Articles & Written Materials

ADBUSTERS MAGAZINE: Measure T Trumps Big Business

By Maxwell Schnurer

In 2005, a small community group in Eureka California successfully authored and passed a ballot initiative, called Measure T, which forbids non-local corporations from giving any money to county elections. Considering the prevailing American political climate where big businesses are given anything they want, it is worth exploring how a little organization called Democracy Unlimited persuaded their community to ban out-of-town corporate money.

Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, campaign co-manager of Measure T, explains that this was a “readymade issue.” Humboldt is a rural county which had attracted the negative attention of big business before. In 1999 Walmart spent $235,000 to re-write local zoning laws, and in 2003 the lumber company Maxxam spent hundreds of thousands in an attempt to recall a district attorney critical of big timber. Both of the campaigns created “an educated public who were primed for Measure T,” says Sopoci-Belknap.

Democracy Unlimited made sure that the public arguments for Measure T were about community control. Arguing that big corporate money undercut Humboldt Elections, the group positioned Measure T as a modern day Boston Tea Party, an anti-corporate rebellion. Complete with purple tea bags and yard signs, the campaign connected the very real negative impacts of corporate indifference with a political movement.

While the symbols of the campaign were radical, the foundation of measure T was traditional organizing. The all-volunteer campaign, largely consisting of veteran Green Party and progressive organizers, scoured voter lists, staffed phone banks and walked door-to-door to explain the issue to voters. With an explicitly feminist model and with women in key positions, the structure of the campaign was effective at creating new activists who could take the message of Measure T to the farthest reaches of this rural community.

Measure T is an amazing model for other communities to help defend themselves from corporate influence. There is no place on this planet that has not been touched by major corporations. With the success of Measure T, Democracy Unlimited has given us an effective template for community groups to protect the places we live.

Find out more about Democracy Unlimited at DUHC.org.

This article appeared in the May 2007 issue of Adbusters Magazine. Maxwell Schnurer is a community organizer and professor of communication at Humboldt State University. He is a DUHC member and Measure T volunteer.