The Grassroots Anti-Monopoly Movement Challenging Corporate Power From the Ground Up
Many of our most pressing problems, including extreme inequality, the climate crisis, and the breakdown of democracy, share a common underlying driver: the outsized economic and political power of dominant corporations. Today, a remarkably broad alliance — encompassing workers, small businesses, racial justice advocates, environmentalists, and more — has come together in a bid to end corporate domination and decentralize the economy. This growing antimonopoly movement has begun to score real wins: a string of federal lawsuits aimed at breaking up the Big Tech companies, new initiatives to create public options in sectors like healthcare and broadband, and other bold democratic interventions. Hear from key leaders and organizers as they discuss the progress, the stakes, and what’s next. Hosted by Stacy Mitchell, Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. With: Solana Rice, Co-Executive Director of Liberation in a Generation; Sheheryar Kaoosji, Executive Director, Warehouse Workers Resource Center; Teri Olle, California Campaign Director, Economic Security Project Action.
Magnes Museum
March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm
Panelists
Stacy Mitchell
Co-Executive Director
Institute for Local Self-Reliance
Stacy Mitchell, a Maine-based writer, strategist, and policy advocate whose work focuses on dismantling concentrated corporate power and building thriving communities and a healthy democracy, has played a leading role in today’s growing anti-monopoly movement. She is Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), a research and advocacy organization that for five decades has challenged the wisdom of neoliberalism and championed local, community-oriented models, from municipal broadband to distributed solar power, community banks, family farms, and local businesses. Stacy has written for The NY Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Washington Post, and many other outlets, and is the author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses, and co-author of the influential report: Amazon’s Stranglehold. She has helped build a number of coalitions and win campaigns for policies that dismantle corporate power, level the playing field for independent businesses, and strengthen communities.Solana Rice
Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director
Liberation in a Generation
Solana Rice is the co-founder and Co-Executive Director of Liberation in a Generation, an organization dedicated to shaping a vibrant, inclusive, and sustainable economy. Solana was previously Director of State & Local Policy at Prosperity Now where she built strong advocacy partnerships with organizations in the field and advanced dozens of policies in nearly half the states in the nation. Before that, she served as Director for Financial Security Initiatives at PolicyLink.
Sheheryar Kaoosji
Executive Director
Warehouse Workers Resource Center
Sheheryar Kaoosji, Executive Director of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC), has spent 20 years developing research, policy and campaign strategies to support sustained organizing among the most marginalized communities in California, including families facing displacement in San Francisco, farm workers in the state's agricultural valleys, misclassified truck drivers at the Port of Los Angeles, and workers and communities affected by the massive warehousing and logistics sector of Inland Southern California. He was behind the WWRC's innovative campaign model to organize workers in supply chains of some of the largest companies in the world to demand a sustainable and just goods movement sector in Southern California.
Teri Olle
