Toward Democracy

What is POCLAD?

We are eleven writers, educators, activists, former elected officials, directors of environmental, labor and human rights organizations, and researchers scattered around the country, who formed POCLAD in 1994.

We have spent more than a decade researching corporate, labor and legal histories, rethinking our past organizing strategies and talking with people about democracy movements.

We work with politically active citizens, historians, lawyers, and others, exploring: a) how fundamental relationships that govern our lives were established (for example, why most corporate harms against life, liberty, property and democratic self-governance are regarded as legal;

• how corporations can deny their workers freedom of speech and other Bill of Rights protections);
• why decades of valiant citizen resistance, along with regulatory laws galore, have neither stopped corporate assaults nor shifted governing power to people and communities;
• what people can do.