Spring
1999 Wild Califonia
Maxxam Corporation
- A Subbordinate Creation of We the People -
Let's Start Treating it that Way
by Paul Cienfuegos
Across the nation, citizens are beginning to awaken from a hundred-year slumber, and are discovering what the legal and cultural relationship used to be between We The People and our corporate creations.
Prior to this century, corporations were prohibited from owning stock in other corporations. Corporate directors and shareholders were held personally liable for all harms and debts caused by the corporation. Corporations were prohibited from any participation in the political process - no political ads or campaign contributions, and were prohibited from making donations to charitable and civic organizations. Why? Because, in the words of Richard Grossman (Co-Director of The Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy), "people still understood that they had a civic responsibility not to create artificial entities which could harm the body politic, interfere with the mechanisms of self-governance, and assault their sovereignty. "
When a corporation caused harm or exceeded its authority, it was common for a state legislature to revoke its charter, and distribute its assets back to the shareholders. In other words, corporations weren't simply thrown out of a state, they were dissolved.
This cultural and legal norm began to disintegrate in the late 1800's as corporations grew richer and more powerful. In 1886, Southern Pacific Railroad Corporation convinced a judge in Santa Clara County, CA that it should have the same Constitutionally-protected rights that are guaranteed to flesh-and-blood people, which ultimately resulted in corporations winning free speech and private property protections.
Before the turn of the century, corporations were PROHIBITED from causing harm to persons or communities. In the brave new legal world, harm is now REGULATED, and corporations are required simply to get permits for the harms they cause. In other words, corporate harm has become legal, and when a corporation exceeds its legal limits of harm, rather than having its charter revoked, it now simply pays a tax-deductible fine (generally factored into the cost of doing business). No longer is anyone held personally accountable. In fact, the paying of fines proves that the system is working.
Let's think about Maxxam Corporation. Despite hundreds of violations of forestry regulations, repeated criminal convictions, and the suspension of its timber operating license, Maxxam continues to wreck salmon streams, devastate the local fishing industry, bury downstream neighbors in loads of silt and landslides, and manipulate the democratic process. Can anyone with eyes and ears honestly still believe that the regulatory law system is working? In fact, it is! It's working exactly as it has been designed to: what the CDF and other regulatory agencies regulate most effectively is citizen participation, not corporate behavior.
"What is the alternative to working within the regulatory arena of law?!" I hear readers asking. In fact, there is another legal arena where citizens DO have sovereign authority - what Richard Grossman calls "Defining Law." The Defining Law most relevant here is our state constitutions, state corporate codes, and corporate charters, all of which used to be written by our state legislatures, and today are written mostly by or with the active oversight of corporate lawyers. Not because the laws were changed, but because the people slowly forgot their proper relationship with their corporate creations, and now only challenge corporate harms one at a time: one timber harvest plan at a time, one endangered species at a time, one corporate downsizing at a time.
If a "natural person" commits three violent crimes in California, he or she goes to prison for life. But when a "corporate person" like Maxxam Corporation causes massive harm, and racks up hundreds of regulatory law violations, it gets a tax-deductible fine, and no one is held personally accountable. I am convinced that the people of Humboldt County have good common sense, and are ready to educate and organize their communities to withdraw Maxxam Corporation's legal right to do business here.
I am not talking about throwing thousands of decent hard working people out of their jobs in the local forest industry. The striking steelworkers are a good example of an empowered and organized group of citizens taking action together to defend their livelihoods. Forest workers' Constitutional rights are consistently being violated by their corporate employers. They also need to reclaim their authority over their workplaces, and over the forestry decisions and practices that affect their lives.
Who is ready to roll up their sleeves and learn more about Defining Law, and what we could accomplish here in Humboldt County and beyond? Are you a downstream resident, employee of Maxxam Corporation, environmentalist, local business owner, or other local concerned citizen? We want to hear from you!
To receive an introductory packet about the work of Democracy Unlimited,
plus two articles - Jane Anne Morris' "Help I've Been Colonized and I Can't
Get Up" which Earth First! Journal refused to publish, and Paul's "Why Forest
Workers and Environmentalists are Natural Allies" - please send $5+ to Democracy
Unlimited, and request the special "Maxxam-packet". Mail to: POB 27, Arcata
CA 95518. Check out our new website:
www.monitor.net/democracyunlimited
(Paul Cienfuegos is the founding director of Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County, and served on the EPIC board of directors in 1998. In 1993/94, he was the Labor Liaison for Friends of Clayoquot Sound in British Columbia. He can be reached via Democracy Unlimited at 707-822-2242 or cienfuegos@igc.org. )
