This week's show features Thom Hartmann, progressive political commentator and author of many books, including Unequal Protection, Screwed: the Undeclared War Against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It, and Rebooting the American Dream. Thom recently spoke at the First Unitarian Church in Portland, OR. In his talk, he addresses the need for a 28th constitutional amendment to end the legal fictions that artificial entities are people and that money is speech. He calls America's governing structure a "constitutional monarchy," and relates how the US Supreme Court's use of judicial review undermines democracy, and how we can regain the power of the people from the court's and corporate dominance.
To get some name recognition with the kids on the interwebs, Move to Amend has developed an ongoing series of short videos that don't tell you much about the ins and outs of corporate personhood or constitutional amendment but aspires to be the kind of funny stuff that gets shared online.
The first few videos in the series were all somewhere between NSFW and WTF but these two are a hoot. So we're sharing them online.
The videos are done by Dennis Trainor Jr., whose work is online here, and Lee Camp.
Hopefully this will inspire even more art, video, song and meme-making. The more the merrier and merry is good.
...that protesting corporate rule is at least as old as our own American Revolution? Move to Amend's Ashley Sanders brought the history of the early days of corporate domination of politics and economies to this edition of Populist Dialogues.
This past June, Portland OR Alliance for Democracy/Move to Amend joined the Portland gay pride parade as the Supreme Court "Corporate" Justices, bringing the message that we need to amend the Constitution to eliminate corporate access to the rights of human persons, and that money is not speech. Chapter president David Delk shot the video:
The Citizens United decision didn't come out of thin air. This video is a terrific look at the history of corporate personhood and political bribery and how the expanding nature of "we the people" has been countered by an equally lengthy history of a US ruling class obtaining more rights and powers for corporations.
The good news is that from the national level, with the Move to Amend coalition, Free Speech for People, and other groups working on constitutional amendments to eliminate corporate access to constitutional personhood rights, to the local level with towns passing rights-based ordinances to protect local economies and ecosystems, "we the (real) people" are developing more ways to take back our government from corporate rule.
In support of the January 20 Occupy the Courts action, here's Bill McKibben on our "money talks" political system, climate change, and the need for environmental activists to be involved in the democracy movement. Get to MovetoAmend.org to find the Occupy the Courts action near you.
Alliance for Democracy is part of the Move to Amend coalition and most AfD chapters are planning or will be involved in Occupy the Courts events. Our local chapter list is here. If you're heading to an action check out material (signs, fliers, bumper stickers) here.
Toward the end of this clip from today's edition of Democracy Now, John Nichols, blogger and writer for The Nation, totes up the spending by candidates and superPACs in Iowa and estimates that it works out to about $200 per vote cast, most of it going to broadcast last-minute negative ads. That's just one reason why anti-corporate personhood advocates will be attending both Democratic and Republican caucuses this evening in hopes of passing Move to Amend resolutions calling for an amendment overturning the Citizens United decision, and allowing for the re-regulation of campaign spending.
"Populist Dialogues," produced by the Alliance's Portland (OR) chapter, has two new shows out focusing on recent Supreme Court decisions enlarging corporate power at the expense of voters and democracy.
In this show, first broadcast on July 24, Portland attorney Dan Meek reviews recent cases involving ATT, Walmart and Arizona clean election funding, finding a pattern of ongoing privatization of the judiciary even more dangerous than the damage these decisions did to class action and voter-owned elections.
Alliance for Democracy member Nancy Matela has been a election integrity activist and currently works on water issues and the human right to water. In this show, which will air July 31, she reviews reforms to Oregon's election system. She also discusses the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, and the issue of water privatization in Oregon, including Nestle's proposals to bottle water at Cascade Locks, the Wilsonville water treatment plant and others. She emphasizes thta that bottled water is already privatization of water, a public resource, and discusses how regulation of water can depend on whether it's defined as a commodity.
The Story of Stuff people and Free Range Studios have collaborated on a new video, "The Story of Citizens United."
Enjoy and share--the video offers a good, quick explanation of how corporations got to be such an influence on government and policy even before the Citizens United decision. It also briefly mentioned public funding for elections--a big part of the fix for the problems that spring from institutionalizing big-money politics.
As far as amendments go, there's debate on whether the better approach is to go after all corporate usurpation of constitutional personhood rights or just First Amendment ones. The organizations that Story of Stuff links to on this YouTube video limit themselves to the first amendment. Story of Stuff's website also gives a nod to the Move to Amend coalition, which proposes ending corporate access to all constitutional rights, not just those granted by the First Amendment. Alliance for Democracy is a member of the Move to Amend coalition and recommends the broader approach--check out the fliers on this page to find out why.
There are state and local resolutions in the works supporting both approaches--maybe one where you live. Given that this movement is just beginning and has a long way to go, this is a good video to share regardless of your views on how broad an anti-corporate personhood amendment we need to win.
by Annie Leonard and Allison Cook. Posted Feb 21 at Yes! Magazine
Watch the trailer for "The Story of Corporate Personhood," coming out March 1.
We never expected to be writing an article with this title. Aren’t united citizens a good thing? Civil Rights movement? Egypt?Madison?
Yes, but that’s not the kind of people power we’re talking about here. What we want to fight is the disastrous 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United v Federal Election Commission (FEC) decision Ironically, “Citizens United” is the name of a conservative advocacy group which receives corporate funding and works to promote increased rights for corporations. The Citizens United v. FEC case originally dealt with the question of whether or not airing Citizens United’s documentary about Hillary Clinton was an advocacy ad, and therefore subject to existing restrictions on election ads under the McCain-Feingold law. Whether your passion is protecting the environment or creating green jobs or improving public education—or really any other issue on which corporate interests are blocking real solutions—this is your campaign too.
But in a brazen act of judicial activism, the court decided to consider the much broader issue of corporate spending to influence elections, which wasn’t even presented in the original case. In a decision that stunned democracy advocates and trampled a number of campaign finance laws, a slim five-Justice majority ruled that corporations—including for-profit corporations—do indeed have a right to spend as much money as they want to elect or defeat candidates in our elections.
This decision effectively grants corporations the same First Amendment Free Speech protections granted to real live people.
The catch is that corporations obviously are not people. Someone get the Supreme Court a biology textbook! There are some really big, and really significant, differences. For starters, people are part of the biological system; we need clear air and water, a healthy environment, a stable climate to thrive. Corporations are legal entities, created by people, and have no such biological needs and thus no inherent reason to safeguard the environment.
People make decisions based on a constant balancing of many interests, including love for our families and communities, compassion, kindness, desire for a better world, as well as economic and material interests. Corporations don’t have families and communities, nor hearts with which to love them. As Justice Stevens said in his dissenting opinion, “corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts and no desires.” Instead, corporations—by both law and the demands of the market—are under enormous pressure to focus on one thing: maximizing profit.
Their single minded focus, plus their enormous scale, means it’s dangerous to invite them into our democracy. If corporations spend even a tiny percentage of their profits on influencing election outcomes, they can dwarf the contributions from real people, skewing election results to favor corporate interests, which aren’t always the same as the interests of workers, families, and the environment.
At the Story of Stuff Project, we have partnered with organizations working for solutions to issues as diverse as climate change, toxics in consumer products, and the wastefulness of bottled water. In every case, when we ask these experienced organizers what the biggest obstacles to progress are, the answer is the same: corporate influence in the political process.
The Citizens United v. FEC decision makes this problem even worse. Reversing it is a critical step to reclaiming our democracy by the people and for the people. Yes, we know that reversing this case won’t immediately prevent the myriad other ways that corporations exert influence in our democracy, but it is a really, really important place to start. Reversing a Supreme Court decision requires a new Constitutional Amendment so we’re joining with a number of organizations launching a national campaign to obtain one. It’s not going to be quick or easy, but working for big changes requires big efforts. And while we’re working on it, we can be building a broad-based national movement to get corporations completely out of our democracy—and get the people back in.
This is a really important fight. Until we wrestle control back from the corporations, we can’t leverage our amazing democracy for real progress on any of the issues we care about. So, whether your passion is protecting the environment or creating green jobs or improving public education—or really any other issue on which corporate interests are blocking real solutions—this is your campaign too. Here are five ways to plug in and get started.
Five Ways to Fight Citizens United: 1. Watch The Story of Stuff Project’s latest film, The Story of Citizens United v. FEC: Why Democracy Only Works when People are in Charge at www.storyofcitizensunited.org. Then share it widely! Post it on Facebook, tweet about it, blog about it, organize a showing in your school or church, put a link on your website. Help turn the volume up on this much needed conversation!
2. Party for the Cause. Hold a house party to screen the The Story of Citizens United v. FEC and invite others to join the campaign. Invite friends, neighbors, family members over to your place for an evening of democracy in action! You can download our House Party Guide, which has house party tips and action ideas, here.
3. Sign on. Sign Public Citizen’s petition calling for a Constitutional Amendment clarifying that free speech is for people, not corporations. We need a lot of signatures to launch this ambitious campaign. Please download the petition here, make copies and carry them around with you collecting signatures—and thus telling others about the campaign—everywhere you go. If you want to sign electronically, please do so here.
4. Get National. If corporations spend even a tiny percentage of their profits on influencing election outcomes, they can dwarf contributions from real people, skewing election results to favor corporate interests, which aren’t always the same as the interests of workers, families, and the environment.
Join a national organization working on taking back our democracy. This way your local efforts can be magnified and it’ll be a lot easier to track this issue and identify opportunities to get involved locally and nationally. Check out Public Citizen, Free Speech for People, People for the American Way and Move to Amend.
(blog editor's note: Alliance for Democracy is a member of the Move to Amend coalition, which supports an amendment barring corporate access to all constitutional personhood rights, not just those under the First Amendment--if you'd like to support a wide ban check out the site--organizing resources, including a petition, are here.) 5. Democracy: Use it or Lose it. One reason corporations have been able to hijack our democracy is that many of us haven’t engaged much in it ourselves lately. If we want policy makers who prioritize public good, healthy jobs, and a sustainable environment, we need to get involved, hold them accountable, and engage as active citizens every day—not just on voting day. Join a local organization working on an issue you care about, host a community event to share information, write letters to your congresspeople and local newspapers to share your opinion. There are an infinite number of ways to get involved and once enough of us do, we can take back our government so that it really is by the people, for the people. Then, we can get to work solving today’s pressing problems with a government working for us, instead of big business.
Annie Leonard and Allison Cook wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Annie is the author and host of The Story of Stuff and the director of the Story of Stuff Project; Allison is special project coordinator for the Story of Stuff Project.
It's hard not to be cynical about the alleged conflicts of interest surrounding Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, based on their relationships with conservative groups and, in Thomas's case, his wife's lobbying activities. What do you expect? Corporations buy politicians; "bought" politicians appoint and approve federal judges. If the corporate elite has "the best government their money can buy," the judiciary is certainly well represented in the toybox.
Nevertheless, it's good to see that this story is sticking, and even moving into the mainstream media and influencing some legislative action. Some members of Congress, for instance, are asking Thomas to recuse himself from any SCOTUS consideration of health care reform, based on his wife's lobbying activities ($700,000 of which went unreported on disclosure forms). You can read a letter to Thomas from Reps. Anthony Weiner, Pete Stark, Frank Pallone Jr. and Christopher Murphy here; some seventy other representatives have also supported the effort.
Meanwhile two groups in particular have questioned Thomas's ties to Citizens United and to an ultraconservative retreat hosted by the Koch brothers.
ProtectOurElections.org filed a bar complaint today alleging Thomas's bias and actual conflict of interest for his failure to disqualify himself from the Citizens United case after Citizens United Foundation supported his nomination and spent at least $100,000 on commercials attacking some senators opposed to it. This is the second bar complaint the group has filed. Video here.
Meanwhile Common Cause has asked for clarification on Thomas's 2008 speaking engagement at a conservative retreat organized by the Koch brothers, and has petitioned the Justice Department to investigate. The New York Times reports that Justice Thomas "reimbursed him an undisclosed amount for four days of 'transportation, meals and accommodations' over the weekend of the retreat," although he earlier described it as a "brief drop-by." Rachel Maddow has also picked up the story, talking to Common Cause president Bob Edgar.
Corporate persons frolic on a frosty morning at the Capitol. The theatrics and following march were part of the Movement for the People summit with participation and performances from members of many of the sponsoring groups, as well as Code Pink. Thanks from the organizers to Steffon Moody, Diane Wittner, Sally Rose, Will Rice, Susan Harman, Perry Goodfriend, Jay Marx, and many others.
On Friday, Vermont state senator Virginia Lyons presented resolution in the Vermont legislature calling for a constitutional amendment to eliminate corporate personhood. Sources say it has a good chance of passing, with 11 out of 30 state senators co-sponsoring so far.
The resolution's language points out the pressing need to curb the political influence of corporations, noting that "the profits and institutional survival of large corporations are often in direct conflict with the essential needs and rights of human beings." In pursuit of profit, corporations "have used their so-called rights to successfully seek the judicial reversal of democratically enacted laws.” This "intolerable societal reality" means that the "only way" toward a solution is the amendment of the Constitution "to define persons as human beings.”
David Cobb, who is a spokesperson for Move to Amend, helped write the resolution and has been most recently speaking in Vermont about the history of personhood--corporate and other--and the need for a constitutional amendment eliminating corporate personhood and the notion that money is speech. You can watch his interview with "Near and Far" host Richard Kemp below.
You can read more about the Vermont resolution here.
What's corporate personhood? If corporations aren't mentioned in the Constitution, why do they have constitutional rights today? How does this affect city or county or state level democratically-enacted ordinances to protect public health, the environment, environmental justice, and other common goods? Here's part one of a two-part video series that answers your questions--from a presentation by Molly Morgan and Jan Edwards of WILPF.
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.
Part 1 of a GritTV expose by the US Chamber of Commerce, by Harry Handbury. This big-business lobbying outfit has used the Citizens United decision and its 501 c 6 trade association status to swiftboat any candidate who tries to regulate their top funders, say the experts interviewed here.
Whether or not we see part II of this report depends on whether the filmmakers can raise enough money before Election Day. See the video website to find out more.
Take a look at USChamberWatch for more information on the US Chamber of Commerce, including facts on funding and how local chambers of commerce are publicly distancing themselves from the national group's partisan political activities.
"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.
(There's new info on the Chicago and Wisconsin events, below!) Robin and Laird Monahan spoke at the Citygarden, in St. Louis, on Sunday--good coverage of their cause and the event below (after a 15-second advertising clip):
AfD member and former national council rep Rick Lamonica was one of the event organizers. (He's tabling at about 1:35 in the video.)
The brothers also have a meet-up today at Springfield, Illinois's Trout Lily Cafe, followed by a press conference at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield with Rich Whitney, the Green Party's candidate for governor.
Then it's on to Chicago (details coming soon) where they'll be guests at a reception at Grace Place Community Center, 637 S. Dearborn Street, on Thursday, August 26 starting at 10:15. Next up, Madison, Wisconsin, where a press conference and reception are planned. Details are available on the Move to Amend site here.
As the finale of our amazing week of Localize This! Artful Activism camp, last Sunday Backbone worked in collaboration with Agit-Pop to execute a model flash-mob, non-arrestable, high-visibility action with great video production that has since gone viral, likely to reach half a million views by the time you read this email. MoveOn.org provided the funding to pay for this production and has since begun sending it to their members.
IMHO - I think we should boycott Congressional elections in districts where members have not signed on to a bill to Amend the Constitutional to ABOLISH "Corporate Personhood." Corporate personhood is the "gateway" to the gateway issue of public financing of campaigns, otherwise known as Clean Elections or Voter-Owned Elections.
Thanks to all the trainers, dancers, musicians, videographers, and especially Agit-Pop for giving us this excellent way to end Localize This!
In Gratitude and Collaboration,
Bill Moyer Executive Director, Backbone Campaign PO BOX 278, Vashon, WA
Have you quit shopping Target and Best-Buy? More importantly, have you told the CEO and your neighbors why? If you need a quick link to express your opinion, check out this cool website from the New York Public Advocate's office, with the corporate political donation policies and contact info of the 100 biggest corporations in the US.
Here's the video--you've probably already seen it but it's too good to not post:
Drive the message home! Support constitutional rights for people, not corporations and show the big donors you're on to their game with these bumperstickers!
