Abstract

Stinging the Corporations

Saul Alinsky, the chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey is standing on a platform. It is the company's annual meeting and he is speaking into a microphone. The 80,000 have just voted "Yes" on a proposal and the chairman is telling them that on behalf of 90 per cent of the shares he is voting "No" and that the 80,000 people have lost. "I'd just love to see that happen. I'd like to see him try to call 80,000 people out of order," says Alinsky. But this spring the corporate annual meeting came under assault as never before, and those who have been involved in bulldozing open this new avenue of social protest believe that the big corporations face some changes. "There will be progress," Alinsky insists. "Once the corporations are pushed into the corner on straight power they will do the right things for the wrong reasons. You've got the stockholders on one hand and the rest of the country on the other. If the United States goes down, the big corporations go with it," Alinsky added. It was Alinsky who invented the idea of using the annual meeting as a forum at which to urge big business to become responsive to the issues of the day. He started the practice three years ago in Rochester, New York, when he forced photography products manufacturer Eastman Kodak Co. to improve job opportunities for blacks.