Mergers V. Coalitions: Power V. So-Called Powerless

It’s a never-ending story, these corporate mergers. They combine, join forces and consolidate—growing ever stronger while the consumer, especially the ethnic consumer, grows more fractured and divided.

In May, 2005, Regions Financial Corporation struck a $10 billion deal to merge with rival AmSouth Bancorp. Prior to that, heavy-hitter software giant Adobe Systems combined with Macromedia for $3.4 billion. And Verizon successfully bid with NBC-Universal to compete in cable and satellite TV.

Meanwhile, we people on the bottom are divided; struggling like crabs in a bucket, or running on hamsters’ wheels that keep us moving but take us nowhere.

It is during divisions and disturbances in prison that the institutional alarms sound and we are obliged, even forced, to freeze. No one is allowed to move until the disturbance is quelled or an assessment is made as to how to proceed. Perhaps this facet of prison life should be our societal model.

Assessment: The elite and established have health care, employment, and property; and the privileged have education, cohesion, and power.

In sad contrast, we struggle for employment, education, and decent health care—we strive for a mere voice!

Ailments like diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension plague our people; and gangs, guns, and prisons drastically minimize our presence.

Some of us are so deceived we see the other as the enemy.

Meanwhile, ExxonMobile pulled in a first-quarter profit of $8.4 billion this year. Many other American-born multinational corporations also did well. And it seems the better they do, the more they get from Congress, and the less we get from either.

But our curse is also our blessing.

After all, in a capitalistic society, money rules. And though hardly realized, money is a resource we have plenty of.

African Americans reportedly spend $761 billion annually, while Latinos dole out $760 billion a year. Our combined ethnic purchasing power, including Asians, Indians and others, is expected to exceed $1.5 trillion in the U.S. by 2009.

That’s power. But power, to be effective, must be channeled.

The days of blindly rewarding discriminatory, unpatriotic and exploitive corporations must end—today.

“How we spend our dollars has a big impact on corporate profits,” says Jeremy Siegal, author of “Stocks for the Long Run.” Samuel Gompers of organized labor told us in the ‘60s that we must “reward[] labor’s friends and punish[] labor’s enemies.”

Punish them by withholding that which they covet most—money.

Boycotts are not new to us. The recent boycotts of “anything gringo”—on both sides of the border—for immigrant rights was impressive. as was the December 12, 2003, boycott, sponsored by the Mexican American Association in response to the repeal of the California law allowing undocumented residents to obtain driver’s licenses. Governor Schwarzenegger has since softened his hostile tone on immigrant issues, and the passage of a new law granting them the privilege to drive appears promising.

The solid unity of Latinos and their willingness to sacrifice brings to mind the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott spawned by the late civil rights activist Rosa Parks. It was hailed as one of the most effective boycotts of the time, lasting over a year and costing the Montgomery Bus Line Company $750,000 in lost revenues. Some 17,000 African Americans refused to ride the buses, instead ride-sharing or walking if they had to.

As history has taught us, values often come in second to profits in a capitalistic world. This point is made clear when one considers the history of the United States, not to mention the exploitation of countries like Africa or our western neighbors in Central and South America. Here in North America we have yesterday’s abominable period of trans-Atlantic slavery, followed by horrific child labor abuses and less than humane sweatshop conditions. Now, prolific immigrant exploitation and heartless job outsourcing plague the country’s moral stance. Yet corporate economics has always been the catalyst fueling this evil.

On the other hand, we now wield an unprecedented potency. Take for instance the knee-bending $50 million loss Safeway, Inc. suffered in just 4 short months during the 2004 worker strike over a dispute with white shirts over health care and a proposal for wage reductions for new workers. Safeway’s devastating loss in revenues also sent their stock plummeting, further hurting their bottom line.

The vociferous complaints bellowed by Los Angeles Unified School District officials following mass student walkouts in protest to anti-immigrant legislation was also telling. According to news reports, in just three days the walkouts caused a loss of $1 million in federal student subsidizing.

In the interim, while we casually consider the urgent need to coalesce, phone giant Sprint bought Nextel for $6.5 billion, Procter & Gamble purchased Gillette for $57 billion and K-Mart seized Sears for $11 billion; all spawning layoffs, fewer consumer options and much more power for corporations incessantly flexing the consolidated muscle we, as consumers, fortify.