Empowering Democracy: 
Challenging Corporate Power; Demanding Accountability 

Conference Report Gary/GRRN Liss 4jun01 

The first corporate accountability conference in Dallas, TX

For more details on the conference and the conference organizers, please contact Molly Rooke molly@larosa-ranch.com 

This conference was convened by Campaign ExxonMobil and organized with the help of Co-op America, CorpWatch, Friends of the Earth, Global Exchange, Greenpeace, Infact, Rainforest Action Network, Sierra Club, STARC, US PIRG, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, Corporate Campaign, Inc. and the AFL-CIO.

It was an incredible event, designed to share skills and teach basic strategies and tactics which organizations and activists can use in corporate accountability campaigns, and lay a foundation for an infrastructure for the corporate campaign movement, while each year increasing presence and influence at a single company's annual meeting.

The conference culminated this year in a protest outside of the ExxonMobil Annual General Meeting of their shareholders, and presentations in support of shareholder resolutions at the ExxonMobil meeting. The resolutions called for a report on the potential environmental damage that would result form company drilling for oil and gas in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and a policy for the company to promote renewable energy sources. Although the resolutions were not adopted, this was the 2nd year of such resolutions being brought before ExxonMobil, and the increased attention given to the protests is not being lost on their management (see A Tiger by the Tail story from NY Times posted on last week's GreenYes by Bill Sheehan).

Bob Massie, Executive Director of CERES highlighted that the US has a long history of consumer movements for corporate accountability, starting with the Boston Tea Party through anti-slavery, suffragists, trade unions, civil rights, consumer, environmental and anti-apartheid movements. The Securities Exchange Commission and Interstate Commerce Commission were created to impose constraints on corporate power and to impose corporate democracy. Massie also highlighted some books in his presentation:

"Rhetoric of Reaction" by Albert Hirschman, that highlighted arguments against change that are made, and appropriate responses to those; and

"Soft Vengeance of Freedom Fighter" in which it was highlighted that the progress made in civil rights in this country was the result of endless hard work that made what appeared IMPOSSIBLE to begin with, to become FEASIBLE, then REAL, then INEVITABLE.

Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange www.globalexchange.org highlighted how there is a secret global government being formed through the combination of efforts of the World Trade Organization, World Bank and related organizations that will essentially become a constitution for the planet. He called upon us NOT to have it be a corporate design, but rather one that ensures democratic institutions retain control, and are monitored and impacted by the public.

Pat Daly of ICCR highlighted that the first shareholder resolution pursued by religious and institutional investors was at the General Motors meeting 30 years ago regarding anti-apartheid in South Africa. Today, ICCR represents 275 religious groups that invest $150 billion that work on issues including genetically engineered foods, CERES principles, global warming, toxics, equality, workers conditions, human rights, tobacco, medical product safety and anti-militarism.

Ray Rogers (Corporate Campaign, USA, corpcamp@aol.com  or www.corporatecampaign.org highlighted that we need to show corporations that there is more to lose than gain, and not just embarrass or harass powerful business and political leaders. By impacting their image and credibility with consumers and investors, corporations are often responsive. He suggested that you target corporate vulnerabilities, target geographic areas, and develop a campaign plan and structure (including issues, tactics and multiple targets).

Rogers suggested that you confront the web of power behind the company, including top policymakers, Board of Directors, officers, major shareholders, major creditors. Through corporate shareholder resolution campaigns, many have gone eyeball to eyeball with CEOs, to highlight their concerns and try to work out key steps to progress. In launching such campaigns, strategists should have a clear idea of what might be a fair settlement of the issue.

According to attorney Sanford Lewis (Strategic Council on Corporate Accountability, gnproject@earthlink.net , the first step to evaluating ways to influence corporations is to identify who influences them, including: consumers, retailers. distributors, suppliers, investors, competitors, employees, facility neighbors, government agencies, legislatures and the media. To date, a lot of focus has been on investors and consumers as key pressure points for corporate accountability campaigns.

Lewis highlighted that deceptive environmental claims could be examples of consumer fraud, if they overstate the benefits of products, which could be pursued by State and Federal Attorneys General or pursued in Small Claims Court. He also noted that Securities Law prohibits any untrue statement of a material fact or the omission of key facts in Annual and Quarterly Reports. These were two legal avenues that he suggested could be used in the future to hold corporations more accountable.

Interestingly, according to David Cobb (Program on Corporations Law & Democracy, www.poclad.org, initially corporate charters in this country stipulated that corporations could not own land, could not participate in government, were forbidden to hold shares in other corporations, had to act inside the public interest and did not have rights as "persons." It wasn't until Santa Clara vs. Pacific Railway case in 1886 that corporations were determined by the courts to be considered as persons, under the 14th Amendment. Several of the speakers spoke of the need to change the latter determination by constitutional amendment.

I learned a lot about shareholder resolutions and researching corporations at this conference. Key tools include researching corporate 10-K financial statements and proxy statements (DEF14A) at the following websites:

www.sec.gov  (EDGAR - Electronic Data Gathering and Retrieval system) and www.freeedgar.com

Key documents distributed included:

Co-op America, "Financial Planning Handbook: America's most popular and comprehensive guide to socially responsible investing," www.coopamerica.org  (Coop America informs people about how to vote with their dollars to effect change; helps people use their purchasing and investing power to create a more just and sustainable future) and Social Investment Forum at www.socialinvest.org

Co-op America, "National Green Pages: A directory of products and services for people and the planet," www.coopamerica.org .

Social Investment Forum, "Directory of Socially Responsible Investment Services," www.socialinvest.org  (Social Investment Forum is environmental, green socially responsible investment, tobacco, toxic-free). They also have a Shareholder Action Network, coordinated by Tracey Rembert  tracey@socialinvest.org  that works to track all shareholder resolution campaigns that are underway.

Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, "The Conscientious Investors Guide to Socially Responsible Mutual Funds and Investment Services," www.iccr.org . ICCR also has a Summary of Shareholder Resolutions that highlights the type of issues that have been pursued over the past 30 years of their work (which was begun with resolutions about apartheid in So. Africa).

There were a number of organizations there that were working with GRRN on the Coke and Pepsi campaigns (e.g., EcoPledge, Sierra Club, and the Social Responsible Investment Coalition of San Antonio, TX) that were very excited about the progress being made on those items. There were also a couple of people who consulted with me on recycling issues they were working on (e.g., wanting to set up apartment recycling in Dallas). The Independent Press Association was also there, and we talked about the magazine PAPER project, a campaign of theirs with Conservatree and CoopAmerica to encourage magazine publishers to use environmentally preferable paper.

I also talked with quite a few people about GRRN plans to develop standards and criteria for evaluating the Zero Waste and recycling performance of businesses, and got an enthusiastic response to that idea. The Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) is part of a group of international organizations developing a Global Reporting Initiative with the UN Environment Programme to get companies to report on both social and environmental performance data (see www.globalreporting.org ). They are in the beta testing phase now, and hope to finalize criteria by this fall, and launch version 2.0 in 2002 (perhaps associated with the Earth Summit 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africa).