Corporations are taking over the world.

Wherever you go, you see a billboard for Nike shoes or Coca-Cola or Nikon cameras.  When you turn on the TV, commercials fill up one fourth of every show.  Hell, even public television has commercials these days.  If you don’t believe me, tune in at the beginning or end of any documentary.  There they are.

The worst part about all of this:  We’ve willingly let it happen.  The commercials we’re bombarded with started small and got gradually larger.  Now they’ve taken over.  We didn’t even notice it was happening.  Most of us still haven’t noticed.

Of course, the big question here is “Who cares?”  Who cares that commercials are everywhere.  After all, we can just change the channel, right?  Sure, you can just change the channel.  Chances are that when you do the commercials will just be on that channel, too.  There’s always some corporation waiting to stick their greasy claws into you, extracting money like a giant bureaucratic leech.

You don’t have to take it.  You’re not powerless.  You can strike back.  Here are some easy ways to do it:
Get a can of spray paint and deface a billboard. 
Tear down a “lose weight fast” flyer in your neighborhood.
Don’t buy stuff at corporate stores like Wal-Mart or McDonald’s.

It’s been argued that the stuff above isn’t enough and that corporations can weather these sorts of protests without any difficulty.  It’s true – when you have giant entities with enough money, the loss of a little business and some advertising won’t shut them down.  It’s naïve to think it will.

The real power we have is in educating others about what corporations are responsible for.  When you point out that the main street of your hometown is boarded up because Wal-Mart opened up across town, that’ll have a lot of impact.  When you point out that record companies are deliberately overcharging you to get a few extra bucks for every CD, that has impact.  They say that revolution begins at home, and that’s where our real power to fight corporations lies.  If we can enact a fundamental change in how we think about property, we can make a difference.