Will Corporate America be the Catalyst for Democracy?

When North Carolina’s Governor, Roy Cooper,  signed a bill to reverse a law that required transgender people to use public bathrooms that matched the gender on their birth certificate, it cost the state $3.75 billion in lost revenues as big companies pulled out of doing business in North Carolina.

My friend believes that it is Corporate America that will be the keepers of the Democracy flame.  He could be right.

We have witnessed people using social media to post videos of racists demeaning and threatening people just because of the color of their skin.  The aftermath of these posts going viral is the companies that these vile people work for have publically chosen to fire them for their behavior.  It does not represent their company values.  It is no different than the large companies pulling the plug on North Carolina.

Companies want to be equal opportunity employers as they should be.  It is the right thing to do, it creates a better workplace, it allows them the opportunity to hire from a larger pool of people and more.  As states choose to keep people from voting, be discriminatory against minorities, continue to support insanely lax gun laws, I too believe we will see Corporate America making executive decisions about what states they want to bring capital and companies into or not.

The Supreme Court might have become more conservative with Kavanaugh but the power is with money and from the reaction from Corporate American in North Carolina, it appears that most of them might be on the side of democracy.

Comments (Archived):

  1. awaldstein

    Interesting thought especially this morningAs I was following the news of the Amazon announcement yesterday, I realized the massive power of that company.Their demands could force not only employment diversity but in many ways, also force NY to fix its transportation issues and attack affordable housing holes.If so inclined, a company like that could single handedly impact the environment in massive ways just by addressing its packaging.Maybe you are onto something here.Because when business and the the aftereffects of good conscience decision align, change may have a chance.

    1. Gotham Gal

      It was my friend’s convo that made me think about it. Amazon in LICity. Major transportation issues that they will have to deal with.

  2. Lauren Barnett

    I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit — probably due to reading your blog? Anand Giridharadas’ new book, Winner Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, is one I’m looking forward to reading after seeing an interview with him at CreativeMornings taping of Design Matters with Debbie Millman. Something has gotta give and since last nights results didn’t thrill me as much as I hoped, it’s definitely a combination of private and public action. I wish could see it clearer. Here is the SoundCloud conversation they had more than 6-months ago: https://soundcloud.com/desi….I wonder what will happen with the relationship between Hollywood and Georgia in the wake of the close Kemp/Abrams race that is still too close to call and somewhat weird to have a referee running in the election in question. Hollywood lost subsidies in North Carolina in 2014 with moving a lot of that industry further south. But that will be interesting to see in the coming weeks/months. http://www.latimes.com/ente

    1. Gotham Gal

      Thanks for sharing this. Will listen to the conversation.I hope Stacy Abrams hangs in there. It is not ok to hold democracy hostage as I do believe Kemp has done.Our country is incredibly divided and will become more so. It appears from the polls that is it the suburbs that are the deciding factor. They are swinging blue and it will be the rural areas that remain true to red even though they are voting against themselves.

  3. jason wright

    The viral distribution over the internet of a video of a particular event is like zeroxing an original document. it does not mean that each copy of that document is an original. It does not mean that each copy of the video is a unique original event. the internet amplifies massively, and tends to give the impression that an event is happening everywhere and constantly. Clearly not. We need to become a little more sophisticated in the way we consume internet content. We are losing our grounded perspective. Where’s the common sense analysis?