Challenge Corporate Power Study Group

This 10 session study guide was created by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 2001 and was revised and updated in 2006.

You don’t need any special skills or knowledge - anyone can start a study group!

Collect names, phone numbers, and addresses of people who are interested.
Find a place to hold the meeting. This can be in someone’s home, in a community center, a union hall, a church or synagogue or mosque, or anyplace where a small group can hear each other easily to talk.
When you have six to ten people who are interested, find a two-hour time slot when everyone can get together for the initial session.
Duplicate the materials for Session I and Session II before the meeting. Distribute Session I materials at the beginning of the meeting and Session II materials at the end.
At the first session, be sure that the group commits to democratically sharing responsibilities — rotate who facilitates, who coordinates logistics like photocopying the readings, who phones or emails reminders about the next meeting, and so forth. Just because you have convened the group doesn’t mean you have to do all the work!
Local organizations that might be interested in this kind of discussion group include unions, co-ops, consumer groups, faith-based communities with social responsibility or social action committees, peace organizations, environmental groups, college and university campuses, and local chapters or branches of national organizations.
Click here for additional tips for promoting events.

The sessions covered include:

Session I - Introduction
Session II - Historical Overview of the Corporate Taking of Our Authority to Govern
Session III - Corporate Personhood
Session IV - The Regulatory State
Session V - Private Property and the Recovery of the Commons
Session VI - People's and Workers' Resistance Movements
Session VII - Economic Development and Militarism
Session IX - What Does Democracy Look Like?
Session X - Where Do We Go From Here: Local Campaign Development
Appendix - Glossary, Suggested Readings

Download a PDF file of all the documents below (3.7MB), or visit the wilpf.org site to download PDFs of each session.

Do you like this page?