Corporate personhood and home rule will be topics of Boston-area forums

Members of the Boston/Cambridge and North Bridge Alliance chapters will be working on organizing two forums on two related issues: corporate personhood and reforming municipal home rule.

The corporate personhood forum will feature an introduction to the history of the usurpation of personhood rights by corporations, with a focus on the decision in "Citizens United v. FEC" and its potential impacts on our election system. Depending on the scope of the decision--which could be broad enough to imperil state-level campaign finance law--the forum will also emphasize actions that individuals and organizations can take to counter a ramped-up "pay-to-play" political system.

Home rule, the idea that localities should be able to pass and enforce laws without unreasonable interference from higher levels of government, was a featured topic of discussion in the recent "Democracy and Relocation" workshop that AfD'ers Dave Lewit and Ruth Caplan facilitated in Boston, and is key to rights-based campaigns, like the work of the Defending Water for Life project. When states or the federal government limit home rule, it means that decisions on local resource management, public health or other issues are turned over to legislators that are less responsive to constituent needs.

In Massachusetts, home rule law has short-changed the city of Boston, overruled local rent-control ordinances, and most recently made it difficult for one town to regulate noxious fumes from a local pig farm. Even legislators agree that the system needs an overhaul. Robust home rule enables a bottom-up strategy for fighting corporate rule.

Look for updates in future issues of the e-news and on the AfD blog.