Richard Grossman, ¡Presente!

TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE:
http://www.social-ecology.org/2014/11/richard-grossman-presente/

Richard Grossman, activist and thinker ahead of his time

by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Research Associate, Institute for Social Ecology
November 17 2014

This month marks three years since the passing of my good friend, activist and valuable anti-corporate crusader Richard Grossman. What made his work unique was his research and critical thinking on the nature of the corporation...

For Grossman, regulation was not the answer. He regarded it as a red herring that distracted from the real issue: the fiction of corporate personhood. He founded the Program on Corporations Law and Democracy (POCLAD), which in its web site describes itself as “people instigating democratic conversations and actions that contest the authority of corporations to govern. Our analysis evolves through historical and legal research, writing, public speaking, and working with organizations to develop new strategies that assert people’s rights over property interests.” He also wrote Fear at Work, a book about job blackmail by employers and the need for an alliance of environmentalists and organized labor, and published the newsletter By What Authority, which questions basic assumptions about corporations.

His views were not all that popular among his peers. “Richard Grossman was one of those activist eccentrics who took democratic power so seriously that he knowingly marginalized himself”, said activist and author David Bollier in his defense (1). “Mainstream political culture regarded his positions as crazy or tactically unwise — but eventually the world began to catch up with him”.

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http://carmeloruiz.blogspot.com/search/label/Richard%20Grossman