Bruce Edward Walker recently wrote mentary for The Tampa Tribune entitled, Shutting Down Corporate Speech in the Name of Social Justice. He says that:

Corporate boardrooms arebeing caught up ina newwave of religious fervor sparkedbyclergy andmembers ofreligious ordersin search ofsocial justice. Alas, this movement is only superficially about the spirit.In truth,corporate directors pany executives are facinga very worldlymissionary effort bypriests, pastors, nuns and laypersonsarmed withproxy shareholder resolutionsthat advance politically liberal dogmas, including attempts to undermine the Supreme Court’sCitizens United ruling.

Enlisting members of the munity to this movement is simply disguising “leftist ideology in church vestments.”

The nuns and friars submitting the proxy resolutions are members of the New York City-basedInterfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, which, for the past 41 years, has established itself as “the pioneer coalition of active shareowners whoview the management of their investments as a catalyst to promote justice and sustainability in the world.” The ICCR’s view of “justice and sustainability,” however, seems less grounded in Christian doctrine than talking points from MSNBC.

Theseresolutions, not surprisingly, list the amount of money spent by pany on “direct federal lobbying”using figures taken from Senate reports. What seems toupsetthereligious activists,or actually ICCR, is the lack of disclosure of “lobbying expenditures to influence legislation in states,” including “trade association payments” and “membership in tax-exempt organizations that write and endorse model legislation, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council.”

Walker fears that:

encouragingboards of directors”to prehensive disclosure related to direct, indirect and grassroots lobbying”efforts as noted in the ICCRproxy resolutions derivesfrom the desire to publicly shame the corporations in question for supporting groups that advocate in theirbest interests. Ultimately, the goal is toend these relationships altogether.Is this not an injustice, by any measure?

Because groups such as ALEC leantoward drafting free-market, lighter regulatorypolicysolutions, it can only be surmised that ICCR simply wants to shut down one side of the discourse with which it disagrees.In this alternate universe, justice apparently denotes big-government oversight of all aspects related to corporate speech, includingthecontents ofthatspeech.

There indeed exist many valid reasons for assuring the privacy of corporate donations to advocacy groups such as ALEC, which hasbeen a major target of liberal/progressive critics. From the corporate side, the effects of these shareholder campaigns could lead panies severing all connections withALEC and other advocacy groupsworking on their behalf.And, indeed, this has panies such asGeneral Motorsand Walmart, which cut their ties to the organization.

He concludes with this thought:

Shuttingdown discourse is justice denied. If the proxy shareholder resolutions put forth by ICCR members and other groups are successful, corporations will lose powerful voices that speak on their behalf. But the biggest losers will be thepeople who benefit most fromthe paniesthatprovide employment opportunities, engage in philanthropic efforts and pay taxes to munities to which they belong.

By all means, those groups represented by the ICCR should exercisethefreedomto express their opinions on any number of issues. But we as Americans— andespeciallyreligiousleaders —should champion freedom of speech in all its guises rather than support efforts to stifle it.

Bruce Edward Walker has written several posts on the Acton PowerBlog about social justice and the ICCR. Check out his posts here.