A Nation of Spectators?

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

The most powerful organization in our society is the corporation.
Corporations have become more powerful than governments, or religious
institutions, or labor unions. 

So how is it possible for a group of highly educated, well-intentioned
citizens to spend millions of dollars and more than 18 months studying
citizenship and civic action, and yet barely touch on the issue of
corporate power? 

This was the question raised last week when William Bennett and Sam Nunn,
co-chairs of the National Commission on Civic Renewal, appeared together
at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to
release the Commission's final report -- "A Nation of Spectators: How
Civic Disengagement Weakens America and What We Can Do About It." 

At the press conference, reporters were given a copy of the Commission's
67-page report, 18 working papers written by scholars from around the
country, and a book edited by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne,
titled Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America.

In all of this work, there is little or no mention of corporate crime and
violence and its debilitating effect on civil society, of the corrupting
influence of corporate money in politics or of how citizens band together
in labor unions, environmental groups, and other citizen activists groups
to combat to corrosive influence of corporate power on America's civic
life. 

In the Commission's final report, only three paragraphs deal with the
issue of corporate power. Under the titled "Markets and Civil Society,"
the authors write that while on the one hand "there can be little doubt
that free markets help sustain a zone of personal liberty that bolsters
the capacity of individuals to associate for civil purposes," on the other
hand "there is no guarantee that the operation of market forces will prove
wholly compatible with the requirements of civic health." 

And what would be an example of such incompatibility? The Commission finds
that "market-driven decisions of giant media corporations have diminished
the quality of our public culture and have greatly complicated the task of
raising children." 

Of the 18 working papers, only one -- written by Rutgers University
Professor Benjamin Barber -- deals with issues of corporate power. 

And Dionne's book, like his columns in the Washington Post, keeps hands
off the issue of corporate power. 

What's going on here? It's not as if powerful institutions don't tackle
issues of corporate power and its abuse. Just read the Wall Street Journal
and the New York Times for your daily dose of reporting on corporate crime
and violence. 

But reporting on corporate power and its abuse is one thing. Doing
something about it is quite another. 

Imagine the Commission releasing a report documenting how citizens around
the country were organizing, through labor unions, environmental groups,
anti-sprawl citizen groups and the thousands of other ways citizens
organize, to combat the encroachment of the corporate state into their
lives. 

That would be a report that could be taken seriously by citizens around
the country, that could be used by citizens to help them challenge
corporate power. And it would be a report that could never have been
written by the Commission as constituted. 

Nunn, after all, is a senior partner at the King & Spalding law firm, one
of the nation's premier corporate crime white- collar defense law firms. 

And Bennett, although he has a thing about rude lyrics in rap and rock
songs supplied by Seagrams, is a defender of the corporate status quo. He
is after all the John M. Olin Distinguished Fellow in Cultural Policy
Studies at the Heritage Foundation, the nation's leading corporate think
tank. 

What about the other Commissioners? Elaine Chao, fellow, Heritage
Foundation. John F. Cooke, executive vice president, corporate affairs,
the Walt Disney Company. Peter Goldmark, chair and chief executive officer
of the International Herald Tribune. Edwin Lupberger, chair of the board
and president of the Entergy Corporation, one of the nation's largest
electricity companies. Michael Novak, American Enterprise Institute,
another corporate think tank. 

You get the drift. 

These Commissioners would never raise the current United Auto Workers
strike against General Motors in Michigan, or the fight against nuclear
waste disposal in New Mexico, or the nationwide citizens campaign to
defeat casino gambling, as indicators of increased civic involvement. 

That would too offend their keepers at the Heritage Foundation and King &
Spalding. 

Better to blame the citizens for inactivity than commend them for actively
opposing corporate power. 

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor.

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

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