It’s becoming increasingly clear that corporate greed is playing an ever-greater—and often destructive—role in our everyday lives. When you look around, the examples are everywhere. Coal and oil burning power plants are polluting our air and water while increasing rates of childhood asthma and respiratory related diseases. Extractive industries are pushing to destroy our last remaining wild places, such as our national forest lands and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The hallways of elementary schools are filled with Coca-Cola machines, Walmart is invading our communities and pushing wages for workers ever lower, and Monsanto is genetically altering the food we eat. Far and wide, multinational corporations are impacting the health and environment of our communities.

When I was in college, I was seeking a way to take on the daunting task of challenging corporate power. Through Green Corps, I learned concrete skills to take on the world’s biggest corporations—how to bring people together to hold corporations accountable for their actions. Just one example is my experience working with Defenders of Wildlife to protect the Endangered Species Act.

For years, greedy timber companies over-harvested the old growth forests of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. As they export huge logs overseas, they leave job loss, local business decline, and environmental and public health degradation in their wake. The Endangered Species Act was written into law more than 30 years ago to not only protect species on the brink of extinction, but with the understanding that spotted owls, logging jobs, and local business all rely on sustainable use of the same forests for survival. Now, multinational logging companies and land developers want to overturn the Endangered Species Act to increase their profits. In corporate boardrooms they are quickly winning the favor of politicians who seem to forget they were elected to represent the public.

In less than four months, I built a coalition of hunters, farmers, ranchers, environmentalists, religious leaders, scientists and concerned citizens to mobilize broad-based public support and educate members of Congress about the importance of strong species protections. I organized and presented 13 slide shows in a tour that took me from the eastern ranching town of La Grande through the central Willamette valley and south to the beach town of Port Orford.

These slide shows, which depicted species under threat of extinction, involved over 300 people in the fight to protect the Endangered Species Act. Along the way, I met with seven editorial boards of local newspapers and generated significant media coverage of the issue. With hundreds of people now invested in protecting the Act, I was able to secure a meeting with U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, where I brought a diverse group of supports to voice their opinions, including a local religious leader, a hunter and a rancher.

Today, there’s only one thing I can think of that is more powerful than multinational corporations. People, organized. Green Corps gave me the training to build a career organizing regular people to challenge corporate power. Now, as the Organizing Director for Food & Water Watch, I work with communities around the country who won’t stand to see their public right to water—our most basic human necessity—exploited for corporate profit. And we’re winning.