It is within this scientific framework that we talk about State Farm Insurance. The Fortune 37 company (meaning they are the 37th largest company in the U.S. as it relates to business revenues) is utilized by many of you to insure your autos, houses, apartments, etc., but most of you probably may not be aware that State Farm is one of the primary backers of the heinous American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC is a legislative lobby group that has sponsored devastating legislation such as the infamous "Stand Your Ground" laws in states like Florida which led to weak @ss George Zimmerman being able to walk away from his cowardly killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012. ALEC has also sponsored multiple anti-LGBTQ bills across the U.S. as well as anti-women bills. They also have international tentacles, pushing legislation that has led to genetically modified foods becoming much more common place in Africa and the rest of the technologically "underdeveloped" world. All of this is said without even getting into ALEC's scandalous sponsoring of pro-prison legislation that has led the effort to dramatically swell the size of U.S. populations with primarily African and Indigenous peoples.
It goes without saying that the legislative system that ALEC operates in is corrupt and has never been built for marginalized communities anywhere, but the reason this is worth mentioning is we have to be wide awake to who we are spending our money with. We cannot get distracted because we may like the State Farm commercials staring basketball players like Chris Paul and Damian Lillard. And, most importantly, if we are focused on who these criminal corporations are, we can use that knowledge to strategize on how to hold them accountable for their support for the anti-human practices mentioned above. What if we organized an on the ground campaign that focused on State Farm for a year. We would encourage everyone to stop doing business with them during this time while maintaining a very public platform indicating the reasons why. In saying all of this, you have to remember that we are revolutionaries, so we have no illusions that this practice alone would sway a criminal corporation into changing their ways. Our objective would be much more strategic than that. Our plan would be to use the campaign to help people understand just how much the actual power is in their hands because I can assure you that if this campaign picked up steam, State Farm would be forced to respond with some concessions. The point would never be to accept those concessions. The point is that the fact that they have to do this would be used to educate people as to how just a little organization of the masses is enough to force these criminals to jump. The second objective would be to maintain a mass education campaign about the connections between State Farm and the oppressive mechanisms that make our lives a living hell because this information is important in order to ultimately convince people that these capitalist corporations will always be poison to us and that's why revolution is always going to be the only solution.
These are important initiatives because currently, most people believe the only method available to us to challenge any of this is in finding some way to utilize the capitalist system to introduce legislation to force State Farm, or whomever, to do something. The truth is, the sky's the limit to what we could do to take power from these criminals if we would just develop some unity of thought and action and get organized.
So, the next time you are watching CP3 and Damian Lillard on a State Farm commercial, or better yet, when you are sending them a payment, think about who they actually are. This should help you think about what capitalism really is. And then think about how we can get back at these beasts because we certainly can get back at them. We are the only people keeping us from doing that.