An Open Letter to the Corporations of America (1969)

Today, March 22, 1969, in the Washington office of the Dow Chemical Company we spill human blood and destroy files and office equipment. By this action, we condemn you, the Dow Chemical Company, and all similar American Corporations.

We are outraged by the death-dealing exploitation of people of the Third World, and of all the poor and powerless who are victimized by your profit-seeking ventures. Considering it our responsibility to respond, we deny the right of your faceless and inhuman corporation to exist:

You, corporations, who under the cover stockholder and executive anonymity, exploit, deprive, dehumanize and kill in search of profit;

you, corporations, who contain (or control) Americans and exploit their exaggerated need for security that you have helped create;

you, corporations, who numb our sensitivity to persons, and capitalize on our concern for things.

Specifically, we warn you, Dow Chemical Company, that we will no longer tolerate your refusal to accept responsibility for your programmed destruction of human life.

You, stockholders and company executives alike, are so willing to seek profit in the production of napalm, defoliants, nerve gas, as in the same spirit you co-operated with the I. G. Farben Company, a chemical manufacturer in Nazi Germany, during the Second World War.

You, who without concern for development for other nations or for their rights of self-determination, maintain 100% control over subsidiaries in more than twenty nations.

You, who in the interest of profit, seek to make it in the military interest of the United States to suppress the legitimate national desires of other peoples. Your product is death, your market is war.

Your offices have lost their right to exist. It is a blow for justice that we strike today.

In your mad pursuit of profit, you and others like you, are causing the psychological and physical destruction of mankind. We urge all to join us as we say no to this madness.

(Signed) Rev. Robert Begin, Rev. Bernard Meyer, Rev. Joseph O’Rourke, S.J., Rev. Dennis Maloney, Mr. Michael Sasaki, Rev. Michael Dougherty, S.J., Sr. Joann Malone, SAM, Rev. Arthur Melville, Mrs. Catherine Melville.

Statement of the D. C. 9

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