A few days after the death of Alex Pretti — the second person shot and killed by ICE agents in Minnesota this month — I received a polished, automated email from a large consumer-facing company. The message urged me to contact my state legislators in Washington to oppose a proposed tax that would affect the company’s bottom line. It warned, plainly, that if the tax passed, the costs would be passed on to me.
My immediate thought? How incredibly tone deaf. Many are actively grieving what we are witnessing in Minneapolis. Even if I did oppose the tax (I don’t), I had a list of about 1,000 things that were far more urgent for the Washington State legislature to think about that week.
Fundamentally, the message from the company was a call to action framed entirely around my identity as a consumer. But I’m not just a consumer — I’m a citizen of this country, one that, right now, feels very broken.
That disconnect got me thinking about the ways in which corporate responsibility is often understood and misunderstood today.
We’ve built a consumer society, not a civilian one
Over the past several decades, the U.S. has steadily restructured how economic security is provided, and who bears the risk when that security fails. Systems that once pooled responsibility across employers and society, such as defined-benefit pensions, long-term employment relationships, and broader social safety nets, have eroded. In their place, individuals are expected to manage retirement through 401(k)s, absorb healthcare costs, and weather economic shocks largely on their own.
Of course, risk did not disappear, it was just redistributed away from institutions and onto individuals.
That shift has consequences beyond financial outcomes. When stability depends on individual market participation, people are increasingly treated as economic actors first, and as civilians in a shared society second. Security becomes conditional on personal consumption, investment behavior, and constant engagement with the market, rather than something collectively maintained.
This is one of the most tangible ways the U.S. has moved from a social contract toward a consumer contract. People are no longer primarily addressed as members of a civic community with shared obligations, but as participants in an economic system whose value is measured through pricing, purchasing, and responsiveness to incentives.
As a result, we are targeted, segmented, nudged, and mobilized — not as neighbors or citizens, but as consumers. Many companies now communicate with us almost exclusively in that frame:
- What we buy
- What we pay
- What policies affect prices
But a country is not sustained by consumers alone. It is sustained by civilians — people with dignity, grief, fear, agency, and moral awareness. When companies forget that distinction, tone-deaf messaging isn’t a mistake, but rather a symptom of a deeper failure of corporate responsibility.
Responsibility is not just about what you advocate for — it’s about how, when, and with whom you engage.
Corporate responsibility is contextual, or it’s not real
There is nothing inherently wrong with a company engaging in public policy. Advocacy is part of operating in a regulated society. But responsibility requires situational awareness.
When two civilians have been killed by federal agents in a month, protests are erupting, and the trust in institutions is actively eroding, it’s probably not the week to try to get me to advocate for your company to pay fewer taxes. Context matters.
A company that continues to push automated political messaging without acknowledging the human reality around it is choosing indifference, not neutrality. And indifference in moments like these is something people remember.
Four learnings for companies that don’t want to step in it
- Timing is not cosmetic, it’s ethical.
The when of communication matters as much as the what. Launching campaigns during moments of national trauma signals that profit considerations outweigh human ones. Even a brief pause or recalibration can demonstrate awareness. - Tone-deafness erodes trust faster than silence.
Many are grieving and will have a hard time forgiving those that treat this week as if nothing has happened. Messages that ignore social reality actively damage credibility long term. - Treat people like human beings, not conversion targets.
Consumers are not just wallets or political instruments and recognize when they’re being treated as such. They are civilians living in a shared society. Corporate responsibility means engaging people with respect for their full humanity, not flattening them into economic inputs. - Don’t make a statement only to back away once the pressure is off
We’ve all gotten pretty good at spotting window dressing and virtue signaling from corporate players. It’s one thing to publicly speak to a cause when everyone is talking about it, it’s entirely another to be known for a cause because you do impactful advocacy work year in and year out.
Responsibility means remembering who we are
At its core, corporate responsibility is about remembering that businesses do not operate in a vacuum. They operate in communities. In countries. Among people whose lives extend far beyond transactions.
When companies forget that we are human first, civilians second, and consumers third, they reveal a deeper failure: not of messaging, but of values.
