By Rickey Gard Diamond
Women, Money & Democracy Issue Committee
July 2021
The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel, although released in Canada is 2020 and available on Netflix there, it is only now premiering in the U.S. with a special showing through WILPF US. We’re honored that Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom will be sponsoring this premiere national showing. We’re betting you’ll see why the delay happened in releasing it here, once you’re the first in your neighborhood to see the inside story of the dangerously growing power behind familiar U.S. corporate logos gone transnational.
Join us – and invite your friends and political allies over to watch with you – for this is a special viewing opportunity:
Sunday, July 18, through Wednesday, June 21 – only until 7 pm Eastern time, 4 pm Pacific time!
The New Corporation is another must-see documentary made by Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakkan, the filmmaking team that brought us The Corporation in 2003. That first and impressive film (now available free of charge online) revealed how over time a legal construction – the corporation – had come to life as a Frankenstein psychopath, legally a person, outshouting everyone saner with the money-speech the Supreme Court had sanctioned as its right.
After that film’s exposé and the increased public scrutiny, corporations underwent a face lift, newly claiming to be good, full of purpose and social responsibility. But as Jennifer Abbott said in an October 2020 article in Forbes about why the sequel was made –with the election of Trump, there was no longer any pretense that governments had been captured by corporations. Joel Bakkan puts it this way in the interview: “Every issue we had addressed in the first film and book—climate change, racial and economic injustice, the corruption of democracy, degrading of workers’ and human rights—had gotten worse.”
The commodification of everything is killing us and the planet! So what can we the people do? We’re already doing it! Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future, the Sunrise Movement, and Black Lives Matter are movements that show the people still have power. WILPF is working in multiple ways. This film shows us that doing nothing is not an option.
A Full Evening of Informative Entertainment!
In addition to viewing the film, plan to watch our short recorded introduction. Then, on Wednesday, July 21, join us for a one-hour presentation by its author and co-producer, Joel Bakkan, and the our panel conversation featuring the amazing WILPF advocates who first created and then, in 2008, updated WILPF’s popular Corporate Study Guide, Challenge Corporate Power; Assert the People’s Rights.
WILPF is offering this complete package of programming for this premiere film viewing! WILPF has worked to overturn “corporate personhood” for over twenty years, and you can support that work in many ways!
Our brief introductory segment sets the context. This fifteen-minute video introduction is available here [link to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15PuWo8IpBg].
At 7 pm Eastern / 4 pm Pacific on Wednesday, July 21 hear from Joel Bakkan, introduced by our Women, Money and Democracy Chair, Marybeth Gardam, followed immediately by the panel. Preregister for either or both here .
Listen in and take advantage of this chance to ask your questions! We’re excited that Jan Edwards, Virginia Rasmussen, and Tomi and Jim Allison will join us to discuss the still growing Timeline of Corporate Rights and Supreme Court Decisions – plus other government policies – that have granted and inflated corporate power and their dark money influence.
Hear about what factors have made possible the increasing power of corporations. Our WILPF panelists will be joined by Kaitlin Sopoci-Balknap from Move to Amend, an organization working to amend the U.S. Constitution to reverse the Citizens United decision and other related cases. Their petition calling for this amendment currently has 478,779 signatures of the 500,000 they seek. Kaitlin will update us on their continued organizing efforts to end the definition of corporate money as speech.
Those who have viewed for the film (through a separate link, to be shared in an eAlert sometime July 14-18) will be able to appreciate some of the finer points Bakkan and our Women, Money & Democracy Issue Committee panel offer, But you don’t have to have seen the film to appreciate this information and the full story.
So be sure to have your meal, snacks, and beverages lined up for a complete evening starting at 7 pm Eastern / 4 pm Pacific. You won’t want to miss a minute!
The Film Premiere – July 18 through July 21
WILPF’s U.S. premiere of the film is offered to WILPF members only, free of charge.
We’re doing the July 21 presentations – accessible to everyone – so you can easily invite family, friends, and political allies to sign up to watch that programming and better understand the crucial background and basis of corporate power.
To view the film, be sure to look for the eAlert sometime June 14-28 with the instructions on how tot view the film. That eAlert will contain further details on the 72-hour period when the film is available to us.
This film presentation is free, but your movie-ticket-sized donations will help ensure that WILPF can keep on bringing you our hundred-year legacy of peace and freedom! Please give what you can to continue the work against the overreach of corporate corruption.
For further details, contact W$D Committee Chair Marybeth Gardam, mbgardam@gmail.com.
We’ve been here before and when history circles back on itself like this, it’s worth paying attention.1
