What’s A Patriot To Do?
By Riki Ott
The US Supreme Court decision last January in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, giving corporations the right to contribute money to federal campaigns, was a major setback on First Amendment rights. In response to this ruling a grassroots coalition, The Campaign to Legalize Democracy, is now proposing to amend the US Constitution in order to curb corporate power. Here are four positive, practical steps we can all take.
First, BREATHE deeply and look out a window. If you can’t see a mountain, river, forest, wetland, ocean, prairie, tundra, or even a patch of sky, close your eyes and imagine it. We aren’t any good for anything if we’re in a panic or funk.
Second, GET INFORMED. Citizens United is merely the last straw in a haystack of (successful) corporate attempts to extend corporate constitutional “rights” to corporate persons. The expansion of corporate rights began over 200 years ago as the anti-corporate fervor from the American Revolution began to fade. The US Supreme Court blurred the distinction between “natural persons,” or real, living human beings, and “artificial persons”—corporations—in 1886 when it conferred the 14th Amendment right of “equal protection of the laws” to an artificial person, a railroad corporation, in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. Since then, the Supreme Court has handed out other human rights to artificial persons (corporations), including the battery of First Amendment rights leading to Citizens United.
Since Santa Clara, literally hundreds—perhaps thousands—of local, state, federal, and international laws that attempt to protect our environment, our elections, our safety and health, and our right to organize have been overturned as a result of this doctrine. Armed with human rights and legal privileges, corporations have amassed enormous wealth and power and disabled democracy within all three branches of our government.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission opens the floodgates to unlimited corporate and union spending on candidate elections by overturning state and federal restrictions on electioneering. This affects all elections: school board, zoning commissions, state and municipal judges, state representatives, congressional delegates, president. Bluntly and boldly, our elected officials will henceforth represent corporations first and people second if they want to serve in “public” office.
Our ExxonMobil-funded officials will tell us climate change is good for us as they open America for coal and oil extraction. Our Big Pharma- and Big Insurance-backed congressional delegates will tell us, “You don’t really want a public option” in health care reform. Our Monsanto-owned officials will give us growth hormones in milk and GMO diets. And so on.
To sum up: Our democratic process has been hijacked by corporations through illegitimate usurpation of rights intended for human persons. This is a call to action! It is time to change the rules.
Third, CHOOSE AN ACTION. Insisting that people rule, not property, is a constant chore in a democracy. As Paul Hawken pointed out in Blessed Unrest, there are literally tens of thousands of citizens’ efforts committed to social justice and a sustainable future. We have a good base to build on! Now is the time to unite our efforts because we can’t achieve what we want as long as corporations are running our country (and the world).
Help spread the word through your networks and websites, as well as on the bus or in the check-out line. Contact your local media and ask them to report on this decision. Get involved with the grassroots movement to protect democracy from unchecked corporate power.
Last fall, in anticipation of a hostile decision in Citizens United, a group of experienced democracy activists met in San Rafael, California to lay the groundwork for amending the US Constitution to end the constant erosion of people’s democratic rights by corporate persons. The Campaign to Legalize Democracy, a diverse and rapidly growing coalition of individuals and organizations, was born.
Its mission is to amend the US Constitution to end the illegitimate legal doctrines that prevent the American people from governing themselves. First and foremost, the campaign will move to amend that only human beings are entitled to constitutional rights.
Ultimate Civics, one member of the coalition, is mapping groups that are working directly to abolish corporate personhood—corporations with human rights.
Fourth, DO IT. It cannot be overstated: The ruling in Citizens United leaves ordinary citizens little power to keep corporate influence out of democratic decision making. We must unite to reverse this outrageous ruling—and the underlying morally wrong premise that artificial persons are entitled to human rights.
Riki Ott shares her story of evolution from marine scientist to democracy activist in Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (Chelsea Green, 2008). She lectures widely on The Democracy Crisis and will be in Ashland, OR on Feb 25 giving a presentation with David Cobb at the Bellview Grange (see ad page 4).
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Feb/Mar 2010
Living in a Time of Mythic Chage
Caroline Myss
The Value of Whole-Systems Design
Shaktari Belew
Playing for Keeps
Derrick Jensen
Motion to Amend
The Campaign to Legalize Democracy
Abolish Corporate Personhood
David Cobb
Ten Ways to Stop Corporate Dominance of Politics
Fran Korten
What's a Patriot to Do?
Riki Ott
The Transition Document
Reviewed by Dan Armstrong
Community Gardening in an Urban Garden Cooperative
Chuck Burr
On Planting Trees
Daniel Bish
A Cooperative Model for Community Supported Agriculture
Jude Wait
Move Your Money
Amy Goodman interviews Robert Johnson
The Mouth of Satisfaction
Peter Moore
Southern Oregon Birth Connections
Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain
Movie Mystic
Stephen Simon
