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Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities

Abstract

In this article I focus on corporate power and the false jobs versus human rights dichotomy, extending it to include jobs versus human rights. Using the coal, prison, and oil pipeline industries as examples, the paper explores the ways in which corporate industries gain and maintain local power. I discuss the false narratives and language that industries use to convince people of their importance, showing how they exploit poverty and unemployment to become the single industries dominating localities. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates the fallacy of the jobs versus environment and human rights dichotomy and demonstrates the ways that the coal, prison, and oil pipeline industries feed off of and rely on each other to create a corporate state that depends on environmental and human exploitation. The paper ends with examples of resistance to corporate power that fights for an alternative vision.

Author Biography

Eliza Macy (she/her) is from Berkeley, CA and is an American Studies major and Environmental Studies minor. Although she does not know what she’ll be doing after graduating, she is interested in doing environmental/climate justice work. She was first introduced to prison activism work in high school in California. Her grandfather and his family is from West Virginia, where they were farmers for generations, but that connection to the state sparked interest in its coal economy. In the Twin Cities she was introduced to the Stop Line 3 movement and has been working with MN350 on their Pipeline Resistance team. That’s all to say, this project comes out of different regional connections and interests.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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