Thinking Critically, Community Rights, and Corporations

Daniel (15 yrs. old) and I are back at reading Derrick Jensen's "Walking on Water" to each other this morning. I can think of 3 powerful quotes that I could pull from today's reading. I'm going to go with this one.

"It is possible to perceive the world such that it makes sense to gas Jews and others at death camps. It is possible to perceive yourself and others such that it makes sense to destroy the planet in order to make money and amass power, to perpetuate and make grow an economic system. None of this is to say these are "wise" choices: It's to say they're choices. It's also to stress once again, how often unquestioned assumptions frame our choices. If we wish to make different choices we must smash the frames that constrain us. We must, if we care about our own lives, and if we care about the life on the planet, begin to remember how to think critically, how to think for ourselves." -- (Pg. 119-120)

I had a couple thoughts related to Community Rights and Corporations this morning.

The first: It occured to me that I'm not against corporations. What I support is once again making corporations subordinate to We The People. A free and sovereign people define and have power over the robots they create. In other words, under the the theory of The United States the corporation was never meant to govern We The People. In my mind, a big reason why the American Revolution was fought was to drive a stake through the heart of the corporation.

The second: What does an authentic win look like for a community fighting a corporate harm? I think an authentic win looks like citizens within the community voting "no", or making a law against the harm being done to them. If a corporation decides to leave because of economic reasons or because of the hassle-factor that is the corporation leaving. You, as a self-governing people have not defined what your values are and codified them into law. Once you have expressed your values into law it's all out there in the open for the next corporation that will be coming in to do the harm.

Do I think this will be easy? No. Do I think it's a magic bullet? No. But I think it's far more effective than fighting corporate harms one at a time. It reminds a lot of whack-a-mole. That is what it looks like for citizens and activists fighting the harms.