Corporate power and community toxics struggles : the case of Yellow Creek

Community-based toxics struggles typically involve a grassroots citizens' organization and a corporate polluter. This thesis examines the power relationships and consequences involved in such conflicts. More specifically, it details the primary bases and mechanisms by which corporate power limits the effectiveness of citizen activism around community toxics issues. The Yellow Creek Concerned Citizens' (YCCC) confrontation of the Middlesboro Tanning Co. in Middlesboro, Kentucky is used as a case study. Research conducted during the course of this confrontation suggests that corporations derive power within communities from three primary bases: secrecy, economic dominance and capital mobility. It is shown that corporations are able to conceal their ownership, investments and movements of capital behind a veil of secrecy which is extremely difficult for citizens to penetrate. Secondly, the economic dominance of large corporations is often such that they can extract concessions from local governments and shape local issues on the basis of their status as employers and controllers of capital. Relatedly, the mobility of capital allows corporations to use the threat of capital flight and flight itself to control the terms of public debate and diffuse citizen protest. This thesis explores the interaction of these bases by examining how they are exerted as power at the local level. In the context of the globalization of capital, corporations are increasingly able to utilize these intertwining power bases as a means to thwart the effectiveness of citizen resistance. Two conclusions are drawn from this exploration, the first being that research conducted during the course of struggle is an invaluable means of uncovering the realities of corporate power. Citizen protest is shown to force corporate actors to expose power bases that might remain hidden in the absence of conflict. It is also suggested that there is a need to extend people's struggles and research around toxics issues. Corporate power, particularly that derived from increasing capital mobility, necessitates that community activists confront environmental issues in a manner which connects local issues and political economies to extra-local sources of corporate power and the global movement of capital. To be successful, citizens' groups are forced to confront corporate polluters on all fronts: by challenging their secrecy, economic dominance and mobility, and by linking with labor and other activists internationally.