Happy December and I hope everyone had a great holiday.
I've got a few thoughts on corporate accountability, but before I get to that I have a quick request. If you're enjoying this newsletter, please share it with a few people who you think might find it interesting. This is currently a personal list of close friends and colleagues....but as I try to expand it, I would love your help.
I've been thinking a lot about corporate power over the last few weeks. Recently, we’ve seen a wave of campaigns pushing for real corporate accountability, from Black Friday non-cooperation actions to public pressure campaigns. Many of these efforts are working, too. The pressure campaigns around Target, the public response to Disney after the Kimmel fiasco, and other campaigns across the country have all done the same thing: they’ve rattled corporate giants in ways we shouldn’t underestimate. Leaders are showing real courage in going after institutions that have spent decades insulating themselves from public pressure.
But moments like these also raise bigger questions for the rest of us:
Once we have a corporation’s attention, what comes next?
How do we turn a flashpoint into momentum — how do we turn a boycott or a public backlash into something more durable than a news cycle?
And what’s the relationship between corporate accountability, and political accountability? How do we use one to achieve the other?
Right now, there are two things happening at the same time:
- People are organizing, experimenting, and building new avenues for accountability.
- Trump is working just as aggressively to pull corporations off the hook, promising weaker enforcement, fewer consequences, and more opportunities to profit without scrutiny.
In past newsletters, I’ve written about the consolidation of media power, corporate power, and government power, and how that consolidation is one of the major structural forces shaping our public institutions, our democracy, and our daily lives.
In this issue, I want to make the case for something that has become increasingly clear to me: we need to build infrastructure for corporate accountability. If we want the first dynamic to win over the second, then we need more than mobilization. We need something strong enough to help leaders land their punches and keep corporations from wriggling out of accountability after the moment passes.
The Harms of Corporate Power
Corporate power harms us in three primary ways— and all three are getting worse under this administration.
1. Corporations are raiding and wrecking our public systems
Corporations are hollowing out the very systems we depend on. They’re siphoning money out of public health, public safety, education, social services, and more. They are taking the food from people’s plates. Taxpayer dollars are being funneled upward to those who need it least. Public systems are left underfunded and unstable, and the harm falls, predictably, on the most vulnerable people.
And the incentives for this harm are only getting stronger. Because profit is the primary goal, shareholders will punish a corporation that doesn’t take advantage of deregulation or profiteering opportunities opened up by the administration. The reward structure is designed for extraction.
2. Corporations are screwing workers and consumers
This, of course, is the oldest story in the book, and somehow continues to intensify. Wage theft is up. Safety violations are up. Union-busting is accelerating. Workers receive fewer protections, and have fewer options for recourse when those protections are violated.
And yet there are also glimmers of what accountability can look like. Earlier this week, New York City officials announced that Starbucks will pay $40 million to workers in the largest worker protection settlement in the city’s history. (The fact that our corporate Mayor Eric Adams enforced the law is a victory, too.) Accountability like this is possible — but it’s still the exception, not the rule.
3. Corporations Are Enabling Authoritarianism
Corporate influence on politics isn’t new. But the conditions we’re living under now are different and more dangerous. More corporations are aligning themselves with authoritarian political projects, using their seemingly unlimited power to accelerate policies that undermine voting rights, civil rights, democracy, and racial justice.
The alignment is driven by both directions - authoritarians influence corporations, of course, but corporations also enable authoritarianism.
Corporate enabling is equally if not more harmful, because it makes authoritarianism more durable. But it’s harder for people to see.
When authoritarians do the influencing, people are more likely to take action. When Target rolled back its DEI commitments after one of Trump’s early Executive Orders, people mobilized and boycotted.. That kind of top-down pressure is easy to see, easy to name, and easy to organize around. But there’s comparatively little public response when corporations enable authoritarianism.
The Three Forces of Alignment
Across decades, organizers and advocates have done extraordinary work in this space. The Black Friday campaign was just the latest example in the movement to increase corporate accountability. Yet we are still on the losing end of this imbalance of power. Meanwhile the alignment between the right and corporations continues to grow.
But the alignment isn’t inevitable. It’s driven by three forces — ideology, fear, and profit— each requiring a different strategy.
I. Ideological Alignment (Genuine Belief)
Corporate leaders, shareholders, executives have spent decades inside a right-wing information ecosystem that frames authoritarian politics as necessary, moral, efficient, etc. These are the people who already opposed DEI, who already believed that regulation and redistribution are existential threats. Think Larry Ellison and the potential merger between Skydance and Paramount.
II. Acquiescent Alignment (Genuine Fear)
The right has built a permission structure where silence, neutrality, and even mild resistance is punished. Under those conditions, many corporate leaders fold. There are corporate leaders who privately oppose right-wing politics who are complying anyway because they’re scared. They fear retaliation, regulatory punishment, lawsuits, and/or shareholder backlash.
III. Opportunistic Alignment (Genuine Profits)
This is by far the most common reason for alignment. Most corporations aren’t politically ideological or fearful. They’re opportunistic. Their core ideology is profit, and they will align with whoever protects their bottom line.
And authoritarianism can be incredibly profitable. Consider our immigration system: every stage of ICE’s machinery — arresting people, transporting them, detaining them, deporting them — is powered by private contracts. The companies that build the armored vehicles, operate the detention centers, run the surveillance systems, or charter the deportation flights all make money every time that machinery turns.
We can change that cost-benefit analysis. But we need stable, durable infrastructure to do it.
The Power of Infrastructure.
In 2020, I remember waking up many mornings to press releases from companies announcing donations to movement organizations, including my former organization, which didn’t even take corporate money. But these corporate actors weren’t donating (or claiming to donate!) to progressive orgs because they really cared about the issues. They did it because public pressure, organizing, and a strong ecosystem had made staying silent riskier than stepping up. We had built enough infrastructure that they felt it.
And just like they weren’t racial justice advocates then, they also aren’t necessarily authoritarians now. Corporations are constantly scanning for risk. In 2020, it was profitable to be on the right side of racial justice because the public energy made silence look irresponsible. So when the administration signals hostility toward DEI or civil-rights enforcement (or democracy!) corporations cave quickly — because the cost of defying Trump now looks higher than the cost of complying. It’s not that they changed. It's that the winds changed.
But the winds can change again. And infrastructure is what creates the wind. Infrastructure is what sustains it.
Right now, corporations believe Trump can deliver consequences and rewards. And they believe we cannot deliver either at the same scale. But this is not destiny. 2020 was one alignment of forces. 2025 is another. Neither is permanent. The world we’re building and the one we’re trying to prevent, depends on building durable, independent power.
And that power requires infrastructure. Legal and policy advocates have infrastructure that provides the foundation and tools necessary to contest power. We need similar infrastructure to win, and to defend those wins. Because our opposition WILL fight back. Corporations will fight affordability, enforcement, policies that make people’s lives better. If we don’t keep people mobilized after winning, corporate agendas fill the vacuum.
The Work Ahead
I wanted to mention some news I haven’t talked about much here that I’m really excited about. I’m currently building a new project called The Action Center for Corporate Campaigning, to raise the standards of corporate campaigning at a moment when the stakes couldn’t be higher. We’ll provide research, leverage mapping, strategic analysis, talent pipelining, and real-time guidance needed to design campaigns that move corporations.
The goal is to ensure continuity and agility. Corporations have learned from our past tactics, which means we need to constantly innovate, too. I’m excited to share more about that in the coming months.
Corporate power is not episodic but structural. And it’s relentless in its growth - shaping the political, economic, and cultural conditions we’re all living under. But accountability is possible, if we create more infrastructure to build the long-term power we need to win.
As always, if you have thoughts, feedback, questions, or interest in what I wrote about here, please do not hesitate to reach out. I'm always here to talk.
One more thing... Last night I attended the Root 100 gala here in New York, where I introduced Ashley Allison, publisher of The Root and founder of Watering Hole Media.
I'm on The Root's new board and also serve as a strategic advisor, which is part of my broader work to shift the media imbalance that makes it harder for Black stories and issues to break through. Given how disheartening the media landscape looks right now, last night was especially great — a much-needed celebration of Black achievement and contribution in a time when our voices and our stories are being silenced by profiteers.
As always, thanks for reading, and let me know your thoughts and feedback. Grateful to be in community with you.
Rashad
