Program on Corporations,
Law and Democracy

Contesting the Authority
of Corporations to Govern

Contact people@PROTECTED

To: Readers and supporters of POCLAD’s work

Subject: The future of our POCLAD collective

Those of us long a part of the collective known as the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy want to thank our supporters for the interest and support we received over the years. Reframing the people’s work against destructive corporate activity is essential to putting people and not giant business entities in charge of our country’s fate and future.

During recent months we POCLADers have been wrestling with the question of when to redirect our attention to other initiatives framed by a POCLAD analysis. When is it time to wrap up our small group and shift toward new venues? We believe the time is now!

POCLAD founders, Richard Grossman and Ward Morehouse, opened our activist hearts and minds to stores of critical knowledge in the mid-1990s. The reason hundreds of citizen organizations working against corporate assaults made so little headway was because they had no legal authority to do so. Whether we sought protection for communities, environments, wild lands or workers, giant business corporations were legally empowered to deny such protections.

How enlightening it was to unravel a hundred years of history under wraps. Corporate authority to govern entered the picture when the Supreme Court granted this legal form the rights of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment in the late 19th Century. They gained financial access to our electoral system when the Court deemed money a form of speech in 1976. Corporate powers continue to call the shots and shape the future in this so-called democracy.

At the nation’s founding, corporations were fiercely defined by states and communities, but those powers eroded as corporations took charge of labor, defined development and saw to the removal of democratic control over their role and strategies. The challenge we faced was not getting corporations to behave better, but to reestablish the people’s legal power over their corporate creations. That work is fundamental to saving the planet, addressing climate change, protecting workers, nurturing real community, and building a just and sustainable economy.

POCLAD sought to insert this history of corporate power into the framework of activist organizations addressing a wide range of assaults on democratic governance. While pursuing this challenge, we believe the work of many has been reshaped due to POCLAD’s efforts toward making democracy real.

POCLAD also focused on the history of the mass movements that opposed corporations -- the shield of the rich. The lessons of that history are essential to learn and apply in our current times.

The POCLAD website, www.poclad.org, will continue for at least the next few years, to make available the articles, many timeless, published over fifteen years in its newsletter, “By What Authority.” Occasionally there may be a new piece on the site, so feel free to check back. Emails sent to people@PROTECTED will be responded to, but not as frequently as in the past.

The REAL Democracy History Calendar will also continue, but under the umbrella of a different group, Create Real Democracy. Greg Coleridge will continue to distribute it weekly.

Finally, POCLAD’s funds are being distributed equally to POCLAD-inspired organizations that three of its major remaining “principals” work for: Cooperative Humboldt (David Cobb), Blue Mountain Biodiversity Project (Karen Coulter) and Move to Amend (Greg Coleridge). Please consider following and supporting these important efforts.

We appreciate your interest in our work and trust that all of us will move it into the future.

The POCLAD
David Cobb, Greg Coleridge. Karen Coulter, Mike Ferner, Dave Henson, Peter Kellman, Lewis Pitts, Jim Price, Virginia Rasmussen

p.s. “Fish Discover Water Last” is the title of a forthcoming collection of writings and talks of Richard Grossman. A separate email will be sent in the next few months when it’s published with ordering information.