The COVID-19 pandemic and protests and uprisings against racial injustice have laid bare a fundamental imbalance of power in our world today: Massive corporations, and the wealthy, mostly white few who own and control them, have too much power. And their abuses time and again reinforces and perpetuates racial oppression. This isn’t new. For decades, corporations have fed and exacerbated some of the deepest injustices in our society — from economic inequity to systemic racism, to environmental destruction.
If like me, you’ve had enough of corporations devastating people’s lives with impunity, I urge you to take this opportunity to vote in our annual Corporate Hall of Shame.
Every year, we ask you to vote for some of the worst and most abusive corporations. We then induct the “winner” of that vote into our Corporate Hall of Shame. Then, we partner with members like you and our allies to mobilize grassroots pressure on these corporations that corrupt the political process and abuse human rights, the environment, and our public health.
So which corporations will you vote for? Maybe you’ll vote for Amazon for undermining public health and worker safety during the COVID-19 pandemic with unsafe, grueling conditions in its warehouses. Or you could vote for TC Energy for jamming oil and gas pipelines through unceded Wet’suwet’en land after Wet’Suwet’en elders and leaders objected to the project, continuing a pattern of trampling on Indigenous rights — while worsening the climate crisis. The list goes on: from GEO Group, a private prison profiteer, to Coca-Cola, that fuels a global epidemic of diet-related diseases.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. We have to name and shame the corporations devastating the environment, trampling human rights, undermining democracy, and threatening lives and livelihoods in the face of a global pandemic.
By casting your vote today, you will help us name a new inductee into our Corporate Hall of Shame. Then we’ll partner with you and our allies in the corporate accountability movement to mobilize the grassroots pressure necessary to compel the corporation to change.
Last year’s “winning” corporation was Koch Industries. And for good reason! Koch Industries and the Koch network continue to lobby for environmental rollbacks and tax cuts for the rich, among a host of other abuses. And in addition to inducting them into the Corporate Hall of Shame, we also partnered with UnKoch My Campus, and other organizations, to demand that George Mason University cut ties with the Koch Network. Thousands have already taken action, and student leaders will deliver those petition signatures when they’re back on campus this fall.
