When Corporations Rule the World, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 23An Awakened Civil Society

Our historic challenge is to add, sift, stir, spice, knead, and otherwise blend ourselves together, over time, into a genuine people’s political power.

—JIM HIGHTOWER

We, the people of the world, will mobilize the forces of transnational civil society behind a widely shared agenda that bonds our many social movements in pursuit of just, sustainable, and participatory human societies. In so doing we are forging our own instruments and processes for redefining the nature and meaning of human progress and for transforming those institutions that no longer respond to our needs.

—“The People’s Earth Declaration,”UNCED NGO Forum

January 1, 1994, was the inaugural day of the North American Free Trade Agreement, an ...