Golden Arches
“The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public… The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”
- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations. (Book I, Conclusion of Chapter 11)
An attendee at the McDonald’s shareholder meeting, I left the headquarters coming out of a surreal, yet boring, dystopian sadness. Yes, I was disappointed that I had not been called to speak, but deeper than that, I confronted the denialist mechanisms we employ to congratulate our excuses as efforts, and I felt: depression.
As I sit in the tightly-controlled safe space, listening to McDonald’s’ snowflake executives congratulate themselves on sustainable tweaks and funny commercials, pulsing through my heart are the images of tortured animals, climate refugees, underpaid and overworked employees, and McTeacher’s Nights, where educators subsidize McDonald’s’ labor and advertising expenses to further addict children into school-validated brand-loyalty, in classist mockery: “Miss Allen just asked if we want fries with that! Like a real-life wage-earner!”
The few people who run the largest company in the industry have an obscene degree of power to intervene in the addicting of our children to slow-acting, long-term poison. They have a gross amount of power to provide living wages for breadwinners (not first-time employees). They have an unnerving level of power to reduce slaughter, deforestation, carbon/methane emissions, and with them, refugees of flooded and climate-arsoned homes.
Robert Gibbs, the Chief Communications Officer who created the “America’s best first job” campaign, and former press secretary and campaign advisor for the first Black president of the United States, has an offensive amount of power in ceasing to target communities of color to further food colonialism at the expense of their long-term health. (Not to let anything slide: Both he and Obama will also have to answer for their roles in war crimes.)
Stephen Easterbrook, who studied natural sciences, has a disgusting amount of power to dismantle what the United Nations has since 2006 recognized as the industry most responsible for climate change, the same one that murders trillions-with-a-T-yes-literally of animals every year.
Fellow activist and educator Karlana Kulseth spoke of her time as an assistant manager. Her most dreadful memories are cutting people’s hours to make room for McTeacher’s Nights. School employees volunteer their labor for the night in the name of raising money for schools that should be funded equitably by a progressive tax system (rather than neighborhood-dependent property taxes). This displaces workers. The “food” thrown at her did not hurt, but telling employees they might not make rent or feed their children broke her heart. Only 15–20% of the money raised those nights goes to the schools.
Earlier in the meeting, the investor to my side shows me his phone. Stock is down a dollar today.
The truth is that McDonald’s, and most other corporations, are the capitalists that Adam Smith feared. Lifting all boats with a rising tide only holds true with the presumption that profits be re-invested in the capital of the company, which includes labor, employee wages. Paying out dividends while allowing real wages to decrease violates this. Smith argued it the responsibility of the government to enforce checks on the capitalist class. Right-Wing propagandists have since slurred his memory.
But more egregious is the realization that Easterbrook and friends, as other mega-corporate executives, are actually the welfare monarchs to rule them all. Economist Richard Wolff describes fascism as socialized capitalism. McDonald’s benefits from the subsidies to the animal feed, dairy, and “meat” industries, as well as the assistance to low-income folk whose employers tell them to split their meals into smaller pieces to feel fuller instead of paying them. Their entire business model would fall apart if a big mac (I refuse to capitalize it) cost $12.
The truth is that corporations love socialism when it benefits them, and the golden arches are as symbolic of subsidized, public-private imperialism as anything else it could stand for — and far more so than solidarity with women. Not two days before the meeting, 10 women filed suit against McDonald’s for sexual harassment, including a minor. The 10 will surely grow, but sexual assault has long been an even greater problem on the actual “farms,” which I put in quotations to include the factory kind.
To get inside the meeting, I bought a single share of the clown prince of crime’s company. For about $160, I purchased complicit access into their propaganda machine in an effort to ensure that no one who perpetuates such devastation should have a space safe from answering for their sins.
I found myself much more affected than I had anticipated. I intended to go “in character,” speaking as a fellow robber-baron, but without the usual euphemistic turns of phrase to hide the blood on our consciences. I had hoped I might greet a board member in passing, and with the grandeur of a real estate shark, jar them out of complacency, if only for a moment, by speaking so candidly.
The entire meeting, ostensibly an opportunity for shareholders to speak to the board and executives in a show of corporate democracy, was one hour. The Q&A session was fifteen minutes and included laudatory plants in the audience. Questions were mostly tedious, ranging from beverage machines (children are dying), to fresh “beef” being used in other sandwiches (ecosystems destroyed), to value menus including meals (women and people of color are being exploited). The aggrandizing questions included a note on bringing cheery customer service to places like Russia and China, and a concern over what would become of the old headquarters, the admittedly pretty location we were currently using—imperialism buys you landscaping.
Tedium in the face of injustice is injustice.
Most of the critical voices spoke on behalf of three proposals. It is required in the meetings that someone speak to each one, separate from the Q&A. Corporate Accountability organized around expanding shareholder power and monitoring charitable action. SumOfUs organized around monitoring plastic straws. The efforts were all struck down, though each garnered enough votes to be allowed a ballot space next year.
It is an amazing thing to watch someone be forced to speak about food thrown at them because of starvation wages in an appeal for minor reform, while the people with the power to stop it flinch and move onto celebrating themselves — then vote down the proposals. Remember: This is the same company that organized a smear campaign against an elderly woman, to paint themselves the victim, in order to save money when sued for public endangerment.
Tedium in the face of injustice is injustice.
The one critical voice during the screened Q&A came from “Reverend Jackson,” who was introduced so randomly and with such little distinction that multiple people, including myself, did not realize it was the Reverend Jesse Jackson until after the meeting had ended. I found his presence similar to that of the normal character in an episode of It’s Always Sunny, who reminds the viewer by juxtaposition that everyone else really is that awful. He spoke of bringing racial and gender justice to McDonald’s, through a process of previous and future meetings. On their part, it was clearly a ploy to seem progressive, but Reverend Jackson pushed just enough to be clear he wanted those further meetings to be about change.
I did not have any future meetings to protect with politeness, but unfortunately I was not called on. Their plan to keep the snowflakes from melting mostly worked, although it was clearly not their natural environment. I had a small window of opportunity to speak to Francesca DeBiase: Chief Supply Chain and Sustainability Officer, a daughter to an immigrant family, who claims to care about animals, children, economic empowerment, human rights, and women, and repeated the lie that McDonald’s is the first restaurant to address carbon emissions. But in my novel role, I hesitated, and missed my chance.
I found I needed to stifle my surreal sadness to stay “capitalistic” in my role. I suspect they, and we all, do too.
Had they called me to speak, I would have asked:
Pierce Delahunt, Shareholder, Thank you.
Violating our 2015 pledge, we pay employees an average nine dollars per hour, who receive over $1B per year in public assistance. $44M went to six executives last year, Mister Easterbrook taking half of that. We remain fervently opposed to living wages, and in fact since 1961, real minimum wage has decreased 25 percent, while executives and we investors pocket the rest. Our own board has proven more tolerant than Wells Fargo’s, keeping Mister Hernandez, Jr.
I think I speak for all of us here when I say this is great news! How do we quash the fight for dignity in our franchises, to continue extracting wealth from the lowest-income in our McDonald’s community, on whom our business depends?
