A clapboard-few miles up the coast, in the and-whitewash town of Eu-reka, is Paul Cienfuegos’s office; a generous word for what is, in fact, a small corner of a small flat owned by Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, co-director with Paul of the organisation he founded in 1996: Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County. I came to Humboldt seeking answers to some of the questions posed by the dominance of private corporations in modern life. Back at the World Social Forum, I’d heard some ideas for regulating the power and influence of multinational corporations at international level. Now I wanted to see how people could impose such limits on the ground, in their own communities, and what difference it would make. I’d heard it was starting to happen, perhaps ironically, in the US - the birthplace of the modern corporation. But how, and could it provide a model for other people in other places? Paul Cienfuegos is first on my list of people to ask.

Right now, he’s rummaging through boxes, folders and teetering piles of papers stacked up in Kaitlin’s lounge, searching for documents he thinks I should read. He doesn’t seem to be quite sure where to look.

"We’re kind of between offices right now," he explains, still rummaging. I console myself with the thought that past revolutions have begun in less auspicious circumstances. Probably.

"Hopefully not for too long," says Kaitlin, sighing. She is in her early twenties, and has only been working with Paul for eight months. I get the impression that she’s the organised one.

"Would you like a drink?" she says. "I think I have tea."

Despite the temporary chaos, it’s possible that operations like Democracy Unlimited could represent the future of anti-corporate activism in America. Cienfuegos won’t use those words: they are not anti-corporate, he says; they are pro-democracy. Corporations have

their place, but it’s subservient to the people’s will, it’s a long way from the public realm, and it’s nowhere near the political arena. Whatever you call it, the sort of work that Democracy Unlimited is carrying out may yet come to connect with a large and potentially powerful section of the American people; a people who, like most others in "developed" countries all over the world, are becoming keenly aware of the sickness inside their body politic.

The work that Paul and Kaitlin and others like them carry out in Humboldt County takes several forms. One of Democracy Unlimited’s primary aims, says Paul, is to "begin a national conversation about the role of corporations within our democracy". To this end, they run study groups in which local people come together to "read, think and talk about stuff they don’t know anything about". That, says Paul, "is how this all starts - just reading stuff, thinking about it, adjusting your approach. It’s how I started. In many ways, rethink-ing the entire relationship between corporations and people is mindwarp stuff". He laughs.

"Reading and learning about this stuff fundamentally alters your consciousness in a way that most anti-globalisation activists think they get, but they don’t," he says. "It’s a leap. When you think about this in a fundamental way, your language changes and the way you look at things changes. It’s like moving from thinking that the world is flat, and if you go past a certain point you fall off, to thinking that the world is a sphere - that’s a fundamental shift, a thought-form shift, a paradigm shift. This one is as big as that, and yet it’s only about governance; it’s about moving from "The corporation is the primary actor in society, and we are merely stakeholders - workers or consumers", to "We, the people, are the source of all authority, and we have the power to decide what role these institutions play in our lives and our communities".

This is not just talk though; not even just ideas. In a small corner of Humboldt County, now, it’s the law. In 1998, after a few years of running discussion groups, touring with work-shops on first steps toward dismantling corporate rule", distributing newslet-ters and generally trying to stir up community interest, Paul and a group of allies decided to see if anything could be done to institutionalise their new take on corporate authority. Democracy Unlimited set up a spin-off organisation, Citizens Concerned About Corporations (CCAC), based in the nearby town of Arcata, where Paul was then living. Its purpose was to rewrite local law to try to reassert some of the people’s powers over the private corporations operating in their town.

Its weapon was the innocuously named "Measure F, a local ballot initiative. Ballot initiatives are a curious remnant of America’s constitutional past which allow ordinary citizens to propose new laws. Any person or organisation can propose one - if they collect enough signatures in support, the proposed measure is put on the "ballot" for citizens to vote on at the time of the next election. If a majority vote for it, it becomes law. Only twenty-four of the USA’s fifty states allow ballot initiatives; California is one of them, and CCAC was about to use it to its advantage.

Cienfuegos and colleagues drafted a ballot initiative for the Arcata local elections in 1998. Measure F, or, to give it its full name, the "Arcata Advisory Initiative on Democracy and Corpora-tions", called on the city council to sponsor two mass meetings for Arcata citizens entitled "Can we have democ-racy when large corporations wield so

much power and wealth under law?", and to establish an official committee, policies and programmes to "ensure democratic control over corporations conducting business within the city, in whatever ways are necessary to ensure the health and well-being of our community and its environment". In a flurry of activity, they collected the 1,110 signatures they needed, got the measure on to the ballot, initiated a local debate about it and began to win widespread local support. On 3 November 1998, the people of Arcata went to the polls and voted, by 60 per cent to 40 per cent, in favour of Mea-sure F The first ballot initiative in US history on the subject of dismantling corporate rule had become law.

"It was fantastic," says Paul. "People really began to ask themselves what role corporations played in their lives, why local shops were disappearing, whether it was right for corporations to pay politicians, why they had so little say in the role that corporations played in their town. For a while, all the talk in the bars and the shops was about Measure F, and about corporations in Arcata. Arcata is still a small town, but there are more than fifty giant corporations doing business there; Measure F simply said the people should be allowed basic authority over their activities. It struck a chord." The city’s mayor and many of its councillors supported the measure. Messages of support began to come in from other parts of the coun-try. Cienfuegos was asked to give talks all over the US, and groups of people came together in other towns to plan their own versions of Measure F

The two town hall meetings were held, and took the debate further. Today, the "Measure F Committee" created by the new law is pushing forward that debate, discussing ways and means to reassert public control over corporate activity. It is currently drafting a local law proposing a cap on the number of chain restaurants in Arcata, and is trawling other states and counties to look at potential ways to reassert authority over corporations. All this, says Paul, is "helping people regain their sovereign attitude - something that has really been lost in America. People are starting to believe again that power really does reside with the people, and that they can actually use it."