Class
project brings democracy debate to Cal
State Long Beach
Katie
Plourd
Online Forty-Niner
Managing Editor
As result of a class project, two Cal State Long Beach students will host an
event examining the role of corporations in democracy Thursday in the University
Student Union.
Senior political science major Sean Brandlin and senior sociology major Trisha
LaRue were required to do a service learning project for Soc. 493, Globalization
and Democracy.
According to Brandlin, the class was given a list of organizations with which
they could work. Brandlin and LaRue opted to work with ReclaimDemocracy.org,
an organization that emphasizes restoring citizen authority over corporations.
The two students went through the necessary steps to put on an event on campus,
such as getting a campus organization to sponsor it and reserving a room from
Student Life and Development to hold the event.
Reclaim Democracy, sponsored by the Campus Progressives, will feature Steve
Spanier, the director of the Orange
County chapter of Reclaim Democracy, as a guest speaker at 4 p.m. Thursday
in USU-224, the Huntington Room.
ReclaimDemocracy.org is a national non-partisan, non-profit organization that
seeks to restore democratic authority over corporations and revive grassroots
democracy.
Spanier said he wants to reach out to students and educate them on the issues
ReclaimDemocracy.org tackles, ranging from civil rights, corporate accountability,
globalization to transforming politics and corporate personhood.
He will speak mainly on the tendency of corporations to take on their own personification
in today’s society and how this occurrence limits democratic values from
being exercised.
“
The general idea is that we believe that in the last 10 years, through a variety
of Supreme Court decisions, corporations have acquired the same rights as people,” Spanier
said.
These tendencies, according to Spanier, allow corporations to get away with
numerous things they should not have the right to do. Corporations in turn
are not as subservient to people as they should be. Examples of this are seen
through corporations like Enron, Worldcom, Wal-mart and countless corporations
that pollute the environment.
“
Corporations are not bad or evil,” Spanier said. “They are just
doing what they’re allowed to.”
Spanier said the way to stop these tendencies from happening is to educate
citizens, a feat he attempts to accomplish through ReclaimDemocracy.org and
by speaking to others.
In the past, Spanier has spoken at political party meetings and religious organizations.
This event will be the first time Spanier addresses a crowd of college students.
Brandlin agrees getting a speaker like Spanier to come to campus will help
students gain awareness on the issue.
“
If students were informed on how corporations are in a democratic society they’d
be interested in it,” he said.
“
Informing and educating is a way to teach people. This is a great organization
to get people active.”
Spanier is looking forward to branching out to students because education on
the topic of the corporate role in society allows others to spread the word.
Young people are of particular interest, he said, because they are the future
of this country.
“
If [students] are aware, they can control the future,” Spanier said. “If
the future generation can understand the problem, hopefully they’ll make
better decisions.”
Getting young people involved is a goal Spanier has for the organization, which
is typically made up of an older group of participants.
“
We’d love to have more younger people involved now,” Spanier said. “I
want to speak at as many campuses around the area. This is a great start.”
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