It’s just a trickle now, but the corporate money that was unshackled by Citizen’s United is beginning to flow just where we feared it would.
And now, before it turns into a torrent, we should try to stop it. The ideal way to do so is with legislation. But the filibuster enabled a minority of Republicans to block more limited campaign finance legislation last week, so that might take a while. In the meantime, perhaps it is time to embrace direct action, boycotts of corporations that support right wing candidates, especially those that depend on a huge base of consumers for their profits.
Two of those corporations, Target and Best Buy, recently made major contributions of over $100,000 to Minnesota Forward a political organization that is running ads on behalf of a Republican gubernatorial candidate, Tom Emmer, who is among other things an opponent of gay marriage.
This is just the beginning. We have seen that corporate America is willing to spend huge sums of money to influence the Congress by running issue oriented television ads directed. During the health care campaign, the Chamber of Commerce spent huge sums trying to block health care reform. Much of that money came from insurance giants like Cigna, which were bankrolling the opposition to health care reform in secret even while they were publicly supporting it. And what’s worse the Chamber used its huge advertising budget to spread shameless lies about the legislation.
Now, however, corporations can spend unlimited sums of money on ads that directly call on people to vote for or against particular candidates for office. And what has happened in Minnesota shows just how dangerous that is. The impact of the big corporate money on our politics is already too great. Now that corporations can spend their money on misleading advertisement in support of right wing political candidates, the oligarchic influence on our politics will be greater than ever.
The only way to defeat the power of organized money is by organizing people against it. So we need to organize to enact legislation and, if necessary, a constitutional amendment that overturns Citizens United.
And while that effort moves forward, we need to start thinking about more direct actions. The big corporations that sell directly to consumers are vulnerable to boycotts. And, like money, those boycotts are fungible. What companies like Target do in Minnesota or even in more conservative states, can be met with boycotts anywhere in the United States. If we can just organize substantial numbers of progressive people in the richer, liberal states of the northeast to boycott Target and Best Buy, we can influence their corporate policies anywhere in America.
So I’m personally not going to shop at Target. And I’m going to start talking to allies in the progressive world about organizing boycotts of Target—and perhaps putting up a protest in front of the store.