Where Your Mouth Is Special Edition: Amy Domini Interview

By Jaclyn Friedman, AlterNet. Posted August 9, 2005.

While producing this month's show on the "ownership society," I had the pleasure of catching up with Amy Domini, creator of the Domini 400 Social Index and founder and director of Domini Social Investments.

She has been working to improve and popularize socially responsible investing (SRI) for over two decades, and recently she was the only Wall Street professional to be named to Time magazine's list of the 100 most likely innovators for the 21st century.

The idea behind SRI is simple: Corporations, left to their own devices, will seek to save money and increase profits. This goal is often incompatible with social justice goals, but since corporations are also owned, at least in part, by the public, we can flex our fiscal muscles to move the companies in more positive directions.

During the interview, we got the chance to talk about a whole range of issues, from social security to the wealth gap between the Right and the Left, from the need for better progressive philanthropy to the many ways to help corporations become better citizens.

It was such a rich conversation that I didn't want to edit it down into a 10 minute segment, so, through the power of the Internet, here it is in its entirety.

Jaclyn Friedman is a writer, poet and activist based in Boston. She produces Where Your Mouth Is, a monthly podcast, exclusively for AlterNet.

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