'Corporate Accountability' Advocates to Convene in Dallas

May 22--Home Depot Inc. has stopped selling endangered rain forest lumber. Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. have withdrawn from an industry group that's fighting efforts to stop global warming.

Voluntary actions? Not exactly.

These and other American companies have been under siege in recent years by a growing political movement that practices what it calls "corporate accountability campaigns."

Under this umbrella can be found political, labor, religious and other groups trying to persuade businesses to change their stance on issues ranging from the environment to human rights to social justice.

Dallas will briefly be a center of such activity next week, when almost 200 activists attend what organizers bill as the first conference for learning the skills, strategies and tactics of corporate accountability campaigns.

Protests, boycotts and stock purchases -- so activists can attend shareholder meetings -- have all been brought to bear against the targets of these campaigns.

Average Americans can no longer effectively air their views to elected officials, according to Peter Altman, whose organization is a sponsor of the "Empowering Democracy" conference Sunday through Tuesday at the Radisson Central Hotel.

"There's been such a growth in corporate influence over the political process that those means simply aren't available," Mr. Altman said. The corporate accountability effort is heir to a long tradition of grass-roots, anti-business protests, dating to crusading 19th-century journalists.

But if today's attacks against corporations are more sophisticated, so too are the companies themselves as they respond to citizen complaints, some say. Louis Thompson, president of the National Investor Relations Institute, says he counsels investor-relations professionals to talk with company critics.

"The situation you're dealing with today is quite different than when Sinclair Lewis and the muckrakers were operating," Mr. Thompson said. "Most corporations realize being a good corporate citizen is important. You try to avoid the bad publicity and the bad images that can sometimes be cast on corporations."

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