But as land, railroad, banking, insurance and other corporations began to acquire wealth, they crafted a different agenda. Investing some of their huge profits from the Civil War, they lobbied for legal doctrines and laws which privileged private over public interests, and favored property rights over human rights. At the same time, people's protests and political activism were increasingly channeled into administrative and regulatory agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Environmental Protection Agency, and scores more. In fact, corporations helped design many of these agencies, starting with the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887, so that the most which We the People can accomplish via such agencies is to get corporate property owners to cause a little less harm. Today, global corporations define us as shareholders, consumers, or workers.
Corporations possess, in many respect, greater rights than human beings.
Unlike people, corporations can live forever, operate even after breaking laws, and write-off fines and penalties. Corporate leaders are immune from liability and are free from public recall. From the beginning, this country has been shaped by sustained contests between propertied minorities using corporations as their political vehicles and whole classes of people struggling for basic human and constitutional rights. But given the dominance by a corporate system over the past century, it is logical that the stories of the African American, Native People, women, the propertyless, workers, immigrants, gays and lesbians who peopled these struggles are still generally unknown. We also realized that the Populist Movement was the last American movement that drew upon the people's rights and sovereignty to challenge the very essence of corporate rule.