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Who We Are

What people say about us...

Instigating democratic conversations and actions
that contest the authority of corporations to govern.

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

We have spent over 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); b) why decades of valiant citizen resistance, along with regulatory laws galore, have neither stopped corporate assaults nor shifted governing power to people and communities; c) what people can do.

Who We Are

David Cobb -- Eureka, CA
Green Party nominee for President of the United States in 2004. He served as the General Counsel for the Green Party before declaring his candidacy in 2003. His entire legal career is dedicated to challenging illegitimate corporate power and to making real the promise of democracy. 2002 Texas Attorney General candidate, pledging to use the office to revoke the charters of corporations that break the law, or that otherwise act contrary to the public good. Campaigns Director for Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County (DUHC) and a Fellow with Liberty Tree: Foundation for the Democratic Revolution. On the Sierra Club's national Corporate Accountability Committee and a co-founder of the Green Institute.

Greg Coleridge -- Akron, Ohio
greg@poclad.org
Director of the Economic Justice & Empowerment Program of the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). A founder of the Ohio Committee on Corporations, Law and Democracy; co-author of Citizens over Corporations: A Brief History of Corporations and Democracy in Ohio, and author of its second edition; author of This is What Democracy [in Ohio] Looks Like: Ohio's Democratic/Self-Determination Infrastructure; writer of the documentary, CorpOrNation: The Story of Citizens and Corporations in Ohio. Greg's work includes campaign finance reform, peace, public access, corporate globalization and environmental issues.

Karen Coulter -- Fossil, Oregon
karen@poclad.org
Director of the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project in eastern Oregon. Karen has been a grassroots activist on environmental, anti-nuclear and social justice issues since 1980; part of the Earth First! movement since 1984; worked for the AFSC against the MX missile; for Greenpeace International as Acid Rain campaigner and international lobbyist on ozone depletion. Helped create the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment. Graduate of Reed College.

Mike Ferner -- Toledo, Ohio
Served as an independent member of Toledo City Council and was an independent candidate for mayor. Former union organizer for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and communications director for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) AFL-CIO. Co-founded Toledo Coalition for Safe Energy, 1975. Traveled to Iraq just prior to, and a year after, the U.S. invasion in 2003. Navy Hospital Corpsman 1969-73 and a member of Veterans for Peace.

Dave Henson -- Occidental, California
dave@poclad.org
Director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC), an 80-acre organic farm, ecology education center and intentional community in Northern California. OAEC builds local democracy through programs in food crop and wildlands biodiversity, watershed–based organizing, school gardens, and opposing genetic engineering in agriculture. Dave also provides democratic decision making trainings and campaign planning consulting for community-based environmental, social justice and farm groups.

Ward Morehouse -- Holyoke, MA
ward@poclad.org
POCLAD co-founder and co-director; president of the Council on International and Public Affairs (CIPA); founder of the International Coalition for Justice in Bhopal, India. Human rights activist and author or editor of 20 books. Ward has taught at New York University, the University of Lund in Sweden and the Administrative Staff College of India in Hyderabad and consulted with various United Nations agencies, including UNESCO, UNIDO, UNCTAD, and the Centre on Transnational Corporations.

Lewis Pitts -- Greensboro, North Carolilna
Public interest lawyer for over 32 years, focusing on racial and environnmental justice, children's rights and participatory democracy. Lewis has appeared on Larry King Live and ABC's Good Morning America discussing children's rights and has been arrested six times protesting nuclear power.? He currently heads Advocates for Children's Services of Legal Aid of NC, is active in the NC Bar Association on children's issues, and enjoys speaking to the public about all these issues.

Jim Price -- Birmingham, Alabama
jim@poclad.org
Staff Director, Sierra Club Southeast Office. Program Director, Sierra Club National Environmental Justice Grassroots Organizing Program; Staff liaison, Sierra Club Corporate Accountability Committee; member of the Advisory Committee, Center for Popular Economics, Amherst, Massachusetts. Jim holds master of Public Administration and master of City Planning degrees and worked for the Birmingham Regional Planning Commission and the Northwest Alabama Council of Local Governments. Served on the National Council, Alliance for Democracy.

Virginia Rasmussen -- Alfred, NY
virginia@poclad.org
Co-founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) campaign www.wilpf.org, "Challenge Corporate Power, Assert the People's Rights." Formerly, Director of the Environmental Studies Program, Alfred University, and Mayor of Alfred, NY; Education Director at the New Alchemy Institute on Cape Cod; Director of the Cape Cod Campaign for Civil Rights. Virginia has a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from Syracuse University, and has taught students in the U.S.,Zambia and Turkey.

Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap -- Eureka, CA
Director of Democracy Unlimited Humboldt County. Graduated from the New College of CA in 2004 with a BA degree in Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community. Served as a member of the national Leadership Team of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom's campaign to Challenge Corporate Power, Assert the People's Rights, and currently serves as a Fellow for Liberty Tree: Foundation for the Democratic Revolution. She was elected as the youngest member and first woman to serve on the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District Board, and she also served on the Housing Advisory Board for the City of Eureka from 2004-2006.

Mary Zepernick -- S. Yarmouth, Massachusetts
mary@poclad.org
POCLAD Office Coordinator. Co-chaired the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom's (WILPF) "Challenge Corporate Power" campaign; A long-time teacher and trainer, Mary conducts workshops on the democratic arts and is a past president of U.S.WILPF. She coordinated the successful Cape Care resolution campaign in spring 2006, to support the development of a single payer community owned health insurance program for all residents of Cape Cod.

POCLAD is a project of the Council on International and Public Affairs (CIPA) http://www.cipa-apex.org/.