The Devil You Used to Know

Stephanie Soechtig’s The Devil You Know (2018), a damning exposé of decades of intentional pollution of a West Virginia town by DuPont, remains one of the best documentaries on Netflix. Among other things, it reminds us, albeit unintentionally, of what corporate citizenship used to look like.

DuPont spent lavishly in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Along with paying their employees a living wage, they paid for everything from the Little League team’s uniforms to the renovations on the old library. This bought them a great deal of good will, and made it exceptionally hard for activists to mobilize the community against DuPont when their dirty deeds came to light.

Minus the poisoning, DuPont’s behavior in Parkersburg used to be the North American norm. When I was a kid, Kraft paid for our team jerseys, Hagan sponsored our field days, and beer companies paid for our cultural events. All of these companies paid living wages too, and they did most of their job training in-house.

But these days, companies like Pfizer set up “strategic partnerships” with publicly-funded institutions like John Abbott College. Which is really just a sleazy way of getting us to pay for their job training. What’s more, they insist that we give them massive tax breaks and help defray the cost of building their facilities. Then, as if to add insult to injury, they often pick up and leave first chance they get. We give them everything and they give us nothing.

This is why Queens, New York, said “thanks but no thanks” to Amazon. The fact that Mr. Progressive Mayor, Bill de Blasio, can’t see why this was a wise decision speaks volumes about what’s wrong with the Democratic Party in the U.S., the Liberal Party in Canada, and the Labour Party in the U.K.