Interdependence: Coming Together to Fight Corporate Power, Big Tech and Unjust Debt

Bioneers | Published: July 1, 2024 Justice

The story of the U.S. can be so much more than corporate rule, the dominance of big tech, increasing economic inequality, and environmental destruction. Hundreds of leaders of diverse movements are coalescing around an initiative to use the upcoming 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence to tell a fuller story of U.S. history and write a new future based on what most Americans agree on. That includes fair wages, environmental protection and common-sense gun control, which an overwhelming majority of Americans support. And that is not the only common ground we share. 

Hear from Bioneers Co-Founder Kenny Ausubel about taking control back from corporations; explore the transformative power of solidarity and resistance against debt injustice with the Debt Collective; and learn from Stacy Mitchell, Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, about the broad alliance that is bringing long-dormant anti-monopoly laws and strategies back to life. 


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Using U.S.’ 250th Anniversary to Consider Our Past and Improve Our Future

The year 2026 will mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The U.S. government has an official commission for the anniversary, and we can expect to hear the usual patriotic narratives. It will be impossible to miss — God Bless America; fireworks; the red, white, and blue. But several prominent women-of-color social movement leaders are proposing something different: a truer, more forward-looking vision for the nation.

Aimee Allison, Saru Jayaraman, Valarie Kaur, Carmen Perez, Linda Sarsour and others are co-leading an initiative with hundreds of other movement leaders to use the anniversary to assert our unity and interdependence and come together to win concrete changes for the country’s next 250 years. In this excerpt from a Bioneers panel discussion, Jayaraman, President of One Fair Wage and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley, and Sarsour, a Brooklyn-raised Palestinian Muslim-American and multi-award-winning racial justice and civil rights activist, discuss the initiative and how we can all play a part in advancing its goals.

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Kenny Ausubel on Taking Control Back from Corporations 

Bioneers Co-Founder Kenny Ausubel says it’s no coincidence that corporations rule the world. Before the Citizens United decision opened the floodgates of corporate money and made free speech prohibitively expensive, the spending on the 2008 election was $717 million. In 2020, it topped $14 billion.

Ausubel says it’s imperative that we build the power necessary to keep making the long-term transformational change that the majority of people want — and that the world wants. Two-thirds of Americans now support antitrust laws and increased penalties for corporate malfeasance. A large majority, both left and right, hold plummeting negative views of big business at large. According to polls, about half of Americans want the U.S. to rein in and break up Big Tech. In this age of extinctions, Ausubel calls on us to extinguish corporate rule, monopolies and wealth inequality, but also environmental destruction, racism, patriarchy, misogyny, the Doctrine of Discovery – and wars too. He says our many diverse movements are really one movement, and it will take solidarity to save democracy and the world. Read an edited transcript of his 2024 Bioneers keynote address. 

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Debt’s Reach: Unveiling Injustice and Collective Power with the Debt Collective

In an era where financial struggles are often framed as personal failings, conversations about debt are critical lenses into systemic injustices and collective resilience. Maddy Clifford, René Christian Moya and Frederick Bell, prominent voices from the Debt Collective, bring these discussions to the forefront. Through their work, they illuminate how debt intersects with social inequality, housing insecurity, and the lack of healthcare access, urging us to rethink our understanding of financial burdens as shared societal challenges rather than individual woes.

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Democracy vs. Big Tech: How We Can Win the Fight Against Monopoly Power

Most of us would like to live in a society accountable to people and the planet, one in which we exercise genuine agency over our lives and have a real say in the decisions that affect our communities, but the dramatic increase in corporate domination, especially the rise of giant tech companies that wield unprecedented levels of surveillance and control, is radically undermining our democracy and concentrating wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. Stacy Mitchell, who has long been at the forefront of the national movement to rein in excessive corporate power and reinvigorate local self-reliance, is here to tell us that, as powerful as these immense companies and their political allies may seem, they’ve finally met their match. A broad grassroots alliance, together with a new generation of creative government leaders, is bringing long-dormant anti-monopoly laws and strategies back to life. This promising turn of events, Mitchell says, offers hope for reclaiming our rights and assuring a far more equitable and greener future. 

Hear Mitchell discuss these developments in the latest Bioneers Revolution from the Heart of Nature podcast episode and watch her 2024 Bioneers presentation below and watch her 2024 Bioneers presentation below. 

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Our Beloved Blue Home Is Grieving J. Nichols’ Passing

In this remembrance, Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons writes that since Wallace J. Nichols left this life on June 10, the sea turtles, cetaceans, and all water-dwelling creatures have been mourning the loss of one of their greatest advocates and allies. After beginning his career tracking and implementing strategic plans to save sea turtles, J. went on to develop a Blue Mind movement, serving as coach and board member to many marine nonprofits. His 2014 bestselling book Blue Mind, which draws connections between neuroscience and peoples’ love of being near  large, wild bodies of water, is celebrating its tenth anniversary reprinting this year. Simons recalls that “I Wish You Water” was the blessing he bestowed upon nearly everyone he met, dropping a blue marble into your palm in his deeply kind and loving way, as a reminder. Read the rest of Simons’ remembrance and look back on presentations and articles from Nichols over the years. 

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Upcoming Bioneers Learning Courses 

We’re excited to announce that our new season of Bioneers Learning is online, and registration is open! You can register for our first-ever self-paced courses, along with courses covering topics such as the Rights of Nature movement, gender equity, regenerative herbalism, and sacred activism.

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