The aim of Knowmore.org is to raise awareness of corporate abuse, and to serve as a catalyst for direct action against corporate power.

Ethical Consumerism is an important movement toward corporate reform, through which individuals recognize their own role in systems of oppression, and take personal steps toward resistance and  positive change.

However, the problem of unchecked corporate power is systemic and goes far beyond the scope of any single boycot or campaign.

Once you've seen enough of Knowmore's data and familiarized yourself with our Issues section, check out our Direct Action page to get involved!

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[edit] Criticisms

[edit] Political Influence & Litigation

• Dole and The Inner Circle: "Who would give $100,000 --- the average American's five-year earnings and 100 times the legal limit -- to help elect the president?"

• 7/11/03: Dole Food Company is a "small business"? According to Government Contracts it is: "Some of the nation's largest businesses shrink in size when they appear on the government's database of federal contractors. Companies including Barnes & Noble booksellers, Dole Food Co., AT&T Wireless and Verizon are mistakenly listed as small businesses in records obtained by The Associated Press."

• The California Recovery Team ("CRT"), a California nonprofit public benefit corporation founded by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, is functioning primarily as a political organization rather than a social welfare entity. It does this in violation of its tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. CRT's activities and representations demonstrate that the organization exists primarily to advance Governor Schwarzenegger's political career as an elected official and that it has adopted Section 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status solely to avoid tax and disclosure requirements that would be required of a Section 527 political organization. In 2004, Dole Food Company donated $125,000 to this corporation.

[edit] Worker's Rights & Fair Trade

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• 5/13/04: Workers Sue Dole Over Exposure to Pesticides: "Francisco Gonzáles believes he lost his chance to be a father because of the pesticide DBCP. "I can't have children," says Gonzáles who began working in the banana plantations of Chinandega, Nicaragua, in 1975, when he was 20 years old. "It's very painful, you know, each one of us would like to have our own child, a child of our blood. But I was poisoned."

• 4/25/02: Labor Abuses Rampant in Banana Plantations: "Banana workers, including children as young as eight years old, suffer from a range of abuses on plantations in Ecuador whose government fails to enforce international labor standards or even its own national labor code, according to a report released in Washington Thursday by Human Rights Watch (HRW)."

• 2/6/01: Bananas, Globalization & Fair Trade: "With a history tied to colonial exploitation, union busting, presidential influence peddling, and environmental degradation, it's obvious the banana is much more than a topping for breakfast cereal or a nutritious snack food. The banana has been at the center of a controversial World Trade Organization ruling and just last month the world's top banana producer (Chiquita Brands International) appeared to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy even as it filed a half-billion dollar lawsuit against the European Union."

• 9/7/00: In Nicaragua, Banana Workers May Sue International Firms: "You would be hard pressed to place his age at more than 13 or 14 because of the mysterious illnesses that have deformed his limbs and left him looking like little more than skin and bone."

• 3/16/00: Banana Producers Fear Falling Victim to US-EU Trade War: "A group of Caribbean banana-producing states fear that a prolonged lull in negotiations between the European Union (EU) and the United States over the EU's banana import regime could work against them."

• 1/99: Dole Uses Hurricane Mitch as an Excuse to Sack Workers: "Hurricane Mitch swept through Central America at the end of October unleashing a deluge of rain and mud. The trail of death and destruction in its wake left more than 11,000 people dead and over 13,000 missing...Now notoriously anti-union multinationals are threatening to lay-off thousands of banana workers."