Time for Citizens to Convene

Just when many conditions seemed ripe for a progressive political
movement, the likelihood is fading fast. Concentrated corporate power
over our political economy and its control over peoples lives knows few
boundaries.

As Republican investor advocate leader Robert Monks puts it: "The
United States is a corporatist state. This means that individuals are
largely excluded both in the political and corporate spheres."

Since Wall Street's self-inflicted multi-trillion dollar collapse last
year, the corporate supremacists have shown no remorse. They have
become more aggressive: they are blocking regulatory reforms; pouring
campaign donations into the governing Democrats' coffers; and,
shamelessly demanding more bailouts, subsidies and tax reductions. They
also continue to block avenues for judicial justice by aggrieved
people, whether they be the wrongfully injured, defrauded consumers and
investors, or jettisoned workers and bilked pensioneers.

The problem: large corporations have too many structural powers over
the citizenry. These "artificial persons" have acquired the
constitutional rights originally given in 1787 only to "natural
persons." In fact, corporations have enormously greater privileges and
immunities than the people themselves because of their global control
over politicians, capital, labor and technology.

Normal sanctions do not adequately deter multinational companies that
can obscure their culpability, escape jurisdictions or create their own
parents (holding companies) and endless progeny (subsidiaries) to evade
or avoid accountability.

Even the most ardent progressives in Congress, and the most organized
progressive groups, cannot begin to deal with such gigantic mismatches.

Decades ago, there was more debate about the need for different "rules
of conduct," to use conservative Frederick A. Hayek's phrase, between
corporations and human beings. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
warned about corporations becoming "Frankensteins." Presidents Teddy
Roosevelt and William Howard Taft wanted to replace the permissive
state chartering laws with tough federal chartering laws for large
corporations.

For two generations the ever-expanding superior status of corporations
has gone undiscussed in political realms. During that time,
corporations and their attorneys rode roughshod over the "we the
people" preamble of the Constitution. Our charter of government never
mentions the word "corporation."

Unabated, the corporate crime wave continues. The corporate welfare
kings get fatter, the power disparity expands between corporations and
shrinking unions, and the pull-down pressures, created by the corporate
shipment of jobs and industries to repressive regimes abroad, further
corrodes American work opportunities. More of government, including
military functions, is being corporatized despite recurring reports of
rising waste, fraud and abuse.

The federal government's budget for auditors, investigators, inspectors
and prosecutors is laughable, given the scale of looting: the
defrauding of medicare; abuses of Pentagon contracts; the taking of
minerals on the public lands; and the giveaways of government research
and development to favored companies.

Corporate profits keep going up, except for bailout periods, while most
Americans' standards of living decline. Our country, so full of
unapplied solutions, is gridlocked--stuck in traffic. Record levels of
poverty, unemployment, home foreclosures, consumer debt and
bankruptcies, and people lacking health insurance persist, yet
corporate political power has not waned. A bad sign. Indeed, it has
increased, notwithstanding large majorities of Americans decrying too
much corporate control over their lives. The leave-it-to-the market
ideology of Big Business, and its claims of patriotism, have lost
credibility in this globalized era. Yet, the myth lives on even as
socialism routinely saves big capitalism from its own greed.

What can active progressives do? In Congress, amongst the
Republicans and corporate Democrats, the small progressive caucus of 83
members generates little political impact. Ironically, many of those
progressive legislators are busy dialing for the same commercial
campaign dollars.

Outside Congress, progressive groups have been on the defensive for so
many years that they have few offensive political strategies. The two
parties are in the narrowest channels of self-perpetuation. They
gerrymander their opponents into one-party districts and together
produce a matrix of obstacles to keep competition from third parties at
bay.

Both parties give preferential access to the hordes of drug, coal,
banking and other industry lobbyists, who are allowed de facto to
choose many of the nominees that lead the government's departments,
such as the Defense and Treasury Departments.

Enough abuses have been documented. Enough power has been concentrated
to shred our democratic processes and institutions. It is time to
decisively shift power from the few to the many. Democratic power is
the essence of progressive political philosophy, and the precondition
for the emergence of a just society nourished by higher public
expectations.

How to begin? Progressives--elected, civic, labor and funders--need to
come together in a national convention to aggregate the existing forces
for change. Such a gathering could create a clear-eyed vision of the
common good to shatter debilitating public cynicism and passivity.

In attendance must be a broad range of energetic community organizers,
thinkers, the seriously generous progressive mega-rich and the heroic
dynamos who have risen from their suffering to act on behalf of
"liberty and justice for all."

There is ample historic precedent for the galvanizing effect of
founding social justice conventions. This proposed convocation needs to
take civic and political action to unprecedented levels, powerfully
fueled by committed resources and strategies to build enduring
democratic institutions.

Unused knowledge, and many working models of community economics,
environmental advances and educational quality exist to further the
larger progressive dynamic.

Lincoln once observed the crucial importance of "public sentiment" for
moving a society forward. That "public sentiment" is here, deep,
widespread and ready for clearly explained "redirections."

If a mantra is needed in the convention hall, let the eternal words of
the Roman, Marcus Cicero, be emblazoned for all to see: "Freedom is
participation in power." For this aspiration places responsibility
where it must always reside: on the shoulders, in the minds, and in the
hearts of an empowered American people.