Joyce L. Arnold, Liberally Independent, Queer Talk, equality activist, writer.
I know. Referring to the “Two Corporate Parties” is old hat. Nothing to see, move it along.
One problem with that attitude is that it helps keeps the Corporate / Oligarchic rule of the wealthiest of the wealthy in place.
Big Corporation owns and/or directs our political and governance system. And yes, it has something to do with marriage and math. I’ll get to that.
Bill Quigley, via Common Dreams:
‘Corporations are people, my friend.’ Mitt Romney …
Corporations are obviously not people. But Romney is accurate in the sense that corporations have hijacked most of the rights of people while evading the responsibilities.
Now, about marriage. Last week’s court decision which once again ruled Prop 8 is unconstitutional (an appeal will follow), and last week’s vote in the Washington state legislature that approved “same-sex marriage (a challenging referendum is planned), and yesterday’s signing of that legislation into law by Gov. Christine Gregoire, were followed by yesterday’s New Jersey Senate vote passing a marriage equality law. The NJ Assembly is expected to pass it later this week. Gov. Chris Christie has been clear he will veto it, and expectations are that the proponents of the new law will not be able get the votes needed to overcome that veto. Of course efforts will continue, and the fact of the passage will be a key step in those efforts. See Keen News for a good overview.
What does this have to do with corporations? Well, in Washington state, for example, several big corporations supported the marriage equality bill. As reported at AlterNet, those corporations include Starbucks, Nike, Microsoft, American Apparel, Apple, and Amazon. I’ve asked this before (here): what do you do when a corporation or organization is “good” on your issue, but not so good on others? Lauren Kelley, in that AlterNet post, writes:
6 Companies That Stand Up for Gay Rights (Now If They Only Had Good Labor Practices Too)
Beyond throwing their weight behind gay rights, these companies share something in common: each has a dubious track record with regards to workers’ rights. It’s clear that while the tide has turned for corporate support of gay rights, the same cannot yet be said for fair labor practices.
… we … saw JC Penney … stand up for its new spokesperson, Ellen Degeneres, after the anti-gay group One Million Moms launched a boycott against the chain.
These incidents illustrate an important trend in, of all places, corporate America. … In doing so, the companies showed us that the right-wing culture war against homosexuality is losing not only in the courts, but in the court of public opinion.
With Corporate Rule firmly in place, conflicts like this (obviously not limited to LGBT equality efforts) are inevitable. Money drives the process, the people at the top determine the direction and the timing. What does an activist do?
Here’s some math that addresses the overall reality of our political / governance Corporate driven system. Or rather, here’s a mathematician who does. Cathy O’Neil, at mathbabe, is writing about needed changes in academic publishing, using Occupy as an analogy.
Mathematics has an Occupy moment
The Occupy Wall Street movement means a lot of things to a lot of people, but one of the things it pretty much universally represents is the concept of agency.
Instead of sitting passively by and allowing a dysfunctional system to detract from a culture, the participants in Occupy want to object, to reform the system, and if that doesn’t work, to build a new system. And the crucial point is that they feel that they have the right (if not obligation) to do so. Moreover, they wish to construct a new paradigm built on democratic understanding of the shared goals of the system itself, rather than letting whomever is in power decide how things work and who benefits.
That’s one of the best summaries I’ve read regarding the Occupy / 99% “issue.” It’s a deliberate step outside of that Corporate System to look for and create different answers. After all, if you let someone else define the “issue” for you, most likely only their defined “answers” are going to fit. Occupy isn’t alone in these efforts, of course, though many are working more from within, also a needed tactic.
From the Quigley post:
Dozens of groups are working to reverse Citizens United and restore limits on corporate election advocacy. In January 2011, groups delivered petitions signed by over 750,000 people calling on Congress to amend the Constitution and reverse the decision. More than 350 local events were held in late January 2012 to challenge the Citizens United decision.
Other actions include one late last year in Montana, when the state Supreme Court upheld the “century-old ban on corporate campaign spending,” a decision being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
And today Occupy Atlanta joined with Atlanta Jobs with Justice, Communication Workers of America, and AFSC in occupying the AT&T Headquarters in Atlanta.
Citing Jobs With Justice:
Multinational corporations like AT&T have been undermining workers standards of living for decades. If we stand up for union jobs with AT&T we can stand up for a future where there’s enough for everyone, a future that creates space for all of us to thrive. …
Let’s not get it twisted. There’s enough resources to go around. The crisis isn’t about resources. It’s about economic priorities.
Life in Corporate Nation U.S.A. is an everyday reality. I firmly believe “everyday,” grassroots people are the only ones who can change that.
(Corporations Cartoon via Occupy Posters )
“ Grassroots people are the only ones who can change that. “ As I’ve said before ( sorry ) it is the voters who are ultimately responsible. They elect people based on a single issue while ignoring all the other things this person their voting for might do once in office. Corporations have the power because voters elected the representatives most likely to give it to them. Until voters can move beyond single issues, loyalty, attack ads, shout radio and being blatantly manipulated by populist frauds, I don’t think all the grassroots action in the world is going to change anything. What you may end up with is an army of progressive soldiers battling the forces of the right to regain what ignorant voters gave away.
I think a lot of the grassroots people are voters. And of course, a lot aren’t. A combination of people working from within and from without, with some overlap between those two groups, is what I think we probably have.
I agree, as we’ve discussed, that getting beyond the single issue, party-loyalty-no-matter-what, etc., is essential. Because yes, we have voters choosing Electeds who are largely beholden to the Corporates. The cycle has to be broken before change can occur.
Love reading your thoughts, fangio.
I like how you made the connection between corporate power and social change. In one respect, it’s a good thing for those of us who work in the corporate world if we’re in a minority (racial or sexual or physically challenged, etc) or are women to know that the company you work for has healthy advocacy policy for fair promotions and meritorious salary increases, etc. (outside of it’s business mission). And, like the J C Penny example, to hire spokespeople like Ellen Degeneres which is good for the bottom line NOW because the climate is right and the American consumer is ready to accept someone like Ellen as the representative of a store they frequent. Imo, JC Penny didn’t risk much by hiring Ellen to be the face of their company because they didn’t have to do much research to tell them she was extremely popular with the American public and it’s not only regional. And, Ellen is now great for J C Penny’s bottom line. But, that wasn’t always the case.
When Ellen did the Puppy Episode in 1997 when she came out to the public, times weren’t so friendly towards us gays, and J C Penny who was a sponsor of the Ellen Show at the time dropped their advertising account for her show or the Puppy Episode and until the series was cancelled.
So, all of these corporate steps forward while very good for us all in terms of employment (and the more they employ, the better for the economy) and to get consumers to buy product by having someone as immensely popular as Ellen as their spokesperson is just another way to make us all become part of the machine in some way or other. To conform. And, perhaps if we see them as benevolent by all of these positive changes, we will keep quiet when they are accused of accounting fraud (not saying this about JC Penny just a general comment) or in the case of Goldman Sachs, massive security fraud that did great damage to the economy and people’s private lives (losing jobs, foreclosures, etc.) .
Here is Goldman Sachs CEO and Chairman, Lloyd Blankfein (who should have been indicted by now and found guilty of massive security fraud at the least) advocating for same-sex marriage. I’d like to know what type of benefits his company makes available to it’s gay and lesbian employees. But, many of us will see this and praise this man for his advocacy and some of us will see it as a double edged sword.
Here is Blankfein’s video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSv5bXC2ANg
But, I know some gay people who see that video of Blankfein’s advocacy for gay marriage will see him and Goldman Sachs as a good man and company and will either want to work there or defend them from those like us who know better.
Will the Borg assimilate most of us so that there won’t be many left to fight back? I don’t know how large the Occupy movement is although last I heard the American public agreed with what they had to say if not their tactics. But, until those who have actually been harmed by what Blankfein etal did and those who want to see justice done by indicting these criminals, rise up and demand change, I don’t even know if that will work. Until we 99 percenters have the power to affect the bottom line of these corporations en mass in addition to that horrible Citizens decision by the Supremes that blasted campaign finance reform to smithereens gets reformed or revoked, I don’t see much hope for real change.
Thanks for sharing these very thoughtful comments. Much appreciated.
I remember Ellen’s ”coming out” episode very well, and you’re right … at the time, it was a very courageous thing for her to do. It hurt her career, for a while. I’m glad JC Penny has “evolved,” but absolutely they did this because it’s good for business. In a very real way, as more of corporate U.S.A. does that kind of thing, it actually provides a kind of cover for people like, say, Obama, to move along in his own evolving process.
The connections between corporate power and social, and political, change are so significant, and complicated. I’ve watched, and been a part of, the very real struggles of what to do when someone is “good” on one of your primary “issues,” but bad on others. It always gets back to the money. As a Board member of a small organization put it, “We can’t afford not to take the money, but we can’t afford to take the money. Now what?”
I loved that the HRC Dinner when Blankfein received the award was protested by some queer Occupiers and others. And there was a good bit of unhappiness expressed in the LGBT communities about it. But, this is HRC, almost certainly THE Insider, when it comes to LGBT advocacy groups, so I don’t think anyone was surprised.
Once you become a corporate rep you become ”corporate entrenched” . There is no seperation of soul and “service” A million/billion $dollar profit machine has no love for its hard working citizens no matter who “represents” it. Greed simply cannot and never will replace that!
The “profit machine has no love for its hard working citizens” — yep. It has “uses” for them, and will do a a bit of nice sounding spin occasionally — we’re patriotic, we’re green, etc. But of course as you say, that’s the profit machine at work.
And they call it Capitalism.
Which — “Capitalism” — is all but equated with “good American” and “good Christian.”
As a technical professional, I found this bit of that “Mathematics has an Occupy moment” paper interesting:
It’s not related to the discussion here, of course, but it’s something that both science and engineering often find difficult – explaining itself to “outsiders”, even when those outsiders are just people in other branches of the same field. That has a lot to do with such a role being less respected than pure research (or development, in engineering).
And, as an aside, it sure looks like the Occupy movements need more storytellers, too.
As someone who put in her time in “the academy,” that rings very true, that anything ”less … than pure research” iis less respected by some.
More Occupy “storytellers” would be helpful. And more of what the storytellers who are present are doing getting more attention.
As for the topic at hand, I think we can boil down the Ellen Degeneres/J.C. Penney’s issue to this: corporations now understand that supporting gay rights won’t affect their bottom line, so they support them. Workers’ rights do affect their bottom line, so they’re considerably more reluctant to support those rights.
Excellent summary.