Resources:
Corporate and community power deep dives for every personality type
For the academics amongst us,
check out the first ever textbook on the commercial determinants of health (i.e., the ways in which corporations/corporate interests and their activities impact public health), edited by Nason Maani, Mark Petticrew, and Sandro Galea. Every chapter of this book is chocked full of so much good insight and information.
For the ones who need everything in video form,
check out Inequality Media and co-founder Robert Reich’s video library. Their vision is “a United States where active participation by informed citizens restores the balance of power in our Democracy and creates an economy where gains are widely shared.” As they say, “We need to engage both the head and the heart by telling stories that move and inspire, even as they inform and educate. Corporate America and the conservative movement have long understood and utilized the power of good storytelling to gain supporters, it is time progressives took notice and took action.”
For the chronic email newsletter subscribers,
two of my absolute favorites in this current political moment are Anand Giridharadas’s The.Ink and Rebecca Solnit’s Meditations in an Emergency. Neither is specifically about corporate power or community power but they both touch on these themes and related topics. They’ve shaped my thinking, enraged me, inspired me, and even given me a sense of community, albeit virtual (no substitute for IRL community, but still valuable!).
For the nonacademics that still appreciate citations,
Dark PR: How Corporate Disinformation Undermines Our Health and the Environment by Grant Ennis will reshape your thinking on the role of community power in countering the harms and gaslighting of corporations. Ennis talks about the nine devious frames corporate interests use to distract, deny, and deceive.
For the nonacademics that still appreciate citations,
check out Money, Power, Health, with Dr. Nason Maani. His conversations with experts in the field cover a range of industries (from social media to firearms to gambling), various ways corporations gaslight us (from PR tactics to influencing science to funding school “education” programs), and what we can do about it all (from going upstream in health data and decisions to advancing public health in local government).
