Fall/Winter 2004
"Free People" vs. Corporatism
Entrepreneurial opportunity brought me to Philadelphia in the fall of 1970, when my partner and I started a retail store on the outskirts of the Penn campus. It was during the Vietnam War, and heeding Eisenhower’s prophetic warning to beware the military-industrial-complex, we distrusted all business. So ours would be no ordinary store – it would be non-profit! To us, that simply meant making just enough to earn a living, while serving the needs of our community. Expressing our independence from the traditional business model, we cut out a sign in the shape of a dove, symbol of peace, and lettered it “Free People’s Store.” As “free people” it was our responsibility to challenge government and corporate power.
Though I soon came to understand the importance of profit to a healthy company, and the answer to “how much is enough?” has changed through different stages of life, I continue to believe that the purpose of business is to serve the common good. During these past thirty years, the words “free people” have not lost their meaning for me, but as I hung a “Stop the War” banner across the front of the Cafe to protest the invasion of Iraq, I wondered - are “free people” loosing the battle?
Just as in Vietnam, and throughout our history of clandestine political interventions around the world, the US government continues to use violence and military force to secure access to natural resources, cheap labor and new markets for US corporations. Despite all the good our country has stood for, worldwide distrust and hatred of the US are growing. While told by President Bush that we’re hated because of our freedom, it has been symbols of US military and economic domination that have been attacked, taking innocent lives. Not only are US citizens facing the prospect of perpetual war abroad, and a growing police state to fight “terrorism” at home, threats to our freedom are pervasive in everyday life.
Increasingly, large corporations control the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the news we hear, and even the government making and enforcing the laws we live under. While US corporations are making billions in Iraq, at home the Bush administration, dominated by former CEOs and lobbyists, and a Congress largely beholden to corporate campaign contributors, make policy decisions favoring big business over communities and nature. Our national forests and public wild lands are being turned over to industry exploiters and our rights to clean air and water relinquished to corporate polluters. Little concern is shown for the importance of broad entrepreneurial opportunity to a free society, as monopolistic companies strangle the market and drain capital from local communities. Family farms are lost to corporate agri-business. Local retailers, providing unique character to Main Streets, are forced out by chain stores. Wal-Mart, the world’s largest company, lauded by Vice President Cheney for its “fair-dealing and integrity,” pays workers so little they often rely on tax-payer funded health care, food stamps and subsidized housing, while five Walton family members have been among the world’s top ten billionaires. Once the land of opportunity, the US is now the most unegalitarian country in the industrialized world, with an increasing gap between rich and the poor.
I recently read an excellent article by Thom Hartmann (posted at http://www.whitedog.com/articles.html) that sounds the alarm of a rise in American fascism. He points to the classic definition, claimed by Mussolini: “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Hartman refers to a 1944 article in which Franklin D. Roosevelt’s vice president, Henry Wallace, warns that fascism’s greatest threat to the United States will come after the war and will manifest within the United States itself. Wallace said, “Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.”
Where are the “free people” challenging the corporatism that threatens our democracy today? Though many Americans are led by fear or complacency to accept corporate rule, there are many signs of hope. Free people are challenging corporate “rights” over those of local communities and mobilizing to protect our natural resources and public commons. Free people are organizing support for locally owned independent businesses and farms, rallying to oppose sweatshops and factory farms, and calling for fair trade and living wages. Free People are challenging the exorbitant prices of pharmaceutical companies and rebelling against drug prohibition laws that send patients to jail for self-medicating with low cost, safe and effective marijuana. Free people are reporting and reading news from alternative media that challenges government propaganda. Free people around the globe organized the largest anti-war demonstration in world history against the illegal invasion of Iraq. Free people are registering voters and raising money from ordinary citizens to defeat George Bush, and remove an administration that is selling our democracy for a profit. “Free people” are not just the imagination of 60’s idealists, but the safeguard of all we hold dear as a country. Free people, the time to act is now!
Judy Wicks
Post-script: After my departure from the Free People’s Store, the name was changed to Urban Outfitters, and built into a publicly traded international retail chain.
