- Make informed choices about the consumer goods you purchase;
- Hold your member of Parliament or Congress, and/or a powerful corporation, accountable on the issues;
- Join an activist organization, and then actively participate;
- Take the issues to your circle of friends and associates, interact with those who share your concerns, and with those who don't;
- Put the laptop down; change will not come by raging from your couch.
You may have already begun to act, or you may feel this list is far too simplistic. Fair enough. But there are countless others who remain uninformed, and many who are aware but have not yet taken even these basic steps. And, by the way, this is the easy part! None of these or similar measures remotely begin to address the systemic issues that underly the unfettered power that multi-national corporations now enjoy. These simple measures are the "training wheels" that allow us to build sustainable habits as we gain experience and community in our activism -- to consistently employ these actions in our daily lives is just the first stage in a longer and deeper commitment.
Removing The Training Wheels. I began to understand that next level of commitment when I came across the results for a conference in 2007, organized by Ralph Nadar. It was called "Taming the Giant Corporation", and through the link ( http://www.tamethecorporation.org/ ) to this three-day session you will find the video presentations on various aspects of corporate behavior. I found one of the presenters to be particularly insightful; Gar Alperovitz, Professor of Political Economy at Maryland University, made several comments that warrant repetition, and one in particular that best captures the true nature of change in relation to large corporations.
He reminded his audience that the progressive movement, linked as it was to labor, fueled many of the most important social reforms, the very reforms that big business is now effectively tearing apart (have you seen today's reports of Obama's capitulation on Social Security and Medicare?). The dramatic diminution of labor today, among many other factors, suggests that there will be no easy reforms at the national level (truer today than four years ago). The pain is most acute at the local level and, Alperovitz suggests, this is where we'll find -- as a start -- the best hope for a new economic system.
He further suggests that we think not of taming the corporation, but that we think in the context of moving beyond the corporation. But, in any case, he asks, "what do you do with large economic entities in any system?". They will remain an important part of a new economic system, so how do we construct real world change with respect to large scale industry?
Alperovitz suggests that we begin with localized solutions. Alternative systems of economic control are increasingly modeled on some sense of common ownership. Collective ownership models have begun to flourish at the local level, in part because it responds to the primary locus of the pain, and in part because it anchors local communities -- such economic entities don't move to Mexico, or Malaysia. And, as Alperovitz notes, these alternative systems "teach people about models of cooperation that are different from the corporate model", and how to use the power of ownership to constrain corporate behavior.
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