Supporers of the MEC have experienced directly the overt environmental misdeeds of corporations like Pacific Lumber (Maxxam), Mendocino Redwood Company (The Gap), Masonite (International Paper), Georgia Pacific and others.
Additionally, we are members of a class of persons (the American public) who are being ripped off and manipulated in countless ways. From the most blatantly egregious (tobacco corportions thwarting the will of the people by continuing to practice their marketing rights with impunity) to the "subtly" outrageous (gasoline prices in California at "lower than highest" levels week after week, gouging millions of dollars out of the pockets of those who can least affort it), the dinosaurs run unchecked.
No space here for a litany of bad corporate practice. Wherever you turn, whether to look at the proposed so-called "reform" of HMOs on our domestic scene, or to trace the recurring actions of companies like Chevron and Shell as they insinuate themselves into the corruptible and violent military juntas of Africa, Asia and South America, you are faced with the same problem: unbridled corporate power.
In recent issues of this newsletter, Bruce Haldane has written about gasoline and its alternatives, and Tom Wodetzki about the Alliance for Democracy and its campaign to educate the public on how corportions can be challenged (their charters can be revoked and rights of "personhood" taken from them).
But the public is not yet ready to name the enemies, let alone challenge their actions. And the politicians don't believe they need to. As just one example, on June 23, 1999, the Unocal Corporate Charter Revocation Action Center was desperately trying to counteract their failure to impress a new California Attorney General, Bill Lockyer, with their arguments for revocation of UNOCAL's corporate charter. According to the action group, Lockyer "has said he wants to be as tough on corporations as Teddy Roosevelt was." Instead, Lockyer "turned his back on this first opportunity to do so when he rejected the citizens' coalition petition to revoke [Unocal's] corporate charter... in a letter only three sentences long."
The enshrinement of corporations as primary custodians of "private property" has become the given presumption for all governance, and serves as the basic rationale for all "deregulation." Freedom is defined as the "operation of market forces." This is particularly strange, and dangerous, when you are talking "large and supranational", whether in the form of mega mergers (Viacom and CBS, Exxon and Mobil) or just traditionally huge monoliths (Archer Daniels Midland, GM, Coca Cola). In all these cases you are dealing with institutions that have only a single accountability: to power, power used in reaping profits at any cost to the world.
Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians, puts the whole issue succinctly. She states that "the dominant development model of our time is economic globalization, a system fueled by the belief that a single global economy with universal rules set by global corporations and financial markets is inevitable. Everything is for sale, even those areas of life once considered sacred. Increasingly, these services and resources are controlled by a handful of transnational corporations that shape national and international law to suit their interests. At the heart of this transformation is an all-out assault on virtually every public sphere of life, including the democratic underpinning of our legal systems."
And in a speech delivered last summer to the International Congress of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), Virginia Rasmussen began her comments with the following:
"Corporatons have made themselves the primary defining force on the globe. They shape our cultures and communities, define what is of value and what is not, what news we hear and what we won't, what we trade and what we can't. They define our work, what is produced and consumed, where investments are made, what technologies are developed.... They draft our laws and policies. They dominate our politicians. Corporatons are in charge of our lives."
And now, the upcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle (November 29 through December 3) brings the theme of globalization of corporate power to a very current and international climax. (See
Challenge the WTO on p. 1 for information on huge public protests planned for the WTO meeting).
The WTO is an evolving international institution whose purpose is to subordinate all national concerns to one overriding international concept: Any decision, any law, any regulation, by any governmental entity (local or national) which "negatively impacts" corporate economic well-being shall be subject to WTO agreements.
The working group on the World Trade Organization/Multilateral Agreement on Investments (WTO/MAI) has created a "Citizen's Guide to the World Trade Organization", with the sponsorship of, among others, the Association of State Green Parties, Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen, Women's Division/GBGM United Methodist Church, and Americans for Democratic Action. According to the guide, what we are confronting here is the creation of a "comprehensive system of corporate-managed trade" in which the needs of corporate globalization will take precedence over any individual country's cultural, environmental, or economic preference or law.
Disagreements between countries and companies will be adjudicated in secret by the WTO; the losers in such disputes must accede to whatever final WTO decision comes down.
It's time for a public awakening, and for human beings all over the world to assert their rights to truly Democratic forms of government, which alone can transform corporate culture into one which will assure that human and environmental needs are given the absolute priority they deserve.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1999
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited