About Us
Corporate Action Network is a hub to support work to expose, prosecute, and end corporate abuse in order to restore balance to our economy, creating shared prosperity and a just society.
This is what we do:
More than four years after Wall Street crashed the world economy with fraudulent mortgage products, not a single banker has been successfully prosecuted. Meanwhile homeowners find no recourse in the courts on rampant illegal foreclosures. There is no question that there is an imbalance of accountability and lack of justice for corporate abuse. Efforts to bring that accountability are isolated and out-gunned by the perpetrators of those abuses.
That’s where the Corporate Action Network comes in. We are building an integrated system of support – from a platform of next generation tools to innovative research and training programs – designed to help organizations fighting these battles to network their power with each other and get real results. We’re creating new ways to pool the power of existing activists and organizations, connecting isolated efforts and disconnected stories into broad, powerful campaigns and cohesive narratives.
For example, working with the Home Defenders League the Corporate Action Network recently created a secure story collection tool for homeowners fighting foreclosure. Homeowners are able to enter their stories in the online tool. The Corporate Action Network then uses social media to push the stories to policy makers, connects homeowners and community groups with real litigation aid to help them seek legal remedy, and aggregates the data from these stories across geographic boundaries to get a look at the real pattern of abuses.
Read a "Case Study: Standing up for Walmart Workers."
How we work - Partnerships with organizers:
The Corporate Action Network is committed to partnering with citizens and groups by providing support for campaigns at no cost. We use a powerful new approach allowing broad networks to form against common targets, far more flexible and powerful than traditional coalitions. The CAN Action Tools create the broad, networked movements, and our research and strategic support give those movements focus and power. We make possible distributed actions that have a concentrated impact, combining the reach of an Occupy-style movement with the power of traditional campaigning.
Theory of Change - Future of Campaigning:
With the new approach made possible by the Corporate Action Network, campaigns against corporate abuse can finally reach the size to make a difference against a modern corporation. Technology networking and efficiencies of scale, so long a core facet of the power of modern corporations, are now put to new use in empowering people to stand up for their rights. Activists can retain the power of community-based organizing and harness it to a new form of networking and collaborative campaigning that bypasses the traditional limitations of coalition-building. Broad campaigns focused on real abuses can begin to get tangible results, providing crucial balance in our society.
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Our sister organization, the Corporate Action Network Action Center, manages the Action
Center toolset and is a 501(c)4 not-for-profit corporation.
