Dam justice long enough and eventually it splits the concrete and floods the valley.

In any social movement, that pressure comes from denial, a lot of denial in a lot of people for a long time.

Five years ago, as survivor after survivor of sexual abuse stepped forward, a phenomenon bloomed in front of everyone’s eyes. A random cop in Minneapolis does something heinous and gets caught by chance — and the people are like, how much of this shit is happening under the radar?

And the denial simply collapses. The magnitude of the thing is suddenly revealed. Not a localized weather system at all, but a climate.

What corporations have done to all of us for a half-century is, to borrow a military term, “lay down suppression.” You simply pummel people into compliance. Or into what Edward Said called “ideological pacification.” Until they can’t even imagine an alternative. And the conquered people think, You know, maybe the clouds look different somewhere, but it’s nowhere my mind can get to.

But there will come a moment when people have been fucked over by corporations for long enough, and people like Richard Grossman have stepped forward to remind us that there are other … ways to be. And by leaning on the principles of sovereignty and self-governance we can get to somewhere new, and better.

The worst of the corporate criminals have committed inexcusable trespass. Philip Morris, Monsanto, GM, the Sackler family, Exxon Mobil: the list goes on and on. Not once over the last one hundred years has a criminal corporation been brought all the way down: its brand erased, its business disbanded, its profits paid out in reparations, its name turned into a historical footnote.

This is the Third Force’s most important brief. And so it’s on.

Gathering online, we converge on the most likely candidate.

There’s some strategy to this. While a beast like Exxon Mobil might be most deserving, a corporation like Wells Fargo may be an easier target. We want a victory here. And we want it to matter.

So we conduct a global Internet vote and settle on a name.

And then we boycott the hell out of them.

We bear down on them with vengeance never before seen.

We create bold acts of mayhem in front of their world headquarters. Harass their CEO and directors in front of their homes. Press blackspots (the sign of impending death) into the palms of their hands.

We launch a massive vilification campaign. Explode thirty-second mindbombs on the evening news. Raise five million dollars on GoFundMe and buy a spot on the Super Bowl. Make #KILLACORP go viral on the Internet. Whatever it takes.

We play jazz as the crowd whets the blade.

We wound the corporation, stick the knife in and twist.

The reason giant corporations have survived, despite mind-boggling violations of the public trust, is that they have become part of American mythology. People just can’t imagine a corporation like Exxon or Goldman Sachs being gone. When Lehman Brothers actually did fail — and many others came within a whisker of it — there was mass disbelief, chaos in the markets. A world without them simply doesn’t compute. So the hurdle here is as much a psychological one as a legislative one. Many people would rather be in an abusive relationship than sleep alone. Corporatocracy is the devil we know.

But can you imagine – can you imagine – what it will feel like to wake up in the morning to the news that … ExxonMobil has bitten the dust ... it is no more.

You go: My God. We did this. We the people did this.

— from an upcoming Adbusters book.