educated at Columbia, Lyon and Harvard. His original hope was to
profess French history, and went so far as to publish a book on De Gaulle. However, he
found the Middle East more challenging and exciting in that time still so near the French-
Algerian troubles. He has spent some 40 years working the Middle East as a journalist. He
has written many books on the topic, and freelanced for the New York Times, the
Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. He has been a correspondent for the New
Yorker magazine, and has taught at Princeton.
Read the full text. . .
Somersett’s Case, Slavery and the American Revolution “James Somersett, a Negro slave belonging to Charles Stewart of Jamaica, was brought by his master to England. There Somersett ran away, but he was captured and put for safe-keeping on board a ship lying in the Thames. Friends of Somersett then obtained a writ of habeas corpus addressed to the captain of the vessel who, in the return of the writ, set forth the facts as above. Here follows the judgment of the court of the king’s bench, stated by Chief Justice Mansfield. The counsel for Somersett pointed out that the only form of slavery known to English law was villeinage, which had disappeared from judicial proceedings since 1618 . . .” (Somersett’s Case, Stephenson & Marcham, 1937.)Read the full text. . .
Notes on Howard Jay Graham (1968). Every man’s constitution. Madison, Wisconsin: State Historical Society of Wisconsin. May, 2005 Amendment XIV. (Ratified July 9, 1868.) Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (Sections 2, 3 and 4 deal with the apportionment of Representatives, the denial of office to former rebels, and how neither the U. S. nor any State would pay any debts incurred in the aid of insurrection or rebellion.) Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Read the full text. . .
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The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom was founded in 1915 during World War I, with Jane Addams as its first president. WILPF works to achieve through peaceful means world disarmament, full rights for women, racial and economic justice, an end to all forms of violence, and to establish those political, social, and psychological conditions which can assure peace, freedom, and justice for all.
Bloomington, Indiana Branch
3940 N. Whitewood Way
Bloomington, IN
47404
bloomingtonwilpf@bloomingtonwilpf.org
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