STOP THE INVASION

Most Americans are familiar with the illustrious history of America and the Revolutionary War against England that gave birth to our nation. Fewer Americans realize America was born not just as a revolt against British Kings and British Parliament, but equally as a revolt against British corporations.

The Hudson's Bay Company, The British East India Company, and The Massachusetts Bay Company were all early corporations that existed during colonial times in America. Our founding fathers despised and feared those chartered companies, for they recognized the way British Kings and their cronies used them to control and deplete the resources of their labors in the colonies.

Remember, it was the British East India Company which imposed duties on the tea they were delivering to the colonies, and because they had a monopoly on the tea market, the colonists were forced to pay the duties or go without. The colonists revolted. Colonial merchants agreed to not sell the East India teas. Many East India Company ships were turned back, unable to deliver their cargoes of teas. And surely you must recall that the result was the Boston Tea Party, when colonists dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor.

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
- Thomas Jefferson

The Declaration of Independence in 1776 freed Americans not only of the British monarchy, but also the British corporations. For more than 100 years Americans remained suspicious and mistrusting of corporate powers. They were very careful about the way they granted corporate charters and the powers granted in them.

Early American corporate charters were of a completely different type than contemporary corporate charters. They were created literally by the people, as a convenience to the people, mere financial tools. Corporations were invisible, intangible, and artificial. They were chartered by the states, not the federal government, where they could be monitored locally, kept under close watch by the people. They were automatically dissolved if they violated their charter. Limits were placed on how big and how powerful companies could become.

The 200 corporations that were in operation by 1800 were kept on a short rein. They were not tolerated to participate in the political process, they could not buy stock in other corporations, and if they acted improperly, the consequences were severe. In 1832 President Andrew Jackson vetoed a motion to extend the charter of the corrupt and tyrannical Second Bank of the United States, and he was applauded for doing so. That same year Pennsylvania revoked the charters of ten banks for acting contrary to public interest. Even the industry trusts that formed to protect corporations from external competitors eventually faced the anti-trust legislation that was put into place in the mid 1800's.

In the early history of America the corporation played an important role, but their role was in service to the people. The people, not the corporations, were in control.

"Unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations."
- Andrew Jackson

The shift began in the last portion of the nineteenth century. It was the start of a period of great struggle between corporations and society. The turning point was the Civil War. Corporations made huge profits from procurement contracts and took advantage of the disorder and corruption of the times to buy legislatures, judges, and even presidents. Corporations became the masters and keepers of business. Before his death, President Lincoln warned, "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country...corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war."


"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question it's methods or throw light upon it's crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the Bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.. corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong it's reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed."
- Abraham Lincoln


President Lincoln's warning went unheeded. Corporations continued to grow in power and influence. They had laws governing their creation amended. States could no longer revoke their charters. Corporate profits could no longer be limited. Corporate activity could only be restrained by the courts, and time after time judges granted them small victories, conceding them rights and privileges they did not have before and were never intended to have.

Then, in 1886, an event occurred that would change the course of American history. In Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, a dispute over a rail road route, the US Supreme Court ruled that a corporation was a "natural person" under the Constitution and was entitled to all the rights and protections under the Bill of Rights. Suddenly, the corporation was made equal to the people, enjoying all the rights and sovereignty of individuals, including the right to free speech.

That court ruling gave to corporations the same powers and rights as private citizens. But, with their vast financial resources corporations thereafter actually have had more power than the individual citizens our Constitution and Bill of Rights was intended to protect against such tyrannical and empirical entities such as corporations. In a single stroke the whole intent of the American Constitution - that all citizens have one vote and equal voice in public debates - had been undermined. A single blunder by a corrupted judge changed the whole idea of democratic government.

Post Santa Clara America became a very different place. By 1919 corporations employed more than 80 percent of the workforce and produced most American wealth. Corporate trusts had become too powerful to challenge legally. Courts consistently favored their interests. Employees found themselves without recourse, if for instance they were injured on the job. If you worked for a corporation you voluntarily assumed the risks was the courts opinion. Railroad and mining companies were enabled to annex vast tracks of land at minimal expense.

Gradually, many of the ideas of the American Revolution were quashed. Both during and after the Civil War America was increasingly ruled by a coalition of government and corporations. The shift amounted to a coup d'tat, not a sudden military take over, but a gradual subversion and take over of the institutions of power. The United States has been governed as a corporate state ever since, with the exception of a brief period during the New Deal ear of Franklin Roosevelt.

"The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did...they always will. They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by the power of government, keep them in their proper spheres."
- Governor Morris, head of the committee that wrote the final draft of the U.S. Constitution


In the post World War II era, corporations continued to flourish and gain in power. They changed, merged, consolidated, restructured, and metastasized into ever larger and more complex units of resource extraction, production, distribution and marketing, to the point where many of them became more economically powerful than many countries. In 1997 fifty one of the world's largest economies belonged to corporations, not countries. The top five hundred corporations controlled forty two percent of the world's wealth. Today, corporations freely buy each other's stocks and shares. They lobby legislators and bank roll elections. They manage our air waves, set our industrial, economic and cultural agendas, and keep growing just as big and powerful as they darned well please.

Every day scenes play out across America and around the world that even 20 years ago would have seemed surreal, impossible, and undemocratic, without a whisper of discontent from the public affected by the negative consequences. Our founding fathers must be rolling in the graves at what has become of the Republic they sacrificed to create for us, their posterity.

At Morain Valley Community College in Palos Hills, Illinois, a student named Jennifer Beatty stages a protest against corporate sponsorship in her school by locking herself to the metal mesh curtains of the multimillion-dollar "McDonald's Student Center" that serves as the physical and nutritional focal point of her college. She is arrested and expelled.

At Greenbrier High School in Evans, Georgia, a student named Mike Cameron wears a Pepsi T-shirt on the day -- dubbed "Coke Day" -- when corporate flacks from Coca-Cola jet in from Atlanta to visit the school their company has sponsored and subsidized. Mike Cameron is suspended for his insolence.

In suburban shopping malls across North America, moms and dads push shopping carts down the aisle of Toys "R" Us. Trailing them and imitating their gestures, their kids push pint-size carts of their own. The carts say, "Toys 'R' Us Shopper in Training."

In St. Louis, Missouri, chemical giant Monsanto sics its legal team on anyone even considering spreading dirty lies -- or dirty truths -- about the company. A Fox TV affiliate that has prepared a major investigative story on the use and misuse of synthetic bovine growth hormone (a Monsanto product) pulls the piece after Monsanto attorneys threaten the network with "dire consequences" if the story airs. Later, a planned book on the dangers of genetic agricultural technologies is temporarily shelved after the publisher, fearing a lawsuit from Monsanto, gets cold feet.

"Fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power."
- Benito Mussolini "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt



In boardrooms in all the major global capitals, CEOs of the world's biggest corporations imagine a world where they are protected by what is effectively their own global charter of rights and freedoms -- the Multinational Agreement on Investment (MAI). They are supported in this vision by the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and other organizations representing twenty-nine of the world's richest economies. The MAI would effectively create a single global economy allowing corporations the unrestricted right to buy, sell and move their businesses, resources and other assets wherever and whenever they want. It's a corporate bill of rights designed to override all "nonconforming" local, state and national laws and regulations and allow them to sue cities, states and national governments for alleged noncompliance. Sold to the world's citizens as inevitable and necessary in an age of free trade, these MAI negotiations met with considerable grassroots opposition and were temporarily suspended in April 1998. Nevertheless, no one believes this initiative will remain suspended for long.


"The Trilateral Commission is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power - political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical. All this is to be done in the interest of creating a more peaceful, more productive world community. What the Trilateralists truly intend is the creation of a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nation-states involved. They believe the abundant materialism they propose to create will overwhelm existing differences. As managers and creators of the system they will rule the future."
- Senator Barry Goldwater, Republican candidate for President, 1964

We, the people, have lost control. Corporations, these legal fictions that we ourselves created two centuries ago, now have more rights, freedoms and powers than we do. And we accept this as the normal state of affairs. We go to corporations on our knees. Please do the right thing, we plead. Please don't cut down any more ancient forests. Please don't pollute any more lakes and rivers (but please don't move your factories and jobs offshore either). Please don't use pornographic images to sell fashion to my kids. Please don't play governments off against each other to get a better deal. We've spent so much time bowed down in deference, we've forgotten how to stand up straight.

The unofficial history of America, which continues to be written, is not a story of rugged individualism and heroic personal sacrifice in the pursuit of a dream. It is a story of democracy derailed, of a revolutionary spirit suppressed, and of a once-proud people reduced to servitude.

It's time, America, for another Boston Tea Party.

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
- Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural