New Chapter and Northwest Actions on Corporate Personhood

The Alliance is growing in the Northwest with a new chapter in Seattle to complement the one in Olympia, new projects, and support of ballot initiatives and an innovative project on corporate personhood.

The Greater Seattle chapter contact is Rebecca Wolfe, at rr.wolfe@comcast.net . The chapter’s first project will be to focus attention on corporate personhood by running a corporation for public office. Plans are to make “Maximillion Bucks, Inc.” an actual, chartered corporation under Washington State law, and "his" campaign will be an opportunity to educate the public about corporate personhood, and to support other state and regional initiatives seeking appropriate limits on corporate power. The Greater Seattle Chapter got their inspiration from Maxey’s corporate ally, Rich Corporateson, of the Portland Alliance for Democracy, another “corporate person” who is seeking public office.

Meanwhile, the AfD South Puget Sound chapter has decided to focus on getting a resolution against corporate personhood passed at the local level. Over the next year and a half, they’ll work on education and building alliances between issue advocacy organizations and unite them around what will unify them to win—recognizing and fixing the democracy problem. They hope to spur these groups to march to DC with us in the summer of 2007. They are also supporting a group of activists who have developed a ballot initiative to abolish corporate personhood. The hope is that the petition drive will educate voters about the issue of corporate civil rights, prior to the ballot going for a vote either in 2008 as a regular initiative, or during the 2006-2007 legislative session. You can see the current text of the petition at the AfD South Puget Sound chapter website, www.sounddemocracy.org.

The group’s long-term plan is to work to educate itself about clean and fair elections -- probably publicly funded campaigns. The group plans to use this effort as an opportunity to work on restoring one of our pillars of democracy while educating the public about corporate personhood and money as speech. So, please stay tuned as these ideas develop and organizing proceeds!