A collage of two women–one Black and one Asian–who look up at the sky, where a technicolor rainbow Saturn spills out of the cracked shell of planet earth.
Image: “The Universe Delivers” by Yvonne Coleman Burney/www.artbyycolemanburney.com

Editors’ note: This piece is from Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine’s summer 2024 issue, “Escaping Corporate Capture.”

The aircraft manufacturer Boeing, granted the authority by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2009 to self-certify compliance, uses that authority to cut regulatory corners—with tragic results.1 A 10-person advisory panel convened by the Federal Drug Administration in 2002 looks at an alarming rise in prescriptions for a Purdue Pharma drug known as OxyContin, but half of the members have ties to the company and no action is taken, allowing opioid overdose deaths to continue to climb.2 A United Nations– sponsored Conference of the Parties, the world’s leading climate gathering, is led in 2023 by Dr. Sultan al-Jaber, a “state oil company chief executive,” who, notes the Associated Press, “got the world to agree to transition away from fossil fuels while still being able to pump ever-more oil”—the horrifying effects of which can already be seen in mounting climate-related disasters.3

This is corporate capture, whereby agencies meant to control corporate behavior instead are controlled by corporate leaders to advance their economic interests.4 But considered more broadly, corporate capture extends far beyond the capture of a few government agencies; indeed, over time, it has developed a stranglehold on our economy and life.

Corporate capture is evident not just in regulatory agencies but also in elections, the halls of government, the media, music, art, and any other cultural sites corporate elites can get their hands on. Corporate capture is visible too in the names adorning the walls of nonprofit university and hospital buildings. It can even be found in the thinking of nonprofit and movement activists and leaders.

Indeed, the scope of resulting corporate control and influence has been astonishingly broad. Decades ago, Philip K. Dick asked if androids dream of electric sheep.5 We won’t hazard a guess as to the psychology of androids, but we can say with certainty that corporate messages have entered human dreams.

Life as Commodity

In 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels observed that the capitalist class was “like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”6 Today, approaching two hundred years later, the modern corporation has amassed and harnessed spellbinding and mythmaking powers that Marx and Engels might scarcely have imagined.

More and more of society has been converted into commodities—that is, items that can be bought or sold. But the corporate form, per se, is not the problem—the corporation is just a creature of law that limits individual liability. Rather, the primary challenge is the accumulation of wealth and power that the corporate form has enabled a small number of owners of private, for-profit corporations to accrue. And, over time, the for-profit corporation has occupied more and more social space; its tentacles reach into politics, our economy, our daily life, and—perhaps most insidiously—our culture and ideas.

Politics. These days, it is often noted that US democracy is in peril.7 And it is true that a rising authoritarian tide threatens civil liberties and democratic institutions like Congress. But even absent open dictatorship, US government today is less a democracy than a plutocracy, ruled by the wealthy few. This is neoliberalism, which is best understood as a politics in which the state acts to support the concentration of wealth among an elite few through its taxation, spending, and regulatory policies.8 In 2014, political scientists Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens published a study that asked a simple question: Do policy choices reflect elite preferences or those of the people at large? Their empirical findings were clear: “[B]usiness interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”9

Decades earlier, another political scientist, Thomas Ferguson, came to a similar conclusion, developing what he called the “investment theory of politics.” Ferguson’s main finding was that the US Democratic and Republican parties are best thought of as “blocs of major investors who coalesce to advance candidates representing their interests.”10

As nonprofits attempt to solve social problems, they must solicit both government funding and private funding from philanthropy and, occasionally, even from corporations. What this means is that progressive agendas depend on funding sources that are ultimately invested in preserving the profit motive.Going even further back, in 1977, Charles Lindblom, onetime American Political Science Association president, authored Politics and Markets: The World’s Political-Economic Systems, in which he argued that in capitalism, business occupies a “privileged position” that offers business elites disproportionate policy influence.11 Lindblom wrote this more than 30 years before the US Supreme Court’s decision of Citizens United, which removed many restrictions on corporate political spending.12 Lindblom’s point was that without spending a cent, corporations, by dint of their mere economic power, tilt politics in their direction.

Economy and daily life. A 2021 study by McKinsey Global Institute found that, globally, “The business sector overall contributes 72 percent of GDP [gross domestic product]” and, further, that “corporations with more than $1 billion in revenue…increased their global value added by 60 percent relative to their home countries’ GDP since 1995.”13 In other words, corporate GDP is growing much faster than the economy as a whole. More broadly, the data show more and more corporate wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. A long-term study of US corporate concentration from 1918 to 2018 by three economists (published in 2023 by the University of Chicago) found, “Since the early 1930s, the asset shares of the top 1% and top 0.1% corporations have increased by 27 percentage points (from 70% to 97%) and 40 percentage points (from 47% to 88%), respectively.”14 Put differently, a subset of one in one thousand companies currently owns nearly nine-tenths of total corporate net worth in the US economy.

Additionally, corporate influence in daily life is growing, as many parts of the economy that once existed outside the corporate sphere are now incorporated within it. One heartbreaking example can be seen in how children are raised. Hours spent in unstructured play are declining; hours spent in structured corporate social media consumption are rising.

A 2016 United Kingdom survey found that children’s playtime had fallen from 8.2 hours a week in their parents’ generation to just over 4 hours a week; US data are similar.15 Relatedly, a 2021 survey by the US nonprofit Common Sense Media found that daily screen use was 5 hours and 33 minutes—49 minutes higher than just two years earlier.16

While establishing direct causality is complicated, the two trends do appear to be connected.17 More broadly, in terms of the theme here, much of what used to be childhood outdoor play existed outside the corporate sphere. By contrast, nowadays, youth are much more likely to be consuming multinational corporate products and services via mobile apps.

Culture and ideas. Corporate power has invaded our thoughts and dreams. To take one example, the phrase “the American dream” has come to be defined in ways that emphasize the individual pursuit of wealth. This is ironic. James Truslow Adams, the person who is credited with coining the phrase in 1931, was referring to “well-being that is held in common and therefore mutually supported.”18

Adams, writes Sarah Churchwell, a professor of American literature, created the notion of “the American dream” as a critique of a nation that he saw as having in the 1920s “lost its way by prizing material success above all other values.”19 Churchwell adds, “The American dream was rarely, if ever, used to describe the familiar idea of Horatio Alger [–inspired] individual upward social mobility until after the Second World War.”20

Nonetheless, as Alissa Quart demonstrated in her book Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream, the idea that success should be defined in economic terms and is determined by one’s own efforts alone is now deeply ingrained in US society. And the effects have often been politically demobilizing. “The cult of individualism,” Quart writes, has led to a “nagging sense that our failure is ours alone.” This myth, she adds, “drops the blame for inequality in our laps, while our flawed systems get off scot-free.”21

What about Nonprofits?

The ethos of individualism that Quart describes has its corollary effects in the nonprofit sector, and even in social movements that are seeking to advance economic justice. First, as Quart explains, the emphasis on self-reliance undermines support for public sector provision of public goods. This results in what Quart calls a “dystopian social safety net,” with many nonprofits placed in the position of putting together “do-it-yourself, taped together programs Stuff that shouldn’t exist but does because we have to rely on ourselves.”22

[Shawn] Fain put the conflict plainly: “People accuse us of waging class warfare. There’s been class warfare going on in this country for the last forty years. The billionaire class has been taking everything and leaving everybody else to fight for the scraps.”

The role of the nonprofit sector since the 1960s has been to try to fill in the gaps of austerity created by the decline and privatization of the welfare state. The result of this explosion is that nonprofits are subject to the same neoliberal pressures that plague the social welfare state.23 As nonprofits attempt to solve social problems, they must solicit both government funding and private funding from philanthropy and, occasionally, even from corporations. What this means is that progressive agendas depend on funding sources that are ultimately invested in preserving the profit motive. In an interview with Jacobin, Melissa Naschek sums up the fact of corporate capture in nonprofits succinctly: “This leaves nonprofits trapped in an inescapable contradiction: politically they are beholden to the very class that is hoarding the resources necessary to expand social spending.”24

Additionally, as Quart has pointed out, not just failure but also success is seen as “self-made.”25 This encourages heroic notions of individualized leadership at the top. Law professor and activist Dean Spade has noted that the students he teaches often seek to be “nonprofit executive directors” even as they lack a clear idea of what they want to do. “The form predates the content,” Spade observes. “That is worrying; it is doing something to the imagination.”26

The field of nonprofit management, in short, has been deeply harmed by corporate capture. This affects not just nonprofits but also movements for liberation today. As Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party powerfully argued in a 2022 essay, movements face a yin and yang between exaggerated notions of individualism that can make effective management impossible and exaggerated notions of collective governance that can make effective organizing exceedingly difficult.27 Writing a year later from the standpoint of solidarity economy organizing, Nicole Wires, network director of the Nonprofit Democracy Network, noted a similar dynamic, pointing out that the first stage of activists moving away from corporate models of management and leadership often leads to what she calls “counter-solutions,” which she defines as “oversimplified solutions that are the obvious opposite of the issue at hand.”28 Wires adds that if movement groups fail to move beyond these binaries, they can get stuck in a destructive loop that undermines their liberatory goals.

Finding a Way Out

If the goal is liberation from these tentacles, then finding a way out from corporate capture is imperative. This is not an easy task, but both movement groups and nonprofits across the country are dedicated to imagining a world beyond. The results can be seen in growing efforts to empower workers, design democratic and effective management and leadership, and build economies rooted in values of solidarity.

Empowering workers. Erica Smiley of Jobs with Justice noted, in 2023, that there has been a “great awakening,” in which “what is possible changed overnight as workers showed us how to effectively hold global corporations accountable.”29 The consequences of this wave have been significant. For example, in February 2024, after resisting unionization for over two years, Starbucks management pledged to negotiate a national agreement with the union that would set wage and working conditions for an estimated 10,000 workers and 400 stores across the country.30

At a broader level, the idea that corporations are the culprits behind mass inequality is starting to take hold and transform movements that have been suffering from demobilization and defeat. We can look to the recent rise of the United Auto Workers for a good illustration of this dynamic. Since its founding, in 1935, the United Auto Workers has been a bastion of progressive policies and programs that have helped millions of working-class Americans achieve incredible economic benefits. In 1945 and 1946, the union staged a historic 113-day strike against General Motors—the longest that it had ever undertaken against a major manufacturer.31

There is an oft-repeated saying: “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”—which is why it is so important to, as the folks at Art.coop say, “remember the future.”

But during the Reagan era, this union succumbed to concessionary contracts due to aggressive union-busting and the ongoing effects of Chrysler’s 1979 bankruptcy, as manufacturing moved abroad. This pattern of concessions continued for decades, until a democratic caucus within the United Auto Workers gained power in 2023 and rekindled its radical flame, reengaging the power of the rank and file to elect leadership that identified the real enemy behind bad deals: multi-billion-dollar corporations.32

In September 2023, the union recalled its history with a “stand-up strike,” taking on all three of the major car manufacturers in the United States at once.33 Led by its newly elected president, Shawn Fain, the union accomplished this not just by putting power back into the hands of the membership but also by bringing class politics into the center of the narrative around economic inequality. Two days before the strike began, Fain put the conflict plainly: “People accuse us of waging class warfare. There’s been class warfare going on in this country for the last forty years. The billionaire class has been taking everything and leaving everybody else to fight for the scraps.”34

By relentlessly repeating the message that corporations are to blame for the state of economic inequality in this country, and galvanizing membership to stand up with their union in a strategic strike to take on the corporate-rigged economy, the UAW not only won a historic contract for their members but have also repositioned themselves as a political powerhouse. Since then, they have already begun to organize nonunion automakers in the South and champion eco-social measures in the production of electric vehicles, and they have called for a ceasefire in the ongoing war in Gaza.35

Envisioning new forms of leadership. Earlier, we mentioned the dilemmas for corporate capture that Wires and Mitchell detail. Fortunately, they both offer solutions, which involve developing new forms of leadership. Mitchell calls for leadership centered in a “movement-accountable governance”36 that finds a middle path between corporate models of command and control and the reactive rejection of what Mitchell labels “anti-leadership.”37

Wires labels this process “a maturation from reaction to vision.”38 In the process of solutions and, initially, reactive counter-solutions, Wires believes that, in the best case, a process of synthesis will emerge. As she puts it, “[W]hen we try to change systems and see their very re-creation within our alternatives, we gain greater insights into how capitalism and its ideologies live within us and around us, and what is needed to transform them.”39

For Mitchell, one thing this middle ground requires is that movements drop their fear of unionization. Too often, unionization is seen as a sign of managerial failure and as a development to be resisted, rather than as a sign of an empowered workforce.40 As Mitchell writes, 

Managers should support and recognize unionization efforts inside movement organizations as a reflection of our values…. Collective bargaining agreements can increase clarity, promote equity, foster accountability, and provide a common language across an organization. And, most importantly, healthy labor/management relations can bridge gaps and serve as an ongoing resource for managers and unit members to tend to collective goals.41

Mitchell also emphasizes the need to replace the corporate-dominated economy with an economy rooted in values of solidarity. As Mitchell has said,

We spend too little time thinking about nonextractive revenue generation, owning the means of production, owning the means of political production, and building economies that can support people’s organizations. We need to ensure that our organizations provide real, material benefits to the people they serve, and that a mass base of people own and direct these organizations.42

The value of solidarity. Meanwhile, the solidarity economy—a movement that seeks to make community ownership of the economy a daily reality—continues to gain momentum. This movement has multiple facets. One of these is an effort that emerged—both within the nonprofit sector and beyond—to adopt a solidarity economics frame.43

As one group of solidarity economy leaders wrote last year, a growing number of nonprofits, including their own, have become “movement organizations,” by which they mean they “are making the journey to embrace systemic change that seeks to move us beyond capitalism and have embraced the solidarity economy as their North Star.”44 They add that they see the three organizations that they help lead as “a microcosm of a shift that is occurring across hundreds of movement organizations nationwide.”45 Additionally, worker cooperatives, once marginal in the world of public policy, have since 2018 won an impressive string of legislative victories at both the federal and state level.46

The path beyond the current status quo will be paved with brave commitments to democratic and distributive models at every level of civil society.

It’s the End of the World as We Know It

In short, unions, movements, and nonprofit organizations can create actual political change when they remake themselves according to the values and vision they want to see in the world. A world free from corporate capture would look quite different from the one in which we currently live, which is why we must keep imagining it in order to make this alternative formation a reality. What would such a world look like? There is an oft-repeated saying: “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”47 —which is why it is so important to, as the folks at Art.coop say, “remember the future”48 and dare to envision a different world.

Some aspects of this vision remain to be developed, but we can sketch out a few key elements here: In this future world, worker democracy, community ownership, and collective enrichment would be central to the organization of our economy. Oil and gas industries would not be destroying the planet and displacing and endangering millions of people, because fossil fuels would be banned, renewable energy production greatly increased, and environmental health restored. Nobody would have to move across the world to take low-paid domestic work because their local economies were destroyed by companies overfishing their oceans. People would be able to fly on planes and be sure that the people building and piloting them were well-compensated and encouraged to do the best they could to make air travel safe for everyone. Private jets and yachts would be vestiges of the past. Instead of privatized travel, travel would be something that everyone could enjoy for low prices and with low emissions. Those who build houses would not struggle to put a roof over their heads, because private equity companies would not be buying up the majority of housing stock. Housing would be made widely accessible through public and community ownership, and would cost a small portion of monthly income. Single-family homes would be retrofitted to be sustainable. Farmworkers who cultivate our food would have a say in what is grown and produced, with environmental sustainability and community health, rather than profits for agricultural conglomerates, prioritized. Millions of children would be able to go to well-funded public schools with plentiful, well-paid teachers and staff to help them learn and grow, because public education would not be starved at the expense of private and charter schools. Millions of elderly people would grow old with dignity in clean and comfortable facilities, and the people who take care of them would be fairly compensated and have sustainable workloads.

We could go on describing this world, because to build beyond corporate capture means transforming every aspect of our economy that is currently controlled by the drive to enrich corporations at the expense of everyday people. This means that a world free of corporate capture is everywhere, in plain sight.

The path beyond the current status quo will be paved with brave commitments to democratic and distributive models at every level of civil society. These efforts have already begun, so understanding the shape and trajectory of these struggles is the best way to keep our escape routes within our sights. We dedicate this article to the organizations that have already begun trying to create this world, and to the sea change that can come with this new era of struggle against corporate capture and for liberation.

Notes

  1. Freddy Brewster, “The Hole In Boeing’s Inspection Program,” The Lever, February 7, 2024, www. levernews.com/the-hole-in-boeings-inspection-program/; Ian Duncan, Michael Laris, and Lori Aratani, “Boeing 737 Max crashes were ‘horrific culmination’ of errors, investigators say,” Washington Post, September 16, 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/boeing-737-max-crashes-were-horrific-culmination-of-errors-investigators-say/2020/09/16/72e5d226-f761-11ea-89e3-4b9efa36dc64_story.html; and Aaron C. Davis and Marina Lopes, “How the FAA allows jetmakers to ‘self certify’ that planes meet U.S. safety requirements,” Washington Post, March 15, 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/how-the-faa-allows-jetmakers-to-self-certify-that-planes-meet-us-safety-requirements/2019/03/15/96d24d4a-46e6-11e9-90f0-0ccfeec87a61_story.html.
  2. Peter Whoriskey, “Rising painkiller addiction shows damage from drugmakers’ role in shaping medical opinion,” Washington Post, December 30, 2012, www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/2012/12/30/014205a6-4bc3-11e2-b709-667035ff9029_story.html. See also “Understanding the Opioid Overdose Epidemic,” Centers for U.S. Disease Control and Prevention, April 5, 2024, www.cdc.gov/ overdose-prevention/about/understanding-the-opioid-overdose-epidemic.html.
  3. Jon Gambrell, “Analysis: At COP28, Sultan al-Jaber got what the UAE wanted. Others leave it wanting much more,” Associated Press, last modified December 13, 2023, apnews.com/article/cop28-uae-dubai-sultan-al-jaber-analysis-0ca576d33e2ad361e49f51f6fee99d8d.
  4. George J. Stigler, “The Theory of Economic Regulation,” Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 2, no. 1 (Spring 1971): 3–21; and Sam Peltzman, The Economic Theory of Regulation after a Decade of Deregulation (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1989).
  5. Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1968).
  6. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1848).
  7. john a. powell and Sara Grossman, “Countering Authoritarianism: Forging a Progressive Response to Fragmentation,” NPQ, March 16, 2023, nonprofitquarterly.org/countering-authoritarianism-forging-a-progressive-response-to-fragmentation/.
  8. Steve Dubb, “A Clear-Eyed Look at the Consolidation of a Billionaire Class,” NPQ, March 13, 2024, nonprofitquarterly.org/a-clear-eyed-look-at-the-consolidation-of-a-billionaire-class/.
  9. Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12, no. 3 (September 2014): 564–81.
  10. Thomas Ferguson, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 27. See also Steve Dubb, “The Struggle Over the Social Contract: Applying an Investment Lens to Politics,” NPQ, February 23, 2022, nonprofitquarterly.org/the-struggle-over-the-social-contract-applying-an-investment-lens-to-politics/.
  11. Charles E. Lindblom, Politics and Markets: The World’s Political-Economic Systems (New York: Basic Books, 1977). See also Ann Crittenden, “The ‘Veto Power’ of Big Business,” New York Times, January 29, 1978, www.nytimes.com/1978/01/29/archives/the-veto-power-of-big-business-business-under-fire.html.
  12. Steve Dubb, “The Best Elections Money Can Buy,” NPQ, January 25, 2023, nonprofitquarterly.org/the-best-elections-money-can-buy/. See also Syllabus, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, no. 08-205, October Term, 2009, www.fec.gov/resources/legal-resources/litigation/cu_sc08_opinion.pdf.
  13. James Manyika et al., Companies in the 21st century: A new look at how corporations impact the economy and households (New York: McKinsey Global Institute, June 2021), 1.
  14. Spencer Y. Kwon, Yueran Ma, and Kaspar Zimmermann, “100 Years of Rising Corporate Concentration,” Insights/Research Brief, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics, University of Chicago, April 5, 2023, bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/100-years-of-rising-corporate-concentration/.
  15. Press Association, “Children spend only half as much time playing outside as their parents did,” The Guardian, July 27, 2016, www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/27/children-spend-only-half-the-time-playing-outside-as-their-parents-did. See also Caitriona Maria, “Fading Fun: The Critical Mission To Keep American Kids at Play,” Star Local Media, March 3, 2024, starlocalmedia.com/news/state/fading-fun-the-critical-mission-to-keep-american-kids-at-play/article_c74d265d-8c2b-567f-b032-269b606788bc.html.
  16. Melinda Wenner Moyer, “Kids as Young as 8 Are Using Social Media More Than Ever, Study Finds,” New York Times, March 24, 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/well/family/child-social-media-use.html.
  17. Tassia K. Oswald et al., “Psychological impacts of ‘screen time’ and ‘green time’ for children and adolescents: A systematic scoping review,” PLoS ONE 15, no. 9 (September 2020): e0237725.
  18. Sarah Churchwell, “A Brief History of the American Dream,” The Catalyst, no. 21 (Winter 2021), www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/state-of-the-american-dream/churchwell-history-of-the-american-dream.
  19. Ibid.
  20. Ibid. For some of the factors behind this shift in the meaning of the American dream, see Steve Dubb, “Of Myths and Markets: Moving Beyond the Capitalist God That Failed Us,” NPQ, April 19, 2023, nonprofitquarterly.org/of-myths-and-markets-moving-beyond-the-capitalist-god-that-failed-us/.
  21. Alissa Quart, Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream (New York: Ecco, 2023), 4, 5.
  22. Steve Dubb and Alissa Quart, “America’s Broken Safety Net—and How to Address It: An Interview with Alissa Quart,” NPQ, March 15, 2023, nonprofitquarterly.org/americas-broken-safety-net-and-how-to-address-it-an-interview-with-alissa-quart/.
  23. Benjamin Y. Fong and Melissa Naschek, “NGOism Serves the Status Quo,” interview by Jennifer C. Pan and Cale Brooks, Jacobin, June 14, 2021, jacobin.com/2021/06/ngoism-nonprofit-foundation-status-quo-community-unions.
  24. Ibid.
  25. Dubb and Quart, “America’s Broken Safety Net.”
  26. Steve Dubb, “Nonprofits and Movements: How Do the Two Relate?,” NPQ, March 29, 2023, nonprofitquarterly.org/nonprofits-and-movements-how-do-the-two-relate/
  27. Maurice Mitchell, “Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis,” NPQ, The Forge, and Convergence, November 29, 2022, nonprofitquarterly.org/building-resilient-organizations-toward-joy-and-durable-power-in-a-time-of-crisis/.
  28. Nicole Wires, “Making Economic Democracy Work: How to Practice Shared Leadership,” NPQ, November 28, 2023, nonprofitquarterly.org/making-economic-democracy-work-how-to-practice-shared-leadership/.
  29. Erica Smiley, “The Great Awakening, and Workers’ Fight to Stay Woke,” Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine 30, no. 2 (Summer 2023): 48–57.
  30. Harold Meyerson, “Starbucks Stops Opposing Its Baristas’ Union,” American Prospect, February 27, 2024, prospect.org/labor/2024-02-27-starbucks-stops-opposing-baristas-union-master-contract/.
  31. Barry Eidlin, “Shawn Fain Is Channeling the Best of the UAW’s Past,” Jacobin, October 16, 2023, jacobin.com/2023/10/shawn-fain-united-auto-workers-past-walter-reuther-strike.
  32. Steve Dubb, “Could a Union Win in Chattanooga Lead to Greater Labor Gains in the South?” NPQ, May 1, 2024, nonprofitquarterly.org/could-a-union-win-in-chattanooga-lead-to-greater-labor-gains-in-the-south/.
  33. Paul Prescod, “UAW President Shawn Fain Is Showing How to Build Working-Class Struggle,” Jacobin, September 28, 2023, jacobin.com/2023/09/shawn-fain-uaw-strike-leadership-class-struggle/. And see Rithika Ramamurthy, “Striketober, Again!,” NPQ, October 25, 2023, nonprofitquarterly.org/ striketober-again/.
  34. Prescod, “UAW President Shawn Fain Is Showing How to Build Working-Class Struggle.”
  35. Dubb, “Could a Union Win in Chattanooga Lead to Greater Labor Gains in the South?”; Luke Tonachel, “The Successful UAW Strike Portends a Successful EV Transition,” Expert Blog, National Resources Defense Council, November 20, 2023, www.nrdc.org/bio/luke-tonachel/successful-uaw-strike-portends-successful-ev-transition; and “UAW Statement on Gaza and Palestine,” United Auto Workers, December 1, 2023, uaw.org/uaw-statement-israel-palestine/.
  36. “Building Movement-Accountable Government: A Conversation with Steve Dubb, Rithika Ramamurthy, and Maurice Mitchell,” Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine 30, no. 2 (Summer 2023): 42–47.
  37. Mitchell, “Building Resilient Organizations.”
  38. Wires, “Making Economic Democracy Work.”
  39. Ibid.
  40. CJ Garcia-Linz, “The Labor Movement Includes Nonprofit Workers, Too,” Teen Vogue, February 12, 2024, www.teenvogue.com/story/labor-movement-includes-nonprofit-workers-oped.
  41. Mitchell, “Building Resilient Organizations.”
  42. Dubb, Ramamurthy, and Mitchell, “Building Movement-Accountable Government.”
  43. Emily Kawano, “Imaginal Cells of the Solidarity Economy,” Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine 28, no. 2 (Summer 2021): 48–55.
  44. Emily Kawano et al., “Stories of Organizational Transformation: Moving Toward System Change and a Solidarity Economy,” Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine 30, no. 2 (Summer 2023): 76.
  45. Ibid, 78.
  46. Esteban Kelly and Mo Manklang, “Unlikely Advocates: Worker Co-ops, Grassroots Organizing, and Public Policy,” Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine 30, no. 2 (Summer 2023): 66–75.
  47. See, for example, Mark Fisher, “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,” in Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (London, England: Zero Books, 2022), 1–15.
  48. Cate Fox and Nichole M. Christian, “How Philanthropy Can Show Up for an Arts Solidarity Economy,” NPQ, January 18, 2023, nonprofitquarterly.org/how-philanthropy-can-show-up-for-an-arts-solidarity–economy/.