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Citizens Rise Up Against "Citizens United"
I was speaking in Milwaukee the other night to a great group of peace activists, and in the question and answer period, we started talking about what could be done to change our foreign policy and bring about peace and social justice.
One thing I said we needed to do was to amend the Constitution to overturn the horrible Citizens United decision of 2010 that said corporations are persons, and corporations can spend unlimited funds to influence the outcome of an election.
I said we have no chance of having democracy in America so long as that decision stands, so I urged people to pass a resolution in their city or county to do just that, kind of like what we did during the Nuclear Freeze movement.
Little did I know that there were people in the audience who were already on the job. They’re trying to pass just such an initiative in West Allis, Wisconsin.
According to a fine recent article by Joel Bleifuss of In These Times on the subject of amending the Constitution, similar resolutions or referendums have already passed in Madison and Dane County, and in Humboldt County, California., as well as in two towns in Maine and ten towns in Pennsylvania. Recently, resolutions or referendums have been introduced in Boulder and Missoula, as well as in the states of Minnesota and Vermont.
And this Saturday in Johnson City, Tennessee, there’s going to be a demonstration in favor of amending the Constitution to eliminate corporate personhood. It’s being billed as a “Rally for Humans.”
I love that!
For more information on how you can join this movement to overturn Citizens United and to establish real democracy in America, go to movetoamend.org.
8 Comments so far
Show AllI live in a blue state (not Wisconsin), have also protested against Citizens United and have given money to support groups organized to fight it. But what was most interesting here was the citation of protests in Johnson City, Tennessee of all places. That area, the tri-cities, is highly industrialized, but it still Tea Party and Cormac McCarthy country - in other words, about as red state as it is possible to be. The real question is whether the protesters are in a small isolated group, or if they are a sign of rising recognition across a wider swath of the spectrum that this decision is a naked disaster for democracy.
Great to read about this, from down here in Florida! Good news indeed.
Proposed Constitutional Amendment:
1. The treatment in law of the corporation as a person for whatever purpose shall not be construed to include natural or constitutional human rights as enjoyed by actual people.
2. The only constitutional right attaching to the corporation shall be the right to due process of law and no other. No corporation shall enjoy any natural human rights whatever.
3. Except for the right to due process of law, the rights and protections enumerated in the first ten amendments to this Constitution, and known as the Bill of Rights, shall not extend to corporations.
4. The lobbying of the government for any reason whatever is an exercise of The right to petition the government for redress of grievances, is reserved to actual people, and is denied to corporations.
5. Any statutory grant in any form shall be construed as privilege, shall be the object of regulation, subject to taxation.
6. Corporations are permanently enjoined from political activity of any kind in any form or amount, including the donation of any funds to any political campaign, all such activities being exclusively the purview and prerogative of actual people.
7. The receiving of any benefit or emolument of any kind in any amount whatever, directly or indirectly, from any corporation by any elected or appointed official during that official's term of office or campaign for office shall constitute a recallable or impeachable offense and shall disqualify that individual from holding puclic office under the United States.
8. Congress shall enact appropriate legislation to carry out the spirit and the letter of this amendment.
Maybe I'll believe a corporation is a person when Texas executes one.
Not possible. For all practical purposes, corporations are immortal! They are creatures of state law, and state legislatures everywhere are loathe (or too timid, or too corrupt) to deny renewal of their charters no matter how horrible their behavior as "citizens". The only lethal injection they face is from competitors in the form of a takeover or merger into something even more powerful.
You can now wait to add Georgia when it executes a corporation as a person (even if it isn't guilty of anything but its victims demand revenge on any "one").
We need to do this, we need to do that. everyone has a cause, and a plan for rallying citizens to "speak truth to power." Power is not listening and does not care.
We have no power, and without power we cannot implement any of these bright ideas. These proposals deny that we are powerless and prop up all of the illusions about "democracy" and the "American dream." We then might hear "you are only powerless because you think you are!" as though if we just believed hard enough things would magically change.
Enough with the "yes we can" fantasies. No we can't.
We could ... but first we will need to create a very large and powerful grassroots organization, a Citizens Reform Association (CRA) with a membership greater than that of the famed and much feared NRA.