As feet march, glass shatters, sirens blare, and weapons fire across Chicago, the United States, and the world, Corporate Accountability Lab stands in solidarity with those demanding an end to white supremacy and racist police violence.
Violence at the hands of the state is intricately connected to corporate abuse of human rights. In its most explicit iterations, police and military forces lethally protect private business ventures, blurring the line between public and private violence and protecting corporate profits at the expense of human life. On a daily basis, state-conducted and state-sanctioned violence terrorizes people of color and keeps communities disempowered, helping perpetuate the violent status quo of oppression and corporate impunity for human rights abuse.
At CAL, we focus on deterring corporate abuses of human rights in global supply chains and holding companies accountable where violations occur. Behind the structures that perpetuate corporate impunity are not only shortcomings in our legal systems and largely unchecked corporate power, but also economic systems and ideologies that commodify Black and Brown (and especially female) bodies and treat them as expendable.
We stand with the individuals and social and racial justice organizations demanding an end to systemic racism and structural violence in all its forms. We support the demands of Black Lives Matter activists to defund the police and invest in communities. A world in which corporations do not violate human rights and where global supply chains are socially and environmentally sustainable is a world in which Black and Brown lives matter.
