THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF
                     CORPORATIONS: TAKING THE OFFENSIVE

          Suggestions for an Agenda of Action in Arenas We Define

   * Revoking the charters of especially harmful or abusive corporations
     under existing laws as in New York, Washington, Wisconsin, Maine. Most
     states still have provisions in their constitution such as Section 1101
     of the New York Business Corporation Law which specifies dissolution
     when corporations act "contrary to the public policy of the state."

   * Rechartering corporations to limit their powers and make them entities
     subordinate to the sovereign people, by e.g., granting charters for
     limited time periods, requiring approval by communities and workers to
     continue in existence, making corporate managers and directors liable
     for corporate harms, etc.

   * Reducing the size of corporations by breaking them up into smaller
     units with less power to undermine elections, lawmaking, judicial
     proceedings and education; restricting size and capitalization of
     corporations; prohibiting one corporation from owning another
     corporation (some of which was accomplished by the Public Utility
     Holding Company Act of 1935).

   * Establishing worker and/or community control over production units of
     corporations to protect the "reliance interest" and other rights of
     workers and communities. This can be done by writing rules directly
     into corporate charters, such as prohibiting the hiring of replacement
     workers during strikes, requiring independent health and safety audits
     by experts chosen by workers and affected communities, and banning use
     of deadly chemicals, such as chlorine.

   * Initiating referendum campaigns, or taking action through state
     legislatures -- and in the courts -- to end constitutional protections
     for corporate "persons" and to require state attorneys general to
     undertake charter revocation or rechartering actions when petitioned by
     citizen groups.

   * Prohibiting corporations from making campaign contributions to
     candidates in any elections, and from lobbying any local, state and
     federal government bodies.

   * Stopping extortion and "subsidy abuse" by which large corporations rake
     off billions of dollars from human taxpayers through direct pay-offs
     and tax breaks.

   * Launching campaigns to cap salaries of corporate officials and tie them
     to a ratio of average compensation levels of production workers (say,
     5:1 or 10:1), to gain greater transparency in corporate
     decision-making, and to end corporate tax deductions for legal fees,
     advertising and fines.

   * Encouraging worker and community-owned and -controlled cooperatives and
     other alternatives to conventional limited liability profit-making
     corporations by using law and the public treasury.

   * Preparing a model state corporation code based on the principle of
     citizen sovereignty and campaigning for its adoption, state-by-state.

   * Invigorating from the grassroots up a national debate on the
     relationship between public property, private property (including
     future value), and the rights of natural persons, communities and other
     species when they are in conflict, and on the role of the law in
     resolving such conflicts in a democracy.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Program on Corporations, Law, & Democracy

Co-Directors:

Richard Grossman, 211 1/2 Bradford Street, Provincetown, MA 02657; Tel/fax:
(508) 487-3151

Ward Morehouse, Suite 3C, 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017; Tel:
(212) 972-9877; Fax: (212) 972-9878; e-mail: cipany@igc.apc.org


 _____________________________________________________________________________
                   This document is available on the web
              at rat haus reality, ratical branch via the URL
               http://www.ratical.org/corporations/Agenda.txt
                 To see all the documents available, go to
                    http://www.ratical.org/corporations/
 _____________________________________________________________________________