By David Swanson

“Memorial Day is a time to remember, appreciate, and honor the selfless patriots who gave the ultimate sacrifice in service to freedom. At a time when our country seems so divided, we must not forget that it is because of their service and sacrifice that we live in the most free and prosperous nation on Earth.” —Congressman Tom Garrett

It would be difficult to count all of the lies in the above statement. Let’s just highlight a few.

Let’s start with “most free.”

In a recent article titled ‘Challenges for Resolving Complex Conflicts’, I pointed out that existing conflict theory pays little attention to the extinction-causing conflict being ongoingly generated by human over-consumption in the finite planetary biosphere (and, among other outcomes, currently resulting in 200 species extinctions daily). I also mentioned that this conflict is sometimes inadequately identified as a conflict caused by capitalism’s drive for unending economic growth in a finite environment.

I would like to explain the psychological origin of this biosphere-annihilating conflict and how this origin has nurtured the incredibly destructive aspects of capitalism (and socialism, for that matter) from the beginning. I would also like to explain what we can do about it.

"Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person."-- Anonymous

In 2010 the pro-corporate 5/4 United States Supreme Court decided, in the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission ruling that favored multibillionaire corporate elites and their trans-national corporations by making it easier for them to steal US elections by allowing unlimited, anonymous monetary “contributions”/bribes to both major US political parties, political action groups and the many politicians who were then beholden to their newest corporate paymasters.

Five years ago, five activists and I set up a protest action at the Wendy’s restaurant located on South High Street in Columbus, Ohio. We lined up on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant with a 30-foot-long banner that stated, “Wendy’s Stop the Exploitation, Join the Fair Food Program.”

Customers did not turn away or stop driving into the parking lot, but when they sat at the outdoor dining area, they would shout out, “What’s wrong with Wendy’s?”

That’s the problem: not many people know what’s wrong with Wendy’s. It is necessary to reiterate the reason that larger and larger groups of farm workers and consumers demand that Wendy’s join the Fair Food Program.

Collaborating as the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) the farm workers’ demands are simple: to be compensated just one penny more per pound for tomatoes picked, and for the companies to purchase from participating farms that adhere to the Fair Food Standards (FFS).

In building an organization for social change it is clear to everyone that the group should be nonprofit, but what does that really mean?  Talking to other people there seems to be an automatic assumption that nonprofit means the same as tax exempt.  Asking for advice from colleagues and lawyers, there is often a kneejerk presumption that if the organization is going to be nonprofit then by definition it should become a tax exempt under the rules of the Internal Revenue Service.

What is the real deal?  Is this an automatic and default option or is this something that an emerging group of leaders and organizers really needs to spend time thinking about when they begin building this new organization? 

Structure matters!  Every minute spent on the front end of these decisions may determine the long-term future of the organization, so the time to debate these questions and make the hard decisions is at the very beginning before it prejudices the ends.