Seems like an appropriate time to share this tidbit in light of GM’s decision this week to close plants and layoff 14,000 workers…
“On January 10, 1997, President William Jefferson Clinton sent a letter to the mayor of Toledo, Ohio. The mayor had asked the president for help in getting the Chrysler Corporation to build a new Jeep factory within Toledo city limits to replace the ancient one which Chrysler Corporation was closing.
“The President of the United States, leader of the most powerful nation the world has ever known, elected head of a government always eager to celebrate the uniqueness of its democracy to the point of forcing it upon other nations, wrote:
‘As I am sure you know, my Administration cannot endorse any potential location for the new production site. My Intergovernmental Affairs staff will be happy to work with you once the Chrysler Board of Directors has made its decision.’
“Our president may not have a clue, but We the People did not grant away our sovereignty when we made Chrysler into a corporation.
“When we gave the Chrysler Corporation authority to manufacture automobiles, we made the people of Toledo not its subjects, nor Chrysler Corporation their supreme authority.
“How long shall We the People, the sovereign people, stand hat in hand outside corporate boardrooms waiting to be told our fate? How long until we instruct our representatives to do their constitutional duty?
“How long until we become responsible, until we become accountable, to our forebears, to ourselves, to our children, to other peoples and species, and to the Earth.”
From “Corporations, Accountability, and Responsibility,” by Richard Grossman in Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy: A Book of History & Strategy, Edited by Dean Ritz, Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD), p. 141-2.
create real democracy 