"I'd dig a hole all the way to China unless of course I was there then I'd dig my way home/If by digging I could steal the wind from the sails of the greedy men who rule the world." Dave Matthews
"Whose streets? Our streets!"
I think the expansion of "private enterprise," "free market capitalism" and "globalization" at the expense of our environment and the lives of fellow human beings has gone quite far enough. Any sense of responsibility or community has been thrown under the bus in favor of "property rights."
Multinational corporations now have such a stranglehold on most markets that we can't effectively refuse to do business with them. In many cases, they are the only game in town, or such a big one that losing a few thousand customers does next to nothing. Going to a competitor is often no better. The option of voting with our wallets is off the table.
Corporations also have a long history of buying out governments or directly supporting human rights abuses. For instance, Chiquita is being sued in NY for funding FARC death squads in Columbia. United Fruit has a similarly terrible human rights record in South America. They are not exceptions; they are the rule.
Obama apologized for the US role in overthrowing Mossadegh in Iran, but British Petroleum were the ones who started the campaign. They went to Churchill, who came to us and insisted Mossadegh be overthrown before he could nationalize Iran's oil.
The list of democracies overthrown or crushed because of corporate interests pressuring our government is harrowing. Should we be surprised that our government is putting corporate interests ahead of the livelihoods and well-being of Americans? No. It's our foreign policy for the second half of the 20th century coming home.
So what do we do? Playing politics will only get us so far. We can fight it out against an increasingly deranged conservative movement and exhaust ourselves in endless campaigns, or we can go straight to the source.
I propose to fight corporate power like Bolivians fought Bechtel privatizing their water. I am not advocating violence. I say we bring the tactics of non-violent protest to the offices and headquarters of corporations that put profits over people.
Imagine shutting down the headquarters of Goldman Sachs, Cigna, Anthem, WalMart or FedEx. I'm not talking marching in and disrupting things for a bit and then leaving. I mean shutting them down. I mean mass protest like the Battle in Seattle. To shut them down for a day, a week. Until they agree to treat their employees and customers like human beings.
We can choose to say, in no uncertain terms, that putting profits before people and the environment is unacceptable. It will take thousands of determined people willing to go to jail, face armies of corporate lawyers and get beaten by private security firms like Blackwater.
What say you, fellow Kossaks?