It struck me, today, listening to politicians express support for the cause of unions in celebration of the holiday because, as usual, I loved the words they uttered, even if they rang hollow. So many of the ideas and movements praised by the public figures who, arguably, actually work against them are worthy of the praise, in other words, making effective critique of message-bearers particularly challenging.

Can’t Americans unionize against Wall Street?, I often wonder. Should we even have to?

Attempting to obtain, hoard, and consolidate power is supposedly just human nature, making the ever balancing and counter-balancing design of the United States government notably ingenius. But, given its arguable failure to anticipate a dominant, cartelized stock market-integrated news sector, how could the country unionize against Wall Street, practically speaking, absent reliable journalism?

I have begun trying, of course, but have found the journey slow as almost every step has revealed to me just how misinformed even I have been by the media sector and the degree to which, despite appearances, it functions so often as a sort of filibustering monolith machine. I’d had no idea, for example, that I would feel as aggressively opposed by a prominent podcast politician – who, long after being approached about my experiences and questions about the constitutionality of publicly-traded news corporations, has recently begun speaking out about “corporate media” – as I did by CNN and its more public allies when trying to advocate for RFK, Jr.’s right to debate.

For all of the effort such public faces of the women’s movement in corporate journalism as Megyn Kelly and Reese Witherspoon have arguably put into, respectively, under- and over-emphasizing the role of gender in the ways in which power differentials manifest in the most gargantuan media corporations, too little is still arguably said about the structural inadequacies at which such manifestations hint. Just as other characteristics seem to be targeted for abuse when nation-states begin to falter, attempted abuse on the basis of gender often seems to increase as structural flaws become evident within organizations. So, while addressing gender equality is an essential part of the equation, another, remaining, vital question is: what is it about the world’s most influential media organizations that make them so coal mine-like, in a matter of speaking, that canaries have tended to struggle there in the first place? And what are their primary defenses against reform?

Anyone who has ever studied similarities amongst the world’s most aggressive branded organizations has likely noted that each tends to have on staff a gang of “PR” professionals whose goal – notably, above all else – is to protect brand names. As I have been writing for about five years now, I believe this is extremely important to note as it means such professionals’ guiding aim, when their employers are engaged in any form of degradation or abuse on the basis of characteristics such as race or gender, often puts them at odds not only with basic concepts of human decency but the founding principles of the country itself. Frequently, such units declare that they exist to thwart or prevent the spread of misinformation when, in actuality, they tend to exist for the principal purpose of doing the exact opposite. (While this challenge, of course, seems most pronounced in publicly-traded corporations, these are, crucially, not the only organizations that tend to trade on band names.)

I realize I have written a lot about it already, but I have personally been inspired by posts on thinker Nouk Sanchez’s blog often recently to look at the world in new ways; and I’ve found her and Daniel Boissevain’s commentary on what they term the seven keys to authentic communication intriguing. So often, I wonder how much better not just some, but all of my relationships – past, present, and future – of all kinds would be or would have been should every person become familiar with some of the concepts described in A Course In Miracles, although I recognize more change is required within myself. Still, how much more progress could we make as a country and larger community by prioritizing these keys interpersonally rather than insisting that the end game of all public dialogue and debate be to declare which organizations or brandnames have come out the most unscathed? Jesus taught that the Kingdom of Heaven is within. Aren’t the people conceived of as being inside of organizations, so to speak, infinitely more important and valuable than the task of burnishing misleading brand reputations?

I still feel that perhaps one of the most consequential steps we as a country could possibly take toward better honoring the humanity of the individual – and therefore nurturing a sense of community that honors the value that is inherent in every person and that, actually, connects us – is to seriously consider severing the relationship between our journalism and Wall Street sectors. Corporate brand names have almost begun to resemble idols, and while strong organizations may still be essential to healthy and functioning country, the primacy of misleading brand names over humanity is not. The more that people identify more with God than with corporate brand names, I believe, the less likely they will be to participate in these organizations’ more predatory behaviors – either as so-called victims or victimizers.

But, once one feels confident speaking out about the problem of over-valued brand names, where and how is this to be done?

I’ve thought a great deal in recent days about the scene in the early-2000s blockbuster My Big Fat Greek Wedding in which Nia Vardalos’s character, her mother, and aunt conspire to deceive a man in their lives to believe a business solution they’ve come up with is his own in order to help ensure it is adopted. And, indeed, this does seem to be the way in which, for ages, women have made progress for the world. Similarly, in recent years, many corporate leaders have yielded to insistence among women that human beings in general be treated more equally as many such leaders have seemed to believe that pursuing such initiatives will ensure they receive public praise and solidify their roles as power players. But, as happens in a game of telephone, the principles of fairness and equality for which women were speaking out have seemed to get warped, misunderstood and, in many cases, intentionally misconstrued for this latter purpose, illustrating the limits of communication and action via proxy.

Even individual public figures who have risen to greater prominence by claiming to address the problem even while silencing the women who spoke out initially as part of the women’s movement in corporate journalism seem to be doing the exact opposite, claiming the mantle of women’s rights activists or even journalists while actually silencing women and suppressing information in order to amass as much fame and fortune as possible.

Like hordes of men bestowed by corporations with immense, lopsided, and unaccountable economic power have historically either mistreated or abandoned their families as if to ask them “what are you going to do about it?”, such celebrities seem to believe they will never be questioned.

Even podcast politicians marketing themselves as “journalists” today, I believe, may be doing more harm than good at times, especially given all the talk they do about “stolen valor” these days. What else could they call their (massively profitable) cooptation of the word “journalist” without doing the actual work?

But does there remain an uncaptured media outlet to which to appeal, and, if not, what is to be done? Surely the answer is not to double down on entreating celebrities to do their part. I still feel the Hello Sunshine sale to the Blackrock-affiliated Blackstone investment firm served effectively as an attempt to convert individual women’s courage from what could have served, at least in part, as steam to help power movement forward away from Wall Street control to a sort of release valve to relieve the pressure we all still feel to do so. Yes, the past several years arguably proved there was still worthwhile ground to be gained with corporate media oligarchs in charge, but it has been steadily shrinking and, arguably, needlessly slow-going.

We all hear, rightly and frequently, of the dangers of so-called “people-pleasing” pitfalls. But aren’t the dangers of what could be termed corporation-pleasing far worse? I am not a republican, but, when the democrat party today warns of the supposed threat to democracy their opponents pose (even though, at times, and despite themselves, they may actually be correct), are they not really just complaining about what they actually perceive as a threat to a system of rule-by-corporation already firmly in place? That Kamala Harris has recently begun to tout what she characterizes as Goldman Sachs approval of her economic plans as a selling point is alarming at least.

Was not the effectiveness of the famed “Time’s Up” movement essentially undermined by its focus on the attempted cancellation of individual people rather than insisting on an end-moment to the domination of the country by for-profit corporations? Still, I, at least, am beginning to feel that, so long as one is trying to obey God and do what feels most right, it is no more necessary to feel intimidated by multinational media corporations than billionaire religious organizations, even today. And I continue to believe the intensifying waves of pain, realization, and even seeming acrimony gripping the country in response to what feels like a delayed assertion of the value of human rights over corporate ones could signify something that could ultimately make it all worthwhile: the birth of a solution. Despite corporate Hollywood’s failures, time is still up for a Wall Street unaccountable to any sort of functioning journalism sector.