Corporate Demons Possess Our Nation

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Public Domain CCO Support the Commons!

An Essay of the Man From the North
by Rivera Sun

Corporate demons possess our nation’s soul. They crept in stealthily, full of trickery and deception, but now they’re lodged in place, as surely as if they had stormed our homes and halls of power with guns and tanks. Perhaps we’d recognize their coup if they had assassinated a flesh-and-blood president instead of merely stealing the souls of all our elected leaders.

A corporation is an invisible entity. It has no body to appear on television or slip into a congressional seat. It is the living, breathing human worshipers possessed by corporate greed who kill, maim, and destroy. For a lump of money, a human soul is bought and turned into the pawn of corporations. For a bribe or a salary, a human being averts their eyes and does the dirty work. For a sweet deal, a real life person decides to allow a corporation to injure and oppress, impoverish and harm.

Without us, corporations are nothing more that words written on documents. They cannot drill for oil. They cannot foreclose on homes. They cannot deliver eviction notices. They cannot pass legislation. They cannot poison water or spew toxins in the air. They cannot arrest those who rise up against them.

There are millions of people railing against corporate power in our government, and rightly so, for corporations have stolen the souls of public office holders. They have corrupted the hearts of elected leaders. They have bought the obedience of senators and representatives, judges and sheriffs and presidents. But, the struggle is far vaster than just our political power-holders. It is not just a monetized, secularized, or politicized conflict. This struggle goes straight to the heart and soul of every man, woman, and child in this country.

Who is willing to be the first to evict corporate power from their heart? Among the citizens, who will expel the twin demons of our habit-forming consumer conveniences and corporate greed from our lives and pocketbooks. Who will decolonize their minds from the entertainment, advertisements, logos, slogans, and ideologies of the corporations? Who will refuse to bring one more purchase of the corporate overlords into his or her house? When the early American colonists were rebelling against the British, they sacrificed the luxuries of imported British cloth, tea, and more. Young girls wore dresses of homespun cloth to the old-fashioned versions of the prom. Among the modern Americans, who is willing to sacrifice our ease, convenience, consumerism, in favor of freedom from political injustice, diversity in our economy, and economic justice?

If we want to evict corporations from Capitol Hill, we are going to have to evict them from our own lives in ways that will not be easy. We will have to sacrifice. We will have to make do and do without. We will have to pay more for the product from a local, small, or independent company that does not have the same economic advantages as mega-corporations who enjoy tax breaks and subsidies, the ability to pay unjust wages unchallenged, the luxury of externalizing the true costs of their products, the insider industry deals on shipping and bulk product purchasing, and much more.

But each time your heart balks at a sacrifice, look at the horizon of possibilities. Fix your eyes on the vision of what we’re working toward . . . it is far greater than the sacrifices we face. We are striving toward functional democracy that represents, cares for, nurtures and sustains the whole of the populace, not just the ruling elite and corporate profit. We are working toward economic justice and vibrant, diverse, local, small, and independent businesses that have a fair and level playing field. We are moving toward protection of our beautiful planet that keeps us all alive, renewable energy, and a world free of pollution and toxicity. We want political justice so that we can assure and maintain economic, cultural, racial, gender, and all other forms of justice. We want arts, culture, and entertainment driven not by monopoly and narrow agendas, but by the beauty and bounty of our diversity and many perspectives. The list goes on.

The possibilities on the horizon line of change are tremendous. Fix your eyes on them as we make changes in our own lives during the efforts to erode and evict corporate power and greed. Remember what we’re sacrificing for as we overthrow corporations from the halls of power of our country. We are struggling for the heart and soul of our nation . . . and we have a vision for which it is worth wrestling corporate demons until, at last, every man, woman, and child is free.

 

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Read more from The Man From The North in Rise and Resist: Essays on Love, Courage, Resistance, Politics, and Democracy from The Dandelion Insurrection

The Man From The North is a fictional writer in Rivera Sun’s novel, The Dandelion Insurrection and the sequel, The Roots of Resistance. The novel takes place in the near future, in “a time that looms around the corner of today”, when a rising police state controlled by the corporate-political elite have plunged the nation into the grip of a hidden dictatorship. In spite of severe surveillance and repression, the Man From the North’s banned articles circulate through the American populace, reporting on resistance and fomenting nonviolent revolution. This article is one of a series written by The Man From the North, which are not included in the novel, but have been collected in a book of essays Rise and Resist which can be  read here

Author/Activist Rivera Sun has written twelve inspirational and hope-filled books that celebrate our human ability to create change for the better. Rivera’s writing is syndicated nationally and her articles have appeared in over one hundred journals. She speaks and teaches strategic nonviolent civil resistance inter-nationally. She was co-host for five years of several popular radio shows and can be reached through her website:  www.riverasun.com

2 Comments on “Corporate Demons Possess Our Nation”

  • Dear Rivera, I would suggest that we not “demonize” the demons, however appropriate the metaphor may be. If we can understand that the corporations are made of people just like us who have different cultural stories, different histories of betrayal, but the same deep needs as we do to contribute to the lives of others, however deeply buried or distorted that need may be, there might be a better chance at redemption. We must own our complicit acceptance of capitalism and materialism and discover our personal power to re-develop trust, re-unite with our brothers and sisters regardless of their superficial allegiance to values we no longer support, and collaborate with them to discover an alternate and equitable justice. In addition to the sacrifice of boycotting corporate markets, I would invoke the power of resilience and self-reliance developed among the people we know and trust, build community, and give the material capitalists a tangible model of investment in human capital that they have no choice but to adopt. Then we shall absorb them effortlessly and organically, like the Borg, against which “resistance is futile.”

  • Pamela Hedgecock

    says:

    Too many people don’t know what it means to be free at least conservatives; to be free from materialism, free from nationalism, free from monetary and free from unnecessary wants.

    Too many conservative associate freedoms with military and gun ownership.

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