Category: Corporate Power
Corporate Personhood to Cost Seattle $500,000 to Settle Phone Book Lawsuit
Update 2: There is now a followup: Why you should care about Seattle’s phonebook debacle? Update: This post did not include an estimate for the city’s own legal fees. The city retained Summit Law Group as outside counsel on the case which...
Good Activism Breaks Law
Update: The Stranger published a shorter version of this on August 15. Last week, The Stranger called Initiative 103 “an unconstitutional waste of time,” but constitutionality isn’t the right benchmark to measure social change efforts. In 1873, after suffragist Susan...
How Phonebook Companies Are Wasting Seattle Taxpayers’ Money
Thud… Thud… Thud! That’s the sound of phonebooks you opted out from landing on your porch in the near future if Seattle loses a lawsuit brought by phonebook publishers. The case is a perfect example of big business using “corporate personhood”...
Why a Free and Open Internet Matters in Seattle
Effective July 1st, Qwest and Comcast subscribers will have to pay an additional fee to stream Netflix movies and they will no longer be able to make calls with Skype. Actually, we’re making that up, but that’s what could happen...
Initiative 103 Provides Tools Seattle Needs to Protect Our Community
Issue after issue in Seattle pits corporate power and influence peddling against residents and our environment. Initiative 103’s Community Bill of Rights provides the tools residents need to protect and manage what happens in our city. Take a...
Pacific Northwest Emerging as a Stronghold for a New Kind of Activism
There’s a new form of activism gaining strength in the Pacific Northwest. Citizen organizers in three Washington cities are gathering signatures to place initiatives on the November ballot that would limit corporate power and elevate peoples’ rights above corporate rights:...
Model Net Neutrality Ordinance for Seattle
Update: Be sure to read our backgrounder – Why a Free and Open Internet Matters which describes how the ordinance works, why it’s necessary and our theory of change. Recently, we wrote that local communities could take inspiration from Pittsburgh’s City Council...