Move to Amend--mapped!

Move to Amend has mapped its local affiliates--find one near you, or start one up! Tips on outreach and what to do below the map!

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Hey, Colorado!

The Colorado Move To Amend group's e-newsletter is online here. Highlights include info on monthly meetings in Arvada starting June 9, a screening of "The Corporation" part II in Denver, a possible public bank for Colorado, and links to good videos.

Check it out here.

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Most Valuable Idea of 2010: Amend the Constitution

John Nichols at The Nation has posted a "Progressive Honor Roll" of the best ideas, activists and legislators of the year. His pick for Best Idea: amending the constitution to dismantle the rights granted to corporations through the Citizens United decision.

Read the full list online here.

Conservatives know the power of proposing constitutional amendments. Even when they don't succeed, amendment campaigns educate people about issues and get them engaged at the local, state and national levels. In recent years progressives have been cautious about the Constitution. But after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision freed corporations to use their immense resources to buy elections, two groups responded with aggressive challenges to the notion that businesses should enjoy the same rights as citizens. Free Speech for People, a campaign sponsored by Public Citizen, US PIRG, Voter Action, the Center for Corporate Policy and American Independent Business Alliance, seeks to counter the Court's move with "a constitutional amendment of our own that puts people ahead of corporations." (Representative Donna Edwards has introduced an amendment, with backing from outgoing Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers.) Another group, Move to Amend (with support from Progressive Democrats of America, the National Lawyers Guild and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, among others), proposes a broader "multi-year movement to amend the Constitution" that would use state legislative resolutions to force Congressional action on "democracy amendments" or schedule a constitutional convention. These campaigns are capturing the imaginations of activists. By year's end, Move to Amend had almost 100,000 signers.

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The only way to fight organized money is with organized people!

Here's an alert from Move to Amend...

The one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision to allow unfettered spending by corporations in our elections is little more than a month away, January 21, 2011. To mark this date, concerned citizens, like you, will take a stand in their communities from coast to coast and oppose corporate personhood and growing corporate power. Move to Amend and our allies will be leading the charge!

Citizens are uniting against the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision! Flesh and blood Americans will take to the streets to demonstrate our support for the rights of human beings and against “corporate constitutional rights.”

Will you join us? Click here to learn about ways you can help take a stand. From rallies and street theater to coalition building and education, there are ways for everyone to take action to oppose how the Court has expanded corporate “rights.”

Click here to get started and please forward a link to this post to your friends and family members who are concerned about rising corporate influence. Ask them to join this grassroots movement to amend the Constitution by signing the Motion to Amend, and ask them to join you for an urgent planning meeting to help mark the anniversary of the Court’s terrible decision.

Polls show that 80% of Americans oppose the decision, and it is critical to our democracy that we stand up and be counted on January 21. The time to start planning is now—can we count on you to help us? Please also share what activities you are planning to do in your hometown, state capital, or in the nation’s capital by sharing them.

Click here to check out Move to Amend’s planning guide and to take the next steps on the path to saving our democracy.

In solidarity,

Your friends at Move to Amend

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Democracy For Sale

Terrific video from the Monahan's entry into Washington DC--thank you to the Backbone Campaign for the visuals, videographer Barry Student/Electric Communications, AfD co-chair Nancy Price for permitting and last-minute bannermaking, and Laird and Robin Monahan for going beyond what all but a few have done in defense of democracy.

Heed the call to get active on the 21st--the first anniversary of the Citizens United decision--and stay active so that someday we're celebrating the anniversary of the passage of a Constitutional amendment ending corporate personhood and corporate usurpation of human constitutional rights. See the Move to Amend website for more details, and check out other Move to Amend videos online.

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Take action today to support the DISCLOSE Act

We urge you to take immediate action in support of the DISCLOSE ACT, which will force sunlight on the dark recesses of corporate spending on elections. DISCLOSE stands for Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections.

The DISCLOSE Act would require all organizations making political expenditures to name their donors. This would allow voters to know the corporations and individuals hiding behind front groups with feel-good names. Deep pockets--like Big Pharma, Big Oil and Coal, and Big Finance and Wall Street to name a few--should not be allowed to hide their funding of misleading and inaccurate election ads.

Introduced in the Senate and House on April 29, the DISCLOSE Act will help address the fallout from the Supreme Court’s activist and illegitimate decision in Citizens United v FEC. Citizens United opened the floodgates of corporate spending as being protected by the 1st Amendment free speech provision. Democrats and the White House hoped it would be passed to take effect before the mid-terms elections.

The clock is ticking...
The clock is ticking to get this done during the “lame duck” session of Congress which ends before Christmas. We expect the new Congress will be much less sympathetic to shining sunlight on the power of money and corporations.

Fortunately the bill has already passed the House. Now action in the Senate is critical. We can’t let the Republicans keep blocking the bill!

Please contact Senate Majority Leader Reid and your Senators today and tell them you want action on this bill before Congress adjourns.

Contact them via the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 or by using this Congressional Directory

Necessary but not sufficient
This is only a first and necessary step. However, the larger questions about the role of corporations in our democracy cannot be resolved until we address the question of corporate personhood. Activist Supreme Courts, including our current Roberts court, have given our human rights to corporations that we create by state charter. We cannot let this stand. We must amend the constitution to place corporations in their rightful place as our servants, not our masters.

Only humans should have human rights
To do this, Alliance for Democracy is part of the steering committee of MOVE TO AMEND – that is, move to amend the US Constitution so that only human beings (you know, the people with belly buttons and a conscience) have human rights.

Make the call, sign the petition
Please call Senate Majority Leader Reid and your Senators NOW to support the DISCLOSE Act. Then go to the Move to Amend website and sign the petition and learn what else you can do to amend the constitution.

Thanks for taking action to protect our democracy!

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More photos and media from the Monahans' walk into Washington

(Updated Wednesday, October 27) Jeff Malet, a photojournalist and performing arts photographer and a regular contributor to TalkingPointsMemo, the Huffington Post, Salon, and DC-area publications, was at the October 20th events welcoming Laird and Robin Monahan to Washington, and took these photos.

John Leonhard took these photos (some are also in the slideshow in our post on the event).

This photo of the event wound up in the Seattle Times, above an editorial on attorney James Bopp, who filed the lawsuit that led to the Citizens United decision and is now aiming at overturning campaign contribution disclosure laws in several states.

Laird's climb up the Lincoln Memorial Steps made "The Caucus Click" on the NYTimes Caucus blog.

Ambreen Ali wrote an article about Laird and Robin's walk and their arrival in DC on Congress.org.

David Swanson spoke at the event, and his remarks are posted here.

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Wednesday, October 20: Welcome Laird and Robin Monahan to Washington

After 3072 miles and 158 days, Laird and Robin Monahan will end their historic “Walk Across America for Democracy” by crossing the Potomac River into Washington, DC, and rallying with supporters in front of the Lincoln Memorial and the U.S. Capitol Building.

Here's the schedule--we'll be updating you on speakers, so keep an eye on the blog or subscribe to our email list.

10:00am: Meet Laird and Robin and walk with them to the Lincoln Memorial. Starting point: The Women in Military Service for America Memorial at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery near the Arlington Metro stop.

12:00 to 1:30pm: Rally at the Lincoln Memorial

1:30 pm: Leave Lincoln Memorial- walk to the U.S. Capitol Building

3:00 pm: Rally at the U.S. Capitol Building and U.S. Supreme Court

6:00 to 8:00 pm: Celebration and reception at Busboys & Poets at 5th and K

On May 16, Laird and Robin Monahan left San Francisco to walk across America to educate people and protest the January 21st Supreme Court decision by 5 unelected Justices in Citizens United decision that overturned decades of campaign finance legislation passed democratically by Congress and state legislatures and upheld by prior Supreme Court rulings. For them letters and phone calls were no longer sufficient.

They have taken their message to people and communities across the country that a Constitutional amendment to deny corporations “personhood” and all constitutional rights is vital to restore democracy and assert the inalienable human right of We the People.

Join them and citizens coming together to speak out against excessive influence of corporations inn our elections and government policies.

Come sign the Preamble to the Constitution.” Help carry it up The Mall to the Capitol Building and the U.S. Supreme Court. Bring your own signs.

Let’s make it clear. Corporations are legal entities, not persons with constitutional rights. Money is not speech.

The Monahans walk in the footsteps of Doris “Granny D” Haddock. At age 90 she walked into DC on February 29, 2000 after a cross-country trek that brought national attention to the corrosive effect of big-money contributions on democracy and the need for substantive campaign finance reform. “Granny D” is credited with galvanizing public support that helped Congress pass the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (McCain-Feingold) which the Supreme Court, now eight years later, overturned with the Citizens United decision!

Alliance for Democracy built on her walk by organizing six Democracy Brigades—groups of activists whose non-violent “Speak-Outs” in the Capitol Rotunda used civil disobedience to underscore a bigger crime: political bribery by big-money campaign contributors

The Monahan’s march may be almost over, but our’s is just getting started. What can you do?

• Join us in DC to focus attention on our next Constitutional amendment—one that ends corporate personhood and corporate constitutional rights and reserves First Amendment free speech rights for humans, not corporations.
• If you’re not near Washington, forward this email to family, friends and colleagues in the DC area who could attend.
• And wherever you are, educate and agitate. Download material on corporate personhood from the Alliance website—see the articles from our Justice Rising issue on “Courts and Corporations vs. Our Common Good” and our “Corporations Are Not People” brochure. Order a bumpersticker! They're on our website. Check out WILPF’s Corporations vs. Democracy Study Guide or resources on this page of the Move to Amend site.
• Bring speakers or trainers from Move to Amend or the Alliance for Democracy to rally support in your community to pass local and state resolutions to abolish corporate personhood and support constitutional amendment. See a sample resolution here.

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Amend the Constitution to end corporate personhood

"Proud, patriotic and pissed-off American citizen" David Cobb talks about corporate personhood and the need for a constitutional amendment to abolish it. David is a former Green Party USA presidential candidate and a member of the steering and executive committees of Move to Amend. This is part 1 of a talk he gave in Florida recently, sponsored by the Green Party of Florida and Progressive Democrats of America. More of the talk is available at the DUHC (Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County) website.

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Video of Laird and Robin Monahan speaking for Move to Amend in Denver, Colorado

Free Speech TV shot this interview with Laird and Robin Monahan at the State Capitol building in Denver; the brothers made a detour up to the city to join Move to Amend Colorado for a rally calling for a Constitutional amendment to take personhood rights back from corporations and to end the legal definition of money as equivalent to speech.



The brothers have been walking across country down Route 50 since June to support the amendment campaign and Move to Amend; they've been blogging here. As they head east they can use homestays, financial support, and opportunities to speak to media and community groups--contact them through their website. You can also follow their walk at the Move to Amend site.

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The choice? Amendment or corporate rule!

While the mainstream media didn't pay a heck of a lot of attention to the US Social Forum, alternative media were there, writing, audio and videotaping. Kevin Gosztola of OpEd news did this interview with David Cobb, speaking on behalf of Move to Amend and the need to strip corporations of their illegitimate claims to be "persons" with constitutional rights continues to grow.

Did you sign the organizing petition? Did you forward it to family and friends? The corporate media is not going to cover us until we are so large and loud that they can't ignore us, so please help us make that happen.

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David Cobb tours Ohio: Bring friends, family and colleagues to learn more about Move To Amend

Start Independence Day out right by coming to hear David Cobb discuss the growing national movement to amend the US Constitution to abolish corporate personhood and create real democracy.

David will be speaking Wednesday, June 30 in Athens; Thursday, July 1 in Wooster; Friday, July 2 in Cleveland; and Saturday, July 3 in Akron. See venue info and times below.

David is an executive committee member of the Move to Amend coalition, composed of more than 60 grassroots and national organizations working toward a 28th Amendment to declare that corporations are not people, and that money is not equivalent to free speech. (Alliance for Democracy is a steering committee member of Move to Amend.) He's also a principal of POCLAD (Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy) and was the Green Party's presidential candidate in 2004.

Wednesday, June 30: Athens
7:00 p.m., Talk, Christ-the-King Church, 75 Stewart St.
Contacts: John Howell, 740-592-5789, howell@frognet.net; Dick Hogan, 740-664-4028,greenfirecenter@gmail.com

Thursday, July 1: Wooster
7:00 p.m., Talk, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 3186 Burbank Rd.
Contact: Dave Sears, 330-262-WNET (9638), RenDave@raex.com

Friday July 2: Cleveland
7:00 p.m., Talk, Unitarian Universalist Society, 2728 Lancashire Rd., Cleveland Heights
Contacts: Lois Romanoff, 216-231-2170, loisromanoff@gmail.com; Greg Coleridge, 330-928-2301gcoleridge@afsc.org

Saturday July 3: Akron
10:00 AM, Talk, Maple Valley Branch Public Library, 1187 Copley Rd., Akron
Contact: Mary Nichols-Rhodes, 330-957-6167, pdaohio@gmail.com; Greg Coleridge, 330-928-2301,gcoleridge@afsc.org

For more information, see the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee page on"Corporations vs Democracy", the "Create Real Democracy" blog, and the Move to Amend website.

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Leading a Wave of Change

By Jim Tarbell

Twenty-five thousand people have descended on Detroit for the second US Social Forum. If 1967 was a rebellion here; this is an uprising. It is an explosion of spirit and connection; an understanding that systemic change is necessary and that people are coming together to make it happen. Dominated by a youthful sea of multi-racial faces, this five-day event features over a thousand workshops promoting the promise that another world is possible. Forums and People’s Movement Assemblies are following fourteen different tracks including: Capitalism In Crisis; Climate Justice; Strategies For Building Power and Ensuring Community Needs; Indigenous Sovereignty; and International Solidarity.

The Social Forum grew as a counterpoint to the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland where the political and financial elite convene to devise a global future based on markets and resource depletion rather than people and sustainability. For the past decade Social Forums have been held across the planet building a vibrant vision of a healthy and empowerment.

With the US as a leader of the global corporate empire that is depleting resources, poisoning the planet and destroying our rights to a stable climate and functioning economy, people in this country have come to realize that change must begin at home This second US Social forum, with twice the participation of the 2007 Social Forum in Atlanta, is concentrating on that idea.
The Alliance for Democracy is deeply involved, leading workshops on the right to water and our community commons. As a founder of the Campaign to Legalize Democracy, AfD is working the crowd to end corporate personhood and empower local communities to protect their culture and resources. Another world is possible and this grand gathering is leading the way.

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Action on Campaign Finance: Call Congress for the DISCLOSE Act

As you probably know, AfD is working as part of the Move to Amend coalition to build support for a 28th Amendment banning corporate personhood and stripping corporations of constitutional rights, including First Amendment political “free” speech rights.

Now that corporate CEOS can give all they want in election campaigns, they and their lobbyists are gearing up to make certain the corporate person is hidden behind the curtain--so we don’t know who is trying to influence whom and for what.

What can you do? Today, we’re asking you to make a call on behalf of the DISCLOSE Act—legislation introduced by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), which would require major special-interest donors to identify themselves on the campaign ads they produce to support—or attack—candidates.

In the House, the DISCLOSE Act has 114 co-sponsors—you can check to see if your member of Congress is one here. If he or she isn't on the list, call and demand that they sign on. On the Senate side, cosponsors are here.

Background: Special interest money has long warped politics and policy development, but the kind of electioneering the DISCLOSE act takes aim at is new, thanks to the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United. Corporations and unions now have the right to fund campaigns for candidates, independent of the candidates' own election committees. What this means is not, as the Court claims, enhanced freedom of speech, but simply more corporate money corrupting our political system.

The DISCLOSE Act is far from the perfect fix. It doesn't attack the root of the problem: the fact that years of corporate-friendly court decisions have conflated free speech with the ability to buy the biggest megaphone.

But even this legislative bandage is under attack, as the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Rifle Association, and other special interest groups pressure Congress to water down this commonsense initiative with amendments that could make it nothing more than lipstick on the corporate cash cow. Make a call today to tell Congress to stand firm!

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The "March of the Monahans" heading to western California, Nevada and Utah

Laird and Robin Monahan have posted several pictures of the last few days of their trip on their website. Last week they stayed with Alliance for Democracy co-chair Nancy Price and her husband Don in Davis, California, where Nancy interviewed them for Davis community television, and Gavin Dahl wrote about the walk for Raw Story.

As they follow Route 50, more or less, they're planning a walk around the State Capitol in Sacramento, and possibly a media event in Carson City, Nevada. In Nevada, they're planning to pass through Fallon, Austin, Eureka, and Ely--if you can host them for an evening or two, have media contacts, or would like them to speak to a group in the area, please contact Riley Gardam at riley-gardam@uiowa.edu.

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Pair walks country for a cause

AfD Co-chair Nancy Price is hosting Laird and Robin Monahan in Davis today at the Farmer's Market--here's an advance. Read more about their walk at their website.

by Nancy Price. Published May 19 by the Davis (CA) Enterprise

A pair of brothers who are walking across America to protest what they call 'the legal fiction that corporations are persons with constitutional rights' will be in Davis on Wednesday.

Robin Monahan, 67, and his brother Laird, 69, will be at the Farmers' Market beginning at 4:30 p.m. They left San Francisco on Saturday and will set off for Sacramento on Thursday morning.

The Monahans are walking the old Lincoln Highway to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., hoping to arrive by Election Day, Nov. 2. Their progress can be tracked online at http://lairdandrobin.org.

Local residents are invited to meet and talk with them Wednesday and sign the new 'Declaration of Independence from Corporate Rule.'

The Monahan brothers were motivated by a Jan. 21 U.S. Supreme Court decision against the Federal Election Commission in the Citizens United case. The 5-4 decision not only confirmed corporations as persons with constitutional rights, but also expanded corporate political free speech rights under the First Amendment to allow corporations to spend unlimited money in politics for or against candidates in local and national elections.


'The Supreme Court's decision,' Robin says, 'will allow corporations to become the greatest intimidators of our senators and representatives ever before witnessed in our country. We felt we had to do something beyond letter-writing or drafting and signing petitions. Our anger over this gutting of our political system called out to us for a physical sacrifice to stop it.'

The brothers are following the example of Doris Haddock, who, at age 89, began her walk across the country for campaign finance reform on Jan. 1, 1999. Fourteen months later, at age 90, she arrived in Washington, D.C.

Embraced as 'Granny D,' her walk created a groundswell of support for legislation to limit corporate money in politics. That led to Congress' approval of the bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (McCain-Feingold) and more than 20 state campaign finance laws, now all struck down by the Supreme Court.

The Monahan brothers are sponsored by MovetoAmend, a consortium of more than 50 organizations promoting a constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood and corporate constitutional rights. You may sign the motion to amend at http://www.movetoamend.org.

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Riki Ott draws a line between oil in the Gulf and money in DC

Dr. Riki Ott, Alaskan marine toxicologist, salmon fisherma'am and author, on the BP Gulf oil spill and the energy industry's campaign to erode safety regulations and oversight.

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Sourdough Starters rising to the challenge of corporate personhood

by Susan Willis
In early April, Tucson's Sourdough Starters teamed up with the student chapter of the American Constitution Society and several other cosponsors to bring David Cobb to Tucson for an evening talk on "Legalizing Democracy", followed the next morning by a breakfast workshop. The workshop sought to engage activists interested in taking the next step toward promoting the passage of a constitutional amendment addressing corporate power.

Approximately 75-80 people came to the evening talk and were very engaged and stirred up by David's talk. About 20 people participated in the workshop on the following morning, with equal enthusiasm.

We are planning to collaborate with our local MoveOn.org council on some actions they are planning on the corporate power issue, one of which occurs on May 4, 2010. We are also interested in getting a seat at the table to consider changes in Tucson's city charter. A third action we are considering is using the MoveToAmend.org resolution template to craft a resolution to present to the Tucson City Council.

The main idea seems to be "Strike while the iron's hot!"

Here's the video:

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The Progressive: Corporations aren't persons

A call to protect the integrity of elections and government by strictly limiting corporate participation, with a run-down of some of the organizations working on this issue and the approaches they take to the problems of corporate personhood.

by Matthew Rothschild. From the April issue of The Progressive


On February 16, about 200 people gathered on the steps of the Wisconsin state capitol. “It’s fitting that we stand out in the cold,” said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. “That’s where the Supreme Court has left us.”

He was referring to the court’s recent decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which granted corporations the right to spend unlimited funds on so-called independent expenditures to influence the outcome of elections. The crowd heartily agreed with McCabe. Signs said: “No Corporate Takeover of Elections,” “Free Speech, Not Fee Speech,” “Money Is Not Speech, Corporations Are Not Persons.” And a chant went up: “Overrule the Court.”

Ben Manski, executive director of the Liberty Tree Foundation, drew the crowd in with a historical analogy.

“Susan B. Anthony, the great suffragist and abolitionist, was born” on February 15, 1820, he said. “Were she alive now, she would be here, celebrating with us, marching to overrule the Court. On a future day, a multitude will gather on these same steps and look back at what we here dare to do, and they will thank you.”

What the crowd was daring to do was nothing less than kick off a nationwide grassroots campaign to amend the Constitution not only to overturn the court’s reckless decision but also to state, once and for all, that corporations do not have the same rights as persons.

Make no mistake about it: The court’s ruling in Citizens United, if left to stand, will destroy whatever hope we may ever have had of democracy in this country. It will entrench corporate power as never before. And the promise of America will be dashed.

Fighting Bob La Follette, the great Senator from Wisconsin and the founder of this magazine, warned throughout his career about the looming threat posed by corporate power. When he ran for President in 1924, he said: “Democracy cannot live side by side with the control of government by private monopoly. We must choose, on the one hand, between representative government, with its guarantee of peace, liberty, and economic freedom and prosperity for all the people, and on the other, war, tyranny, and the impoverishment of the many for the enrichment of the favored few.”

Yes, we must choose. And we must choose now.

To read the 5-4 majority decision in Citizens United is to look at a fun-house mirror. The case, most narrowly, concerned whether the rightwing nonprofit group Citizens United, which is partially funded by corporations, could run an anti-Hillary Clinton documentary on cable and whether it could promote the film with ads on TV close to election time. The McCain-Feingold law prohibited corporate-funded independent ads during such a timeframe, and Citizens United challenged the constitutionality of the law as it applied to this particular instance.

But the Court’s majority was not interested in ruling narrowly. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, threw out decades of Supreme Court precedents. Writing in the most sweeping way, he declared that “political speech of corporations or other associations” cannot “be treated differently under the First Amendment simply because such associations are not ‘natural persons.’ ”

The logic of the Court’s argument would throw out all restrictions on corporate expenditures. “Political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it, whether by design or inadvertence,” it said. This seems to justify unlimited direct gifts to candidates, though the majority didn’t quite go there. But it went everywhere else.

The decision asserted, astonishingly and without evidence, that “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” It added: “The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.” And it asserted that “no sufficient governmental interest justifies limits on the political speech of nonprofit or for-profit corporations.”

Justice John Paul Stevens, at eighty-nine writing eloquently in dissent, warned: “Starting today, corporations with large war chests to deploy on electioneering may find democratically elected bodies becoming much more attuned to their interests.” The Court’s decision, he added, undermines the integrity of our democratic institutions and “will undoubtedly cripple the ability of ordinary citizens, Congress, and the states to adopt even limited measures to protect against corporate domination of the electoral process.”

Stevens cut to the heart of the matter and laid out why corporations should not be treated as persons. “In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant,” he argued. “Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. . . . Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.” Later, he added, witheringly: “Under the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech.”

Stevens also invoked our Founders. “Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind,” he wrote. “Thomas Jefferson famously fretted that corporations would subvert the Republic,” Stevens observed, and in a footnote, he provided the quotation from Jefferson from 1816: “I hope we shall. . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.”

By an overwhelming margin, the American people have sided with Justice Stevens and against the Court’s majority. According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, 80 percent of the American people oppose the Court’s decision, and 65 percent “strongly” oppose it. “The poll shows remarkably strong agreement about the ruling across all demographic groups,” noted Dan Eggen of the Post. “The poll reveals relatively little difference of opinion on the issue among Democrats (85 percent opposed to the ruling), Republicans (76 percent), and independents (81 percent).”

This represents a huge base of support for overturning the decision.
But how to do it?

Some members of Congress are hoping to blunt the effect of the decision legislatively. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio introduced a bill that would require corporations to get prior approval of their shareholders before launching political ads. And Senator Charles Schumer of New York and Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland began circulating drafts of legislation that would ban independent campaign expenditures by corporations that are more than 20 percent foreign owned. They would also ban such expenditures by any company that receives taxpayer support through either the Troubled Asset Relief Program or through federal contracts. And their bills would require a great deal more disclosure.

“If we don’t act quickly, the Court’s ruling will have an immediate and disastrous impact on the 2010 elections,” Schumer said. “Our goal is to advance the legislation quickly, otherwise the Supreme Court will have predetermined winners of next November’s election—it won’t be Republicans, it won’t be Democrats, it will be corporate America.”

But the Democrats in Congress aren’t acting quickly on this. And even if they did, they’d run into an unmovable object: The Supreme Court’s decision is now the law of the land. The Court would likely strike down any legislation that went against it.

“These are noble efforts on the Hill, but they misdiagnose the problem,” says Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy. “We shouldn’t waste energy on legislation that won’t pass a filibuster or won’t pass muster with this five-member majority on the court.” (Graves, by the way, calls Citizens United “Bush v. Gore on steroids. That decision affected only one, or at most two, elections. This will affect many elections to come.”)

There’s another approach, floated by Ralph Nader and by Robert Weissman, the new president of Public Citizen. While they support legislative efforts, they say the President could issue an executive order refusing to “contract with or provide subsidies, handouts, and bailouts to any company that spends money directly in the electoral arena.”

But the Supreme Court could invalidate such an order, as well.

Nader and Weissman also recommend that shareholders pass resolutions requiring their corporations to receive majority permission before spending money on elections.

Ultimately, however, Nader and Weissman favor amending the Constitution. “In the absence of a future court overturning Citizens United,” they wrote in The Wall Street Journal on February 10, “the fundamental response should be a constitutional amendment. We must exclude all commercial corporations and other artificial commercial entities from participating in political activities. Such constitutional rights should be reserved for real people.”

On February 2, Representative Donna Edwards, Democrat of Maryland, became the first member of Congress to offer up a constitutional amendment aimed at Citizens United. She introduced the following: “The sovereign right of the people to govern being essential to a free democracy, Congress and the States may regulate the expenditure of funds for political speech by any corporation, limited liability company, or other corporate entity.” It was co-sponsored by Representatives André Carson, John Conyers, Keith Ellison, Raúl Grijalva, Jesse Jackson Jr., Barbara Lee, Ed Markey, Jim McGovern, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Chellie Pingree, and Betty Sutton.

We need to “take matters into our own hands to enact a constitutional amendment that once and for all declares that we the people govern our elections and our campaigns, not we the corporations,” Edwards said, in a great video on the website freespeechforpeople.org. “Imagine a world where corporations could spend the never-ending source of their corporations’ treasuries on elections and campaigns and public policy. The people would completely lose our voice. . . . It would be gone.”

To illustrate Edwards’s point, Jamie Raskin, a Maryland state senator and a law professor at American University, provided the following example on that same video. “In 2008, the Fortune 100 corporations had $600 billion in profits,” Raskin said. “Now imagine that those top 100 companies decided to spend a modest 1 percent of their profits to intervene in our politics and to get their way. That would mean $6 billion, or double what the Obama campaign spent, the McCain campaign spent, and every candidate for House and Senate.”

On February 24, Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut introduced his own constitutional amendment, which was co-sponsored by Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico. The amendment would “authorize Congress to regulate the raising and spending of money for federal political campaigns, including independent expenditures, and allow states to regulate such spending at their level,” according to a statement from Dodd’s office.

“Ultimately, we must cut through the underbrush and go directly to the heart of the problem,” said Dodd. “And that is why I am proposing this constitutional amendment: because constitutional questions need constitutional answers. I believe it is the best way to save our democratic system of government from the continued corrosion of special interest influence.”

Two progressive coalitions are pushing the effort to amend the Constitution. One is at freespeechforpeople.org. According to the website, “this is a campaign sponsored by Voter Action (voteraction.org), Public Citizen (citizen.org), the Center for Corporate Policy (corporatepolicy.org), and American Independent Business Alliance (amiba.net) to restore the First Amendment’s free speech guarantees for the people, and to preserve and promote democracy and self-government. We are joined by a growing wave of people around the country.”

The other is movetoamend.org. (Disclosure: I signed its petition.) It’s a little broader in scope than just overturning Citizens United. Here’s how it spells out its goals: “We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:

“Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.

“Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.

“Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate ‘preemption’ actions by global, national, and state governments.”

Some of the prime movers behind it are the Liberty Tree Foundation, the Center for Media and Democracy, and the Independent Progressive Politics Network. And it is endorsed by the National Lawyers Guild, Progressive Democrats of America, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy.

There are two ways to amend the Constitution. One is to start with Congress, pass the amendment by a two-thirds margin in both houses, and then get three-quarters of the states to ratify it. The other way, which has almost never been used, is to get two-thirds of the states to call a constitutional convention, and then get three-quarters to ratify.

The Free Speech for People group favors the traditional way, while some in the Move to Amend coalition lean more toward a constitutional convention.

“I certainly think it would be more effective to build up from the states,” says Manski. “It may be that in the process of winning state legislatures over, we’ll change the political climate and Congress will respond by taking action. But I’m not going to rely on Congress. For myself, the safest route is to put all of our energy into the state initiatives and go the constitutional convention route.”

John Bonifaz, the legal director of Voter Action, believes it would be “dangerous to go down that road.” A constitutional convention, he fears, could be a disaster for minority rights. He believes that the right wing might successfully organize to pass an amendment declaring marriage as solely between a man and a woman or anointing English as the official language of the United States.

“What we’re about is reclaiming our democracy and advancing the franchise, not moving backwards,” he says.

The groups are getting along, fortunately, and working together. And they sense the urgency of the moment.

“The Supreme Court has had its say,” Raskin said. “Now it’s our turn. Now is the time for us to put in motion a great popular movement to defend democracy against the champions of corporate plutocracy.”

But no one has any illusions that it will be easy, as anyone who experienced the heartbreak of the Equal Rights Amendment can attest.

“It’s certainly an uphill fight,” says Weissman. The court’s decision “dealt a severe body blow to our democracy, and we’ll have to wait and see whether democracy can rise up or falls to the canvas.”

Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin calls the ruling “one of the most lawless in the history of the Supreme Court.” But ever idiosyncratic, Feingold opposes a constitutional amendment as a remedy. “I think that’s unwise, but I certainly understand the sentiment,” he told The Progressive. “The best thing to do is to get new justices, different justices, who will do the right thing.”

That may be a shortcut—and it may not.

“Based on the age of some of the justices in the majority, that’s suggesting we wait a very long time,” says Bonifaz, who has litigated the campaign finance issue at the Supreme Court. “And while a constitutional amendment can take a long time, there have been instances where it took only a few years.”

There’s one other drawback to hoping for a more enlightened composition of justices, because that leaves the question of corporate personhood up for grabs every time there is a new formation on the Supreme Court.

We need to slay the dragon of corporate personhood once and for all. To do that, it seems to me, we’ll have to put our Susan B. Anthony hats on and get to work.

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.

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Mary Zepernick on the history of corporate personhood and a broad amendment strategy for overturning it

Last week, North Bridge Alliance for Democracy joined with Concord Carlisle League of Women Voters, Concord CAN, and the Carlisle Climate Action Network to present a panel discussion on the Citizens United decision and its implications for American democracy. Mary Zepernick, of POCLAD and WILPF, one of the presenters, was unable to attend in person but sent the following history of corporate personhood as well as her observations on the need for ending all corporate appropriation of personhood rights through a Constitutional amendment.

WILPF, POCLAD & AfD have been allies since the latter two organizations’ founding some 15 years ago, though WILPF has 95 years on the other two. And here we are on the Steering Committee together of the campaign to Legalize Democracy: movetoamend.org.

On occasions like this I describe myself as a reconstructed US history teacher doing penance. Of the many lenses through which to view US history, one that is central to our purpose this evening is: Who is and who is not a person under the law? And what does this mean for our ongoing quest to be truly self-governing?

At the outset, legal persons were white propertied men, 55 of whom gathered in Philadelphia in 1787, closed their doors and replaced the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution – sealing their records for half a century. The historian James Beard referred to them as the well bred, well fed, well read, and well wed!

Cape Cod’s revolutionary pamphleteer and playwright Mercy Otis Warren when the new document was unveiled: the Senate is too oligarchical, the country is too big to be governed by a strong federal system, and where are the rights of the people?

Mercy would be even more outraged to learn that the three Democratic and three Republican Senators brought together by Max Baucus in search of a health insurance plan are from states with a combined population of 8.4 million, 2.7% of the US population. The country is many times larger now and still in the hands of a strong federal government, despite growing dissent. And the rights of the people have been hijacked by property’s most powerful expression, the corporate form.
A significant Court decision in 1803 set the stage for subsequent judicial supremacy, all the way to Citizens United v FEC and beyond, until we change it. Chief Justice John Marshall established in Marbury v Madison: the principle of judicial review: the right of the federal courts to review actions of executive or legislative bodies to determine their consistency with statues, treaties or the Constitution. Then President
Thomas Jefferson wrote: “ To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”

Given the oppressive role of the Crown trading corporations and colonies under the British, post-revolutionary corporations were small, relatively few in number, and restricted by the conditions of their charters, which were often amended or revoked by state legislatures or courts when violated .

An example of the prevailing political culture regarding corporations is the PA legislature’s declaration in 1834: "A corporation in law is just what the incorporating act makes it. It is the creature of the law and may be moulded to any shape or for any purpose that the Legislature may deem conducive for the general good."

This was no golden age of democracy, but the corporate form was in the appropriate subordinate relationship to the people’s representatives – not withstanding the fact that at this point legal persons still consisted of white men, usually propertied.More than a century later, Justice Felix Frankfurter described the modern corporation this way:

“Today’s business corporation is an artificial creation, shielding owners and managers while preserving corporate privilege and existence. Artificial or not, corporations have won more rights under law than people have– rights which government has protected with armed force.”

So what happened between the Pennsylvania legislature’s and Justice Frankfurter’s description of the corporation role’s in society? The short version is that by the mid-19th century, the industrial revolution, the growth of railroads and banking, then the Civil War saw an increase in the size and wealth of corporations. Corporate executives and lawyers sought ways to slip the bounds of their charters, bringing case after case up through the federal court system. As you probably know, they hit pay dirt in 1886, in an otherwise insignificant tax case. A since-disputed headnote in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad declared the corporate form a person under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

Of the three so-called Civil War Amendments – the 13th abolishing slavery and the 15th granting black males the vote – the mighty 14th was the corporate prize. Here is the relevant passage for our purpose:

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty,or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person with its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Due process and equal protection

WILPF’s timeline includes the corporate “person’s” Bill of Rights protections that flowed from the Santa Clara decision; here are some examples:

• 1893: due process of the 5th Amendment

• 1906: “search & seizure protection of the 4th Amendment

• 1908: 6th Amendment right to trial by jury

• 1922: “takings clause” protection of the 5th Amendment

• 1976: 1st Amendment: “Political money is equivalent to speech” (Buckley v Valeo)

• 1977: 1st Amendment used to void a Massachusetts law restricting corporate spending on political referenda

A similar timeline could be constructed for the slow march of rights gained by women, including the Suffrage Amendment in 1920. Not until 1971 was the 14th Amendment ruled to apply to women, though it was assumed in earlier cases!

For WILPF’s campaign to Challenge Corporate Power, Assert the People’s Rights, AfD and WILPF and AfD members Jan Edwards and Bill Meyers coined the phrase: Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property, and corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person,

In 1857 the Supreme Court declared in Dred Scott v Sandford: "The right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution. The right to traffic in it, like any ordinary article of merchandise and property, was guaranteed to the citizens of the United States, in every state that might desire it...And no word can be found in the Constitution which give Congress a greater power over slave property, or which entitles property of that kind to less protection than property of any other description. The only power conferred is the power coupled with the duty of guarding and protecting the owner in his rights."

Ten years after the Santa Clara decision on corporate personhood, the Supreme Court declared in Plessy v Ferguson, 1896, that separate but equal accommodations were legal.Thus African Americans saw their personhood diminished, even as the corporate form continued to accumulate power based on corporate constitutional rights. Half a century later, Brown v Board of Education in effect reversed Plessy. However, early last year the Supreme Court overturned desegregation plans in Seattle and Louisville. And women’s right to abortion, Roe v Wade, 1973, has been steadly assaulted and eroded.

Thus our struggle continues between justice and equality for natural persons and the illegitimate rights of the so-called corporate person to usurp our promised self-governance. May we seize this opportunity to see that the Supreme Court has at last overstepped its bounds!

According to Larry Kramer, author of The People Themselves, American revolutionaries considered the notion of "Popular Sovereignty" more than an empty abstraction, more than a mythic philosophical justification for government. The idea of "the people" was more than a flip rhetorical gesture to be used on the campaign trail.  Ordinary Americans once exercised active control over their Constitution.

After the initial shock at the 5-4 decision in Citizens United v FEC, dropping the remaining barriers to corporate funding of the people's elections, many of us realized that Court had actually handed us a great opportunity. In the 15 years that AfD, POCLAD, WILPF and a growing number of allied activists have focused on illegitimate  corporate power and rights, there has never been the ferment in the press and populace that this case has created. 

Why is the Campaign to Legalize Democracy: movetoamend.org using a broad amendment strategy?  In effect, we are seizing the opportunity to exercise active control over our Constitution – not a document belonging to the Courts, nor to the Congress nor to the Chief Executive, but to us, the people's Constitution. At this stage, no one knows the"right" path to take. This is a long term, multi-layered challenge. It's not a contest but a collaboration between two approaches (and probably more to come).

Given the nature of the case itself, it's logical and useful to have a focus on the First Amendment: freespeechforpeople.org. 

It's  logical for those of us who have been organizing around "legal" but illegitimate corporate constitutional rights to seize this opportunity to raise a range of issues and to go for what we want and need: like the examples in my talk's short list of cases, taking back our rights from the corporate form. In the wake of a retreat in California following the September rehearing of the case, these two approaches began to form. Since then the email dialogue representing a range of people and views in both budding campaigns has been vigorous, respectful and fruitful.

The Campaign To Legalize Democracy; movetoamend.org aims to claim and make real in law and practice our birthright of self-governance. The Steering Committee, representing 15 organizations, and dozens of partners and endorsers believe that the Supreme Court is misguided in principle and wrong on the law.

Thus we reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:

    * Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
    
* Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.
    
* Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate "preemption" actions by global, national, and state governments.     

Signed by 74,255 and counting . . .

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