Over the past few months, you took action to make sure executives and board members of some of the biggest and most powerful corporations in the world heard your voice during their annual shareholders’ meetings.
And, although these events were all held online again this year, giving corporations even more control over whose voices could be heard, you helped make quite a splash.
I wanted to give you a few quick highlights:
- You helped challenge Coca-Cola’s funding of racist voter suppression: With your support, we partnered with Nsé Ufot, the CEO of the New Georgia Project, who spoke powerfully at Coca-Cola’s shareholders’ meeting about its funding of politicians that passed Georgia’s voter suppression law. She urged the corporation to stop funding racist and restrictive anti-democratic laws, unhealthy marketing practices affecting Black communities, and get its money out of politics altogether.
- You supported youth speaking truth to Big Tobacco executives: Thanks to you, we helped train youth organizers who spoke at Altria’s shareholders’ meeting about the dangers of addictive tobacco products that kill millions every year.
- You joined in solidarity with fast food workers: Terrance Wise, a McDonald’s employee, directly challenged McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski and the Board of Directors over the corporation’s refusal to pay its workers a fair and livable wage — despite netting nearly $5 billion in profits just this year. The shareholders’ meeting happened just one day after McDonald’s workers walked out on a one-day strike.
And that’s just a sample of the ways you’ve spoken truth to corporate power over the last few months.
Going toe-to-toe with these corporations like this isn’t easy. And our organizing doesn’t end when the shareholders’ meeting is over. It takes long-term, strategic organizing to win systemic changes that are propelled by deep partnerships.
Shareholders’ meetings present a tremendous opportunity to challenge executives directly about their corporations’ abusive practices and to draw attention to the people harmed by corporate abuse.
But you and I know that we can’t stop at just speaking out during annual meetings. We know from decades of winning hard-hitting corporate campaigns that these shareholders’ meetings are just one moment, and we have to keep the pressure on to make change.
That’s why I’m asking if you’ll donate today to support the critical campaigns we run. Your support makes it possible for us to bring your voice to major events like shareholders’ meetings. And it also makes it possible for us to run long-term, strategic, nimble campaigns that go beyond the immediate media moment.
