Corporate Campaign Movement Growing in US

Advocates to Meet in Dallas
They push to hold business accountable

The Dallas Morning News
May 22, 2001
By Carolyn Barta

Home Depot Inc. has stopped selling endangered rain forest lumber. Ford
Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. have withdrawn from an industry group
that's fighting efforts to stop global warming.

Voluntary actions? Not exactly.

These and other American companies have been under siege in recent years by
a growing political movement that practices what it calls "corporate
accountability campaigns."

Under this umbrella can be found political, labor, religious and other
groups trying to persuade businesses to change their stance on issues
ranging from the environment to human rights to social justice.

Dallas will briefly be a center of such activity next week, when almost 200
activists attend what organizers bill as the first conference for learning
the skills, strategies and tactics of corporate accountability campaigns.

Protests, boycotts and stock purchases - so activists can attend shareholder
meetings - have all been brought to bear against the targets of these
campaigns.

Average Americans can no longer effectively air their views to elected
officials, according to Peter Altman, whose organization is a sponsor of the
"Empowering Democracy" conference Sunday through Tuesday at the Radisson
Central Hotel.

"There's been such a growth in corporate influence over the political
process that those means simply aren't available," Mr. Altman said.

The corporate accountability effort is heir to a long tradition of
grass-roots, anti-business protests, dating to crusading 19th century
journalists.

More sophisticated

But if today's attacks against corporations are more sophisticated, so too
are the companies themselves as they respond to citizen complaints, some
say.

Louis Thompson, president of the National Investor Relations Institute, says
he counsels investor-relations professionals to talk with company critics.

"The situation you're dealing with today is quite different than when
Sinclair Lewis and the muckrakers were operating," Mr. Thompson said. "Most
corporations realize being a good corporate citizen is important. You try to
avoid the bad publicity and the bad images that can sometimes be cast on
corporations."

Dr. Jarol Manheim, a political science professor at George Washington
University, said the modern anti-corporation movement grew out of
anti-apartheid and civil rights efforts of the 1960s.

Coordinated efforts

It has blossomed in recent years with the coordinated efforts of labor,
environmental and other groups.

"It's going to be the political story of the next five, 10 years," predicted
Dr. Manheim, who has written a book about corporate campaigns.

Eschewing electoral and legislative politics, groups involved in corporate
campaigns look elsewhere to make their mark, according to Dr. Manheim.

They might use regulatory agencies to try to accomplish their goals, he
said, or appear before congressional committees to try to embarrass
companies.

The movement, he said, "shapes a lot of political decisions, particularly in
the regulatory agencies."

Corporate campaigners have also begun focusing on multinational institutions
such as the World Bank, World Trade Organization and International Monetary
Fund.

Their footprints can be seen in the 1999 WTO protest in Seattle and
subsequent trade protests in Washington, D.C., and, most recently, in
Quebec.

"Over the last two years, we've seen a dramatic increase in protests against
globalization and international trade rules that trade off environmental and
human rights in favor of huge corporations," said Mr. Altman, the conference
organizer.

"This is all part of a big picture of people in the United States feeling
they have less control over laws and policies that affect their lives and
less ability to get their elected officials to protect them," he said.

Exxon Mobil

Mr. Altman is coordinator of Campaign Exxon Mobil, an Austin-based coalition
of religious and environmental groups that has been demanding the
Irving-based oil company do more to combat global warming. Exxon Mobil
rejects the group's criticism.

Other sponsors of the Dallas conference include the AFL-CIO, the Interfaith
Center on Corporate Responsibility, Friends of the Earth, Global Exchange,
Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, Student Alliance to Reform
Corporations and U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Dr. Manheim said most of the action is by liberal-progressive groups,
because "these are the outs."

"This is how the left is coming back," he said. "But it's coming back in a
different form. These are not liberals in the Humbert Humphrey sense.
They're not talking about government programs to help people" but an
anti-corporation ideology.