Corporate Personhood & Human Rights
Gaveling Down the Rabble
In Gaveling Down the Rabble, author/activist Jane Anne Morris explores a century and a half of efforts by corporations and the courts to undermine local democracy in the United States by using a "free trade" model. It was that very nineteenth-century model that was later adopted globally by corporations to subvert local attempts at protecting the environment and citizen and worker health. More >
The Elite Consensus
Financial and business corporations throw millions of dollars at think tanks, lobbyists and universities, exploiting writers and artists galore. Their assignment? To twist words, gnarl symbols, sell lies, whip people into line. The Elite Consensus fingers the American Enterprise Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Chamber of Commerce, the Heritage Foundation, and many other "educational" corporations, which men of property have unleashed on this planet. The author shows how these corporate con artists teach us our history, elect our representatives, write our laws, define ideas and frame public policy debates. Originally published in 2000 by Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project as The Corporate Consensus. More >
Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy
In these 70 essays, speeches, sermons and screeds, POCLADers probe: corporations as "legal persons"; corporate social responsibility as a ploy; strategies for amending state corporation codes and challenging judge-made laws; and much, much more. More >
The Rule of Property
In The Rule of Property, Karen Coulter offers a groundbreaking new perspective on the rise of private property over the public domain by linking two popular streams of thought: the legal history of the rise of corporate power developed by POCLAD (Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy) together with the new thinking about corporate encroachment on the ecological and social commons. Coulter, a member of POCLAD, is also a forest activist who watchdogs public lands against corporate theft. More >
Abuse of Power
The enormous size and global reach of multinational corporations make it increasingly difficult for any one country to hold them accountable when they behave recklessly. This book demonstrates just how serious and urgent the problem has become by exposing Union Carbide's record of abuse of its workers and the environment. Abuse of Power examines the inadequacy of existing mechanisms and presents new ways of curbing corporate irresponsibility. More >
Global Aggression
An expose by INFACT (now Corporate Accountability International) of the role of the US-based tobacco corporations Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco in aggressively promoting tobacco internationally, contributing to the deaths of 3.5 million people worldwide per year. Filled with examples of manipulation of public policy and big Tobacco's disregard for advertising restrictions in other countries, Global Aggression builds a case for a combination of consumer pressure and world standards to stop the spread of tobacco-related diseases and hold tobacco transnationals accountable. More >
Building Unions
Your union local or activist community group is doing good work against one corporate assault after another. But your successes aren't making the next campaigns easier. Or challenging public officials who enable corporate usurpations.You're itching to take action. More >
Inhuman Rights
An expose by INFACT (now Corporate Accountability International) of the role of the US-based tobacco corporations Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco in aggressively promoting tobacco internationally, contributing to the deaths of 3.5 million people worldwide per year. Filled with examples of manipulation of public policy and big Tobacco's disregard for advertising restrictions in other countries, Global Aggression builds a case for a combination of consumer pressure and world standards to stop the spread of tobacco-related diseases and hold tobacco transnationals accountable. More >
War and Peace and Democracy
Of all the possible responses to the attacks of September 11, why did the U.S. government choose war? What can a reactivated peace movement learn from the Iraq war and from 20th Century social movement history to prepare us to do more than react to the demands of empire? In other words: how can we fundamentally challenge the power of corporations to turn our government against us and march another generation off to war? More >
Taking Care of Business
From the Preface: Corporations cause harm every day. Why do their harms go unchecked? How can they dictate what we produce, how we work, what we eat, drink and breathe? How did a self-governing people let this come to pass? More >