How Did We Get Here?
Fifty years ago this year, the Chamber of Commerce was struggling with what it saw as a political and social pendulum swinging against the interests of Corporate America. In 1971, Lewis Powell submitted a now-infamous memo to the Chamber arguing for a set of reforms transforming a relatively weak business interest group into one of the most powerful political forces in the United States and the world. Over the last five decades, that power has been everywhere and has been completely invisible, by design.
The Corporate Accountability movement seeks to grab that pendulum again—now farther in the other direction than Powell and the Chamber of the 1970s could ever imagine—and wrestle it back to serving the people.
We want to build a world where business activities are not built on labor and human rights abuses; where corporations are not emboldened to attack their critics, whether in the courts or on the streets; and where the government is responsive to the people and the public interest, instead of to corporate donors.
This starts with attacking one of the most sinister sources of power for corporate influence: that almost no one can see it happen. Through Capitol, Inc, we are combining art, technology and social justice to reveal this hidden world of corporate power and influence happening all around us!