The following page,
in it's entirety, is excerpted from a recent POCLAD fundraising
letter. Learn more about POCLAD at www.poclad.org,
or e-mail them at people@poclad.org.
Material here used without permission, but intended to promote the
organization (plus, one Raptorial staffer is a paying POCLAD supporter).
Program on Corporations, Law &
Democracy
"contesting the authority of corporations to
govern..."
As of last year, the 400 richest persons in the USA
had amassed a total net worth of $1 trillion – more than the
gross domestic product of China. The richest one-half percent –families
worth at least $4 million– own 42% of all US wealth.
Why not? Our country gives corporate managers vast
constitutional protections. Corporations write our laws, define
our elections, invade our schools, mock family values, vacuum our
communities, decree what's in our air, water, soil, food and children.
POCLAD's US History Test
(May, 2000)
1) It is easy for citizens of the United States
to form a corporation but very hard for them to form a union. Name
three countries where it is as easy for workers to form a union
as it is in the United States for investors to form a corporation.
answer
(swipe with cursor):
Sweden, Germany, Italy, Japan, Belgium, Ireland,
and more.
2) In 1770, what percentage of the colonial
population lived in slavery?
answer
(swipe with cursor):
20%
3) At the time of the War of Independence what
percentage of the people who made up the colonies of Pennsylvania,
Maryland & Virginia were or had been indentured servants?
answer
(swipe with cursor):
75%
4) Who was the richest man in America at the
time of the Revolution?
answer
(swipe with cursor):
According to historian Charles Beard, George
"Washington of Virginia was probably the richest man in the
United States in his time, and his financial ability was not surpassed
among his countrymen anywhere."
5) What percentage of "We the People"
could vote in 1776?
answer
(swipe with cursor):
10%
6) Who said, "The people who own the country
ought to govern it."?
answer
(swipe with cursor):
John Jay, first President of the Continental
Congress and first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
7) What great United States document was written
behind closed doors in a meeting held in 1787, the minutes of which
were made public 53 years later?
answer
(swipe with cursor):
The Constitution
8) What well-known patriot "told a British
visitor shortly after the American Revolution that he could make
$257 on every Negro in a year, and spend only $12 or $13 on his
keep."?
answer
(swipe with cursor):
Master Builder of the Constitution, and fourth
President of the United States, James Madison.
9) What were the demands of the labor movement
in 1830?
answer
(swipe with cursor):
The 10 hour day and public education.
10) The 14th Amendment to the Constitution
was passed after the Civil War in 1868 to extend due process and
equal protection of the law to African Americans. In the first 50
years after its adoption, what percentage of the cases brought under
it were on behalf of African Americans and what percentage of the
cases were brought on behalf of corporations?
answer
(swipe with cursor):
African Americans: one-half of one percent.
Corporations: 50%. Of the 307 14th Amendment cases brought before
the U.S. Supreme Court between 1890 and 1910, 19 dealt with the
rights of African Americans and 288 dealt with corporations.
11) The Supreme Court ruled in 1872 that women do
not have the right to vote under the 14th Amendment. What year did
the Supreme Court rule "Corporations are persons within the
meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United
States."?
answer
(swipe with cursor):
1886
12) How can five people amend the constitution?
answer
(swipe with cursor):
They become U.S. Supreme Court Justices.
13) Whose election to the Presidency of the United
States was determined by a special commission, made up of Supreme
Court justices and members of Congress and controlled by the CEO
of the Pennsylvania Railroad? In what year did that President pull
the last Federal troops from the south, ending Reconstruction, and
use those troops to put down the first national labor strike in
the United States in which over 100 strikers–including railroad
workers–were killed"?
answer
(swipe with cursor):
Rutherford B. Hayes, 1877.
14) In 1886, what was the largest labor organization
in the Untied States? What issues did this union advocate and fight
for?
answer
(swipe with cursor):
The Knights of Labor. They advocated the creation
of producer, consumer, and distributive cooperatives, the prohibition
of child labor, equal pay for equal work between the sexes and races,
universal suffrage, and the eight-hour day. They opposed concentration
of wealth and power in the hands of a few, reasoning that as long
as a few people controlled most of the wealth they would use their
economic power politically to prevent the creation of a real democracy.
15) When was the labor movement politically powerful
enough to prevent the Governer of Michigan and the President of
the United States from sending troops to break up a strike in which
workers were occupying corporate property?
answer
(swipe with cursor):
1936-37
16) What president (John Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt
or Herbert Hoover) signed into law an act which included the following:
it is necessary that he (the worker) have full freedom
of association of this own choosing, to negotiate the terms and
conditions of his employment, and that he shall be free from the
interference, restraint, or coercion of employers of labor, or
their agents, in the designation of such representatives or in
self-organization or in other concerted activities for the purpose
of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.
answer
(swipe with cursor):
Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932 was passed by
a Republican Congress and signed into law by Herbert Hoover.
17) In many countries, workers have benefits like
paid maternity leave, maximum hours of work, health care, paid holidays
and vacations defined by law. In these countries workers have what
that they don't have in the United States?
answer
(swipe with cursor):
Strong working class political parties (Germany,
Australia, France...)
POCLAD
P.O. Box 246
South Yarmouth, MA
02664-0246
phone: (508) 398-1145
fax: (508) 398-1152
e-mail: people@poclad.org
web page: www.poclad.org
The Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy is
a project of the Council on International and Public Affairs, a
501[c][3] tax exempt organization. The Council is registered with
the New York State Charities Bureau, and a financial report is available
from the Bureau in the Department of Law, The Capitol, Albany, NY
12224 or from the Council at Suite 3C, 777 United Nations Plaza,
New York, NY 10017.