Jeff Clements is an attorney, the president of American Promise, and a former assistant attorney general for Massachusetts. He has been a member since 2013.
I have been involved in the question of corporations and democracy for much of my career, but I got involved at a deeper level after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. It is a fork in the road. One road leads to oligarchy. Or we can reaffirm human rights and equal citizenship: That’s the path to democracy. We have a choice.
Democracy is on the defensive: It is viewed as an inconvenience to global capitalism. That’s a real problem.
Corporate Accountability International is not just sounding the alarm but working on real solutions. One of the things I like a lot about your approach is how you look at the whole systemic problem, and then pick effective places to dig in and make a difference. For example your work around public water and the threat of privatization. It gets to the heart of the actual conflicts people are dealing with: the immediate problem of something that belongs to everyone now being claimed as private property. Identifying these struggles and acting on behalf of humanity is something I appreciate about Corporate Accountability International.
