Summer 2024 - Digital Issue

Escaping Corporate Capture

Summer 2024: Volume 31, Issue 2

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• Welcome

• Corporate Capture: Can We Find a Way Out?

  “[O]ver time, the for-profit corporation has occupied more and more social space; its tentacles reach into politics, our economy, our daily life, and— perhaps most insidiously—our culture and ideas.”

  by Steve Dubb and Rithika Ramamurthy

• They Need Us More Than We Need Them: The Power of Debtor Organizing

  “For tens of millions of people, the American dream is no longer owning a house with a white picket fence; it is getting out of crushing debt. Our economic system leaves many if not most of us no choice but to borrow for healthcare, housing, education, and other basic needs.”
  

  by Astra Taylor and Hannah Appel

• Corporate Economic Blackmail and What to Do about It

  “[W]elcome to the land of economic development subsidies. It’s trickle-down economics on steroids— in which some of the biggest corporations...extract huge sums of public money for corporate and personal profit.”

  by Arlene Martínez and Greg LeRoy

• From Corporate Culture to a New Organizational Landscape: A Conversation with Steve Dubb, Rithika Ramamurthy, and Ananda Valenzuela

  “I fundamentally believe that the change we want is going to take a lot of people running in—generally— the same direction. And the more effectively we can organize and collaborate, the more movement we’ll make in that direction. I believe that culture is far more important than structure, but structure is where we get stuck. We spiral around questions of power, decision-making, and leadership.”

• Whose Capital? Our Capital!: The Power of Workers’ Pensions for the Common Good

  “There is no way to protect existing pension funds from the slow strangulation of the tentacles of finance capitalism unless workers take more control over the uses to which their deferred compensation is being put.”

  by Sara Myklebust, Bahar Tolou, and Stephen Lerner

• Organizing the South: How Black Workers Are Challenging Corporate Power

  “The goal is to build an authentic base from which to call on the current administration to facilitate discussions between Black workers and labor and industry leaders across fields. Is it almost too big to wrap our minds around? Perhaps. Yet we do not have the luxury not to try.”

  by Erica Smiley

• Building Solidarity Economies: Stories from Worker Co-op Members

  “Now in its twentieth year, the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives has witnessed strong, transformational leadership within its member co-ops via the worker–owner model— leadership that is strengthening both the workplaces and the communities in which they are embedded. The stories that follow provide a window into the lives of three worker–owners in this field.”

  by Sabiha Basrai, Yvette Beatty, and Andrew Gansenberg

• Challenging Corporate Influence in the Nonprofit Sector

  “In the maze of advocacy and issue-based organizations, the tendrils of corporate influence grip tightly, shaping the contours of the sector in ways that stifle innovation and perpetuate inequities, particularly for Black women leaders.” 
  

  by Anne Price

• Economic Justice: Nonprofit Leaders Speak Out
  

  “How do we confront corporate capture in our work? Corporate capture can be found throughout our economy and society, but how it shows up differs depending on where one sits. In [these] essays... three leaders consider the question in the areas of housing, climate work, and higher education.” 

  by Tara Raghuveer, Johanna Bozuwa, and Davarian L. Baldwin

• Building a Solidarity Economy in the South (and Beyond): Cooperation Jackson
  

  “May Day 2024 marked the 10-year anniversary of Cooperation Jackson—a network of worker cooperatives and solidarity economy institutions whose mission is to build a vibrant and ecologically regenerative solidarity economy in Jackson, MS, and throughout the southern portion of the United States, as a prelude to a democratic transition toward eco-socialism.”

  by Kali Akuno

• Transcending Racial Capitalism: A Conversation with Steve Dubb, Rithika Ramamurthy, and Saqib Bhatti
  

  “Those who work closely with community organizations, labor unions, and advocacy groups that work on such issues as housing, policing and surveillance, education, healthcare, and so on know, because of the way that our economy functions, that the harms in the system across each and every one of those fields fall most heavily on communities of color. And they do so by design.”
  

• Liberating the Media

  “The American media is a morbid affair of late. Publications ranging from the Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal to the Intercept are laying off reporters by the droves.    The sometimes nasty-as- its-name VICE is laying off hundreds, citing dwindling figures that conveniently overlook executives’ golden parachutes; Sports Illustrated said it was hanging up its swimsuits and jockstraps, and laid off most of its workforce. Welcome to the media extinction die-in.”
  

  by Alissa Quart

• ENDPAPER
  Wait Let Me Get My Mask