Consumer Rights Activists

"The labor activist Clara Lemlich described marriage as a young woman's only hope of getting free of the factory. "In the beginning," she wrote, "they are full of hope and courage. Almost all of them think that some day they will be able to get out of the factory and work up, but continuing work under long hours and miserable conditions they lose their hopes. Their only way to leave the factory is marriage.""

"A Ukrainian immigrant and lifelong radical, Lemlich had moved to New York City in 1903 and led her coworkers at various factories out on strikes between 1906 and 1909. She, like Rose Schneiderman and many others of her time, was one of the early U.S. labor movement's revolutionary "fiery Jewish girls" who would soon leave a mark in their new homeland's history books."

"According to traditional Marxist theory housewives were problematical as to their class consciousness; they often were unreliable allies of radical men. They were usually grouped with peasants and intellectuals as a potentially conservative drag line on the forward march of proletarian men. Women's equality was a stated goal of all Marxist movements, but the way women's issues were treated, one got the clear message that what women did was marginal to the struggle, unless they excelled at doing it the way men did. The great and celebrated heroines-La Pasionaria, Mother Bloor, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Clara Lemlich did not organize housewives; they organized female factory workers, women's auxiliaries or men."

"The shops. Well, there is just one row of machines that the daylight ever gets to-that is the front row, nearest the window. The girls at all the other rows of machines back in the shops have to work by gaslight, by day as well as by night. Oh, yes, the shops keep the work going at night, too."

"The bosses in the shops are hardly what you would call educated men. And the girls to them are part of the machines they are running."

"At the beginning of every slow season, $2 is deducted from our salaries. We have never been able to find out what this is for."

"How are women treated as they begin to grow? Girls as well as boys go into the factory as soon as they are old enough."

"Let us consider these young girls going into the factories. In the beginning they are full of hope and courage. Almost all of them think that some day they will be able to get out of the factory and work up, but continuing work under long hours and miserable conditions they lose their courage, they lose their hopes. Their only way to leave the factory is marriage. How do you like such a marriage? A girl is ready to give herself to any man who will make the offer! But I am sorry to say that there are thousands of our working girls who are soon disappointed, because right after they are married they have to go back into the factory because their husbands are not making enough money to keep a home."

"Just go through any of the public buildings at midnight and you will see old and middle-aged women on their knees scrubbing away the dirt that men of business have brought in during the day. That gives you a picture of how well men carry the burdens of women."

"You men as a body who make the laws, and men of money who support the makers of the law are responsible for this system of ours that forces 30,000 girls out into the streets."

"When these girls are brought to Court, to a court of men, do you know how they are punished? They are fined and punished for the things that men have done."

"Senators, we are here to stay, 800,000 women in New York State alone. We have learned a good many things. We have learned to organize in the industrial field. Give us a chance, the workingwomen together with the working men, through an intelligent vote and we will make good in the political field."

"In the first two decades of the 20th century, the suffrage movement was infused with immigrant working-class women, in which Jewish women were very prominent. Their numbers–pouring into parades and suffrage organizations–were in the tens of thousands. The two most prominent Jewish immigrant suffrage leaders were Rose Schneiderman and Clara Lemlich. Both were heroines of the Triangle Shirt Waist strike [Uprising of the 20,000] and fire. Lemlich became a communist, Schneiderman a Roosevelt Democrat. They both linked suffrage to the legislative and economic concerns of wage-earning women."

"I won't be running for office again. But I'll continue to advocate, write and teach."

"From day one his standard operating procedure ... was a blend of ignorance, amnesia, and dissembling. Like a panicky passenger lunging for a life preserver, he would, under stress, concoct almost any fact or anecdote to advance his ideological beliefs. Ronald Reagan brought to mind Will Rogers' comment that "It's not what he doesn't know that bothers me, it's what he knows for sure that just ain't so.""

"Like knowing hostages, the AFL-CIO and its unions march in tandem to endorse the Democratic presidential nominees early in the primary season. They have given up their capacity for negotiation, so frightened are they of the Republicans. Meanwhile, the rank-and-file workers suffer their dwindling status in silence."

"...organized labor...rushes to support the party without demanding a turn away from corporatism toward workers’ needs. This is the logic of the lesser of two evils. It tethers labor to a relentless slide deeper into the corporate power pits year after year."

"...the Democrats know that no matter how many GATTs, NAFTAs, empty OSHAs, and other betrayals...they heap on those labor leaders, they can be had because, once again, the Republicans are deemed worse."

"The tired whine of 'But the Republicans are worse' will fall flat as more young Americans take charge of their future and move, with their reenergized elders, toward the Green Party and parallel civic and political movements."

"We must strive to become good ancestors."

"The shortcomings of America's political leaders do not stop at our borders."

"Unlike members of Congress, Big Business knew what the WTO agreements contained. That's because corporate lobbyists helped draft them."

"Half of democracy is about just showing up."

"[T]he concentration of power in the hands of the few is common to all cultures... When a small group of people rules a society the political system is considered an oligarchy; when only money and wealth determine how a society is controlled, the political system is a plutocracy. From the standpoint of a democratic society, both oligarchy and plutocracy are inherently unjust and corrupt. ...In many ways, the majority of Americans live in a democracy of minimums, while the privileged few enjoy a plutocracy of maximums. ...[T]he dominating influence of the One Percent..."

"[F]amily functions have been outsourced to business... everything is for sale, and money is power... Our elections and our governments should be... commercial-free zones; our environment, air, and water should never fall under the control of corporations or private owners. Children should not be programmed by a huckstering economy..."

"[W]henever there have been periods when enough of the country organizes and resists, we see movements of people and communities breaking through power. Progress is made. Rights are won. Education and literacy increase. Oppression is diminished."

"Concentrated power in the hands of the few really... matter[s]... if you are denied full-time employment or paid poverty wages and there are no unions to defend your interests... if you are denied affordable health care... if you are gouged by the drug industry... lack of public transit or packed highways... if you or your children... breath dirtier air and drink polluted water... if your children are receiving substandard education... are being taught to obey rather than question, think and imagine, especially when it comes to the nature of power."

"In addition to stimulating the economy, creating more jobs, and establishing less need for public welfare assistance, the movement for a... living wage... teaches how little it... takes to change the balance of power... especially when there is overwhelming public opinion... These lessons... should be, applied to winning the myriad of public interest, ecological, and civil rights struggles that the ultra-rich and their commercial interests obstruct... increasing wages... decreasing militarism and crushing... military spending... decent and affordable housing and healthcare, reducing... carbon emissions... to prevent catastrophic climate change... enabling democracy at all levels."

"America's Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution that never once uses the words "corporation," "company," or "political parties." Their use of language reflected their antipathy toward the domineering influence of empire and big business... If "We the People" are the sole subjects of the Constitution, why is it that we are ruled by large corporations and their largely indentured servants—the Republican and Democratic Parties... "We the People" have allowed these plutocratic forces to slowly siphon away our power."

"Before and after the American Revolution, there has been a continuing daily tension between contending private commercial pursuits and common civic values. ...[T]he obsessive drive for gold, money, and profit is a formidable deviation from other more important spiritual practices that strive to center community on non-market values... love, generosity, kindness, cooperation, and non-violence."

"America's business leaders said NO to the idea of revolting against the British monarchy. ...In later decades, commercialists... consistently said NO to efforts to end child labor... to starting labor unions... to the regulation of railroad and banking abuses... to the 40-hour work week and progressive taxation... to antitrust laws and the regulatory agencies... to a woman's right to vote (they feared the women's vote against exploiting child labor and cheating consumers), and NO to the minimum wage, Social Security, universal healthcare, and to... protect the environment, empower consumers, reduce government secrecy, protect ethical whistleblowers, and... to reduce commercial fraud on the government as with Medicare and military contracts."

"[P]ublic interest groups, consumer protection organizations, and... social networks have worked relentlessly to break through the battalions of lobbyists paid by corporate interests..."

"Exxon/Mobile, Pfizer, Citigroup, General Motors, Lockheed/Martin, Proctor & Gamble, United Health Care, Comcast/NBC Universal, Apple, and many other giants garner revenues as large as numerous nation states... Most are global... but there is no public global government holding them accountable... [T]here are dictatorial trade agreements that corporatists conjure up to subordinate the general population's labor, consumer, and environmental protections—a stunning end-run around our courts and legislatures. These protections are seen as "non-tariff trade barriers"... [T]hese... entities have a clear and obsessive unity of purpose—money for bosses... for shareholders, money to buy lawyers and politicians to take down laws and whatever else slows the pace of hoarding wealth."

"Paradoxically, we are in a golden age of books, documentaries, and films that... expose the abuses, crimes and authoritarian essence of corporate commercialism. ...[N]ever ...have they had less impact for change."

"One of my all-time favorite "shake 'em up books," which is almost impossible to describe briefly, is Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual."

"Here we are in corporate occupied territory, otherwise known as Washington D.C. ...I've seen it ...become a very sophisticated expression of the plutocracy ...[Y]ou have the plutocracy ruled by a few wealthy, developing an ever more penetrating oligarchy ruled by a few politicos, indentured to the super-wealthy. ...With their corporate attorneys they have developed one of the most sophisticated controls of a formerly democratic society... turning the very institutions, Congress, the courts, the executive branch, against the people... What they do is simply keep the myths alive, like "We have Democratic elections." We do not."

"Democratic elections require that votes are supreme, not big-money. They require contested candidacies, not a two-party duopoly that increasingly reflects the same commercial interests."

"They say we have a free press, but we do not. We have a press that is indentured to advertising revenue, and they themselves are now conglomerate corporations... and five big ones control most of the circulation and viewership..."

"They say we have a free... independent judiciary, but... on the big questions of abuses of power, like going to war without congressional declaration... which is a requirement under out Constitution (and we have not had a declaration of war since 1941...) The courts have a very convenient doctrine. It's called, "This is a political question, invading Iraq, and we don't deal with political questions. This is to be decided between the Congress, which abdicates its duty, and the Presidency"... When citizens say "We don't believe in that. We're going to go to court," and go all the way to the Supreme Court to challenge this illegal war of criminal aggression against Iraq, they have another convenient doctrine... "You have no standing to sue." So all the American People have no standing to sue..? Well, who has a standing to sue... dealing with a criminal war of aggression... with all... who have died? Well, who has standing to sue? Only one person. The Attorney General, and guess who his boss is, the President."

"[W]e have all these myths... about a Democratic society... [W]e have been disintegrating our Democratic institutions for over 40 years."

"[A] phony standard... from Medieval England... says that you are thrown out of court if you don't have a specific interest... that usually now means an economic interest... a corporation that might lose sales, for example."

"It only takes one percent or less of The People... mobilized in every Congressional District... say three or four thousand [out of an average Congressional District population]... [A]s long as they represent a majority opinion... they can control the Congress against any vested interest. We used to do it on far less... regulating the auto industry, getting through the Freedom of Information Act, which was opposed by... almost every corporate trade association, because they didn't want government information on them available to the public."

"We don't need huge numbers of people. We need about one percent... spending three to five hundred hours a year, connecting with each other, opening full-time offices in every Congressional District, and focusing on just five-hundred and... thirty-five people... in the U.S. Congress... the branch that has the most power under our Constitution."

"We have 206 law schools in the country. You would think they are the first responders to challenge the criminal injustice system, conditions in the prison, violation of civil rights, crushing consumer rights, and the government being taken over by corporations. It's not happening. It's like they're training technicians... lawyers to serve the powerful interests."

"Mike Pompeo is Secretary of State, a total warmonger, and... bigot against Arabs and Muslims, based on his own assertions when he was a member of Congress, and after that."

"Lawlessness by the rich and powerful is the norm... Either they violate the law with impunity, or they make sure the law provides loopholes for them with their influence in Congress. ...They are extremists... [T]hey... have no conscience, no soul. The corporate entity is an artificial being driven maniacally by profit..."

"You really have to educate your [law] students about lawlessness, otherwise they're going to graduate and just tinker with the law... The law students are so clueless, in fact, deprived about what's going on in this country in terms of the concentration and the abuse of power... [W]e have a real crisis in the legal educational institutions that breed the next generation of lawyers."

"[T]he lawyers are the architects of corporate power. They're the architects of grinding responsible government into the ground and turning it into an accounts receivable, corporate welfare, ... giving these corporations immunities and privileges which we would never have as real individuals. ...They are artificial... they cannot be morally accountable like real individuals... unshielded by the corporate structure."

"A judicial coup in 1886... determined that corporations were persons, for the purpose of the Constitution. ...[T]he Constitution doesn't even have the word company, corporate, or political party in it. So why are we ruled by them? You see the distortion? The only persons recognized in the Constitution are real people. It starts... with "We the People" not "we the corporations.""

"It first starts with an intrepid rat... that goes up to the toilet bowl of the Speaker, just as he's sitting down to do his business... Some readers who couldn't get past the first few pages... called it disgusting and upsetting, and I said, "Well, you're describing the behavior of Congress...""