ENGAGE US #3: Early Morning Doubts
	INDEX|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13

Sometimes, in the darkness before dawn, have you wondered why - despite all this good activist work - corporate assaults against life and democracy keep increasing? After a century of local, state and federal regulatory laws - pure food, labor, stock exchange, clean water, clean air, public health - why do people in community after community have to struggle for years to get the right to know which corporate chemicals are killing their families? To bring a wrongful damage suit against a corporation? To save a forest? To get a fair collective bargaining election? To get back pay or their own pension money?

We all know stories about small, low-budget groups stopping global corporations from siting a deadly factory, clearcutting a forest, ramrodding through a new law, busting a union, using deceptive advertising, carrying propaganda into a school. This is vital: valiant and persistent organizing has enabled people to stand up to raw power and violence. It has bettered the daily lives of millions, instilled confidence and self-respect, transformed whole communities, taught democracy.

But when the joy of victory fades, imperial corporations remain. Slowed down in one place, they pop up in another. They are in everyone's yards front and back, in little leagues and scouting, in town halls, state houses and Congress. They keep blocking sane, logical transitions in food, energy, transportation, health care, finance, forestry and manufacturing. They keep funding think tanks and university corporations to frame public debate. They keep buying obedience and defining family values. Their leaders still walk off with big money and top community honors.