How to Get Your Business Involved
Why should your small business declare “The US Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me”?
The U.S. Chamber claims to represent the interests of more than 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions. This just isn’t true.
In reality, it represents closer to 300,000 small businesses, and whether you are a member of the U.S. Chamber or not, it has been using your good name to publicly question well-established science, block any progress on climate legislation, influence elections to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate money, and stop clean energy innovation and job-creation in the United States—until now.
Here’s what you can do to help:
1. Join thousands of business leaders and local chambers across the country in declaring “The U.S. Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me.”
2. Help grow the movement: Ask five other local business owners to join “The U.S. Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me” campaign.
3. Join the sustainable business movement.
Frequently Asked Questions:
“The U.S. Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me” campaign aims to expose the U.S. Chamber for what it is—a front group pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into our political and environmental landscape for the sake of corporate profits—so that it can no longer lobby with impunity as the “voice of small business.”
This campaign also seeks to build an economy that recognizes that sustainable economic development is compatible with shared prosperity, environmental protection, and social justice. An economy that is good for business and for the American people. Addressing climate change is one key element to realizing that goal. For too long now, much of the media and political establishment have assumed that the US Chamber is the voice of business. That is simply not true. As more companies – large and small – adopt socially responsible and triple bottom line (people, planet, profit) practices, organizations like the American Sustainable Business Council are stepping up to influence public policies at the state and federal level on a wide range of issues.
Now is the time to take on the Chamber not only the around the climate change challenge, but also to build the business case for a broader sustainable economy. Addressing climate change needs to be pursued in a manner that the ‘financial bottom line’ is honored as well as the ‘environment bottom line’ and the ‘social justice bottom line’. Responding to the climate change challenge offers not only a unique business opportunity but also a moment to remake our economy so that people and communities matter as much as profit.
When tens of thousands of businesses and hundreds of local chambers declare “The U.S. Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me,” we’ll be able to reveal one of the largest trails of dirty money in Washington DC, and the U.S. Chamber will effectively become the new Big Tobacco: a widely reviled and weakened voice in American politics, mistrusted by the public, the media, and politicians. Major companies will be embarrassed by their association with the U.S. Chamber and either pull out or force the Chamber to greatly tone down its lobbying on climate and energy policy.
This campaign starts with you, America’s small business owner. When you sign the declaration, you’re adding your voice to thousands of others across the country who care about the triple bottom-line: people, planet, and profit.
Thanks for taking a stand for building a more sustainable economy—and for the health of the planet and of our democracy! Thanks also to our friends at the American Sustainable Business Council for helping us develop these materials.
