We are challenging the corporate takeover of our democracy.
“Corporate Accountability is about democracy. Democracy cannot survive when corporations call the shots. I find inspiration in the daring, smarts, and persistence that Corporate Accountability brings to reining in corporate abuse.”
– Wendy Fields, executive director of the Democracy Initiative
We join with people and organizations across the country to reclaim democracy from corporate control.
Trump’s presidency is nothing less than a corporate takeover, as Naomi Klein has said. This administration is dismantling the policies and institutions meant to keep us and our planet safe. At the same time, Trump is rolling out the red carpet for corporations to establish even greater control over our lives.
But the truth is, corporate influence over the U.S. and other governments has been growing for decades, laying the groundwork for our current situation.
It doesn’t have to be this way. And Corporate Accountability has a role to play in creating systemic change toward a just democracy.
The enormous power and influence of transnational corporations that has corroded democracy is not infallible. Our successes prove this. In fact, we have been curbing corporate power for 40 years. We force corporations to make changes and we secure democratic protections on issues vital to our survival: climate, water, food, and public health.
In partnership with our members and allies, we counter corporate power by waging and winning global campaigns. We mobilize grassroots power and support public officials to advance lifesaving policies that serve the common good–not the interests of the powerful few. And in doing so, we create the opportunities for true democracy to flourish.
Here’s how you can be a part of reclaiming and defending democracy:
Grassroots action
Healthy democracies require vibrant civic engagement. When people come together and take strategic action, they make big changes happen.
Corporate Accountability Action League
Corporate Accountability’s campaigns have always been member-powered. After the 2016 election, we recognized the need to give more structure to our grassroots organizing. That’s when we created the Corporate Accountability Action League. Today, people across the country are creating local groups. They bring together their friends and neighbors to develop activist skills and to organize in their communities.
In the spring of 2017, for example, Action League members played a pivotal role in organizing the People’s Climate Movement actions in the Bay Area and Boston. Groups across the country also mobilized to protect our public water systems from corporate control and challenge corporate power in their communities. And during the most recent U.N. climate treaty talks, Action League members pressured the U.S. State Department to stop undermining international climate policy.
You too can be part of making history. Sign up here.
Corporate Hall of Shame
The Corporate Hall of Shame provides the opportunity for people around the country to speak out and challenge the corporate power threatening our democracy.
As we know, sunlight is the best disinfectant. So every year, the Corporate Hall of Shame shines a spotlight on the year’s worst corporations. The ballot is a list of corporations whose pursuit of profit tramples our democracy, threatens the wellbeing of our communities, pollutes the environment, and subjects people to life-threatening dangers.
And every year, we ask you to vote for the worst of the worst. The corporation that receives the most votes is inducted into the Corporate Hall of Shame. These inductees face the hot light of public scrutiny and exposure as we partner with allies to generate grassroots pressure and action to demand change.
Who will we hold accountable together this year? Cast your vote today.
Democracy around the world
As an international organization our campaigns aren’t simply focused on democracy in the U.S. Our global campaigns, waged in close partnership with organizations in the Global South, advance groundbreaking international law. Together, we empower global democratic institutions to exercise their power over transnational corporations.
The Nestlé boycott, our founding campaign, resulted in the first-ever United Nations Code of Marketing for breast milk substitutes.
Our tobacco campaign helped secure the world’s first corporate accountability and public health treaty. Unanimously adopted and one of the most quickly ratified U.N. treaties in history, the global tobacco treaty sets an important precedent for keeping abusive industries out of policymaking and making them pay for the harms they cause. We are building on this precedent across all of our campaign areas.
And in partnership with corporate accountability organizations around the world, we generate the political will needed to empower governments to stand up to transnational corporate power. Some important ways we are doing so include:
- Kicking Big Polluters out of climate policy.
- Advancing a treaty to hold transnational corporations accountable for perpetrating human rights abuses.
- Preventing corporate-driven trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership from corrupting the democratic process.
- Holding Big Tobacco accountable for its alleged bribery schemes in East Africa.
- Ensuring the Lagos, Nigeria government upholds the human right to water.
