It all began a few years ago with the publication of The Devil's Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lurch. [2] It is basically in two parts, one telling how the corpocracy was ruling and ruining America and much of the rest of the world and the other presenting over 180 proposed initiatives for ending the corpocracy and its tyrannical, ruinous rule. The initiatives were grouped into seven categories of strategic reform goals: 1. telling the public from students to senior citizens about the corpocracy, 2. mobilizing and organizing the opposition to the corpocracy; 3. reforming the political and judicial system; 4. digging up the legal roots of the corpocracy (e.g., corporate personhood); 5. ending corporate welfare and war; 6. holding corporations accountable for their actions and consequences; and 7. ending undemocratic capitalism.
The heart of the book's second part is what I occasionally call "two-fisted democracy power" to knock out the corpocracy figuratively speaking. One fist would be a coalition of numerous segments of our society (e.g., existing grass-roots movements) to provide the political pressure behind a coordinated plan of strategic reforms to be carried out by the second fist, an on-line network of numerous NGOs that claim to be seeking to change the status quo but are not united in their efforts and clearly are not changing the status quo. So I proposed in the book the creation of a network that I named the U.S. Chamber of Democracy as a counterpart to one of the corpocracy's staunchest allies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The book got glowing endorsements, and one in particular emboldened me to start out on the odyssey: "NGOs have been fighting the Corpocracy one company at a time for 30 years--and losing. Brumback tells us why, gives us a battle plan, and issues a challenge to join forces to reclaim our democracy. This is the pre-eminent American challenge for the 21st Century. The Corpocracy could not be more timely. Don't just read this book. Take action. Now!"
Had I understood then the real reason why NGOs are losing the battle to the corpocracy I would not have done what I did next. I started e-mailing a number of NGOs to see if I could persuade them to create and operate such a network. Here are a few excerpts from one of my e-mail templates:
The plain truth of the matter is that we are up against corrupt
corporations and crooked politicians. And that
is why I am writing to you about an idea I hope your organization will
seriously consider endorsing.
I am searching for organizations that are truly seeking to end the
corpocracy's power but that are mostly
disconnected from one another, mostly focused on narrow issues rather than
broad strategic reform objectives, mostly with limited resources, and have not
marshaled the massive public support necessary for their initiatives to
succeed.
An illustration of what an online network of organizations would look
like and do is illustrated on the Democracy Power Page of www.uschamberofdemocracy.com. I
emphasize that it is an illustration only. The network would make its own
decisions. I also want to emphasize that being a member of the network is not
intended to compromise the existence, the history, or the current resources or
agenda of any of the network's members.
When there are a significant number of endorsements on the list, it
will be sent to those on the list. They will be asked if they wish to stay on
the list for the time being or withdraw. The list will then be sent to
prospective donors who will be asked if they would be willing to fund the
start-up and initial operation of the network with options for continued
funding. Given a positive response from donors, those on the list that would
be willing to form the new network would
organize it and develop and submit for funding consideration a plan of reform
initiatives.
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