Publications & Talks
There are many schemes now for undoing the doctrines under which corporations claim constitutional rights and bribery is deemed constitutionally protected "speech." Every single one of these schemes depends on a massive movement of public pressure all across the homeland formerly known as the United States of America. Montana High Court Says 'Citizens United' Does Not Apply In Big Sky State
State Supreme Court Issues Remarkable Ruling Against Corporate Speech
MN STAR TRIBUNE: Corporations and People
The conventional criticism of the Occupy Wall Street movement – that it is long on complaints about income inequality, but short on proposed remedies – may need revision.
A number of “occupations,” including ones in Minnesota, have latched onto a constitutional amendment proposal that would deny corporations legal status as persons with full First Amendment rights.
REBECCA MANSKI: What Liberty Square Means
A year ago, New Yorkers watched in horror as voters in the progressive heartland of Wisconsin replaced progressive standard-bearer Russ Feingold with a Tea Party mega-millionaire, and the state’s capitol came under the control of self-described Tea Party Republicans. Months later, the impact of that electoral change became clear. Governor Scott Walker unleashed attacks on the right to organize, to engage in collective bargaining, to access health care, food, shelter, a quality education and even on the right to vote.
BRINTON & SCHULTZ: Big Sky Populists Fight Back Against Big Corporate Money
Corporate Attack on Democracy in Montana: Communities Do Battle with Modern-Day “Copper Kings”
A year and a half after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission that corporations are “people” with expanded constitutional rights, the impacts of the ruling continue to reverberate. 24 states have been forced to re-examine their legal limitations on campaign financing by corporations. Among them is Montana, a state with some of the country’s strongest campaign finance laws.
TRUTHOUT: Local Resistance to Corporate Personhood Wages Crucial Battle
In the 2010 US Supreme Court case, Citizens United v. Federal ElectionCommission, the judges of the highest court in the land narrowly ruled that corporations were "people" with First Amendment free speech rights. The corollary of this judgment is that corporations, as "persons," have the right to contribute unlimited funds to political campaigns as an exercise of their free speech.
ROTHSCHILD: Citizens Rise Up Against "Citizens United"
I was speaking in Milwaukee the other night to a great group of peace activists, and in the question and answer period, we started talking about what could be done to change our foreign policy and bring about peace and social justice.
One thing I said we needed to do was to amend the Constitution to overturn the horrible Citizens United decision of 2010 that said corporations are persons, and corporations can spend unlimited funds to influence the outcome of an election.
Boulder Should Vote on Corporate Personhood
Large multinational corporations today wield enormous power. They determine whether our oceans are filled with oil, whether we get more floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes and other signs of an accelerating climate crisis, whether Americans have jobs or our jobs are outsourced to low-wage countries, whether our military budget keeps expanding, and whether our economy implodes, to name a few of the thousands of ways that mega corporations impact us on a daily basis.
The fundamental question here is, who is in charge of our country -- the big corporations or the people and their elected officials? Who should make the decisions about our well being, our future, our environment and our jobs?
SOPOCI-BELKNAP: Movement to Abolish Corporate Personhood Gaining Traction
In the year and a half since the Citizens United decision, Americans from all walks of life have become concerned about corporate dominance of our government and our society as a whole. In Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court (in an act of outrageous “judicial activism) gutted existing campaign finance laws by ruling that corporations, wealthy individuals, and other entities can spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns.
Throughout the country people have responded by organizing against “corporate personhood,” a court-created precedent that illegitimately gives corporations rights that were intended for human beings.
VERMONT COMMONS: Interview with Move to Amend's David Cobb
VERMONT VOX POPULI: Human Rights for Human Beings, Not Corporations - An Interview with Move To Amend’s David Cobb
By Rob Williams, Vermont Commons
The 
ALLISON and ALLISON: The Climate of Corporate Personhood
Corporations have no rights under the Constitution or its amendments. However, their constitutional rights as granted by the Supreme Court have multiplied like rabbits since the Santa Clara decision in 1886, and the end is not in sight.
The Supreme Court “. . . avoided meeting the constitutional question [of corporate personhood] in the [Santa Clara] decision.” (Morrison Waite, Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, to his Court Reporter, 1886.) Nevertheless, the Court has repeatedly misused this decision as precedent for bestowing constitutional rights on corporations.
Summary
How the fiction of corporate personhood arose in the 1880s, perhaps based on a deliberate lie about the intent of those who drafted the Fourteenth Amendment. How a Supreme Court adjudicated railroad cases while being showered with major gifts from railroads. How the Court played fast and loose with Court records. How a Court Reporter’s notes passed as official Supreme Court opinion. How the Court declared a precedent that wasn’t, as the media slept through it all. How the story played out against a background of unregulated speculation, the ensuing Panic of 1873, and fervent class conflict. How the present Court used the very same fiction to renew the subversion of democratic government at the hands of wealthy corporate CEOs. How to put things right.
JURMAIN: Problem and Solution
On Wednesday, August 11th, local entrepreneur and inventor Rick Jurmain, who, with his wife and partner, Mary, has committed his business to social responsibility, spoke at the kickoff meeting of the northwest Wisconsin chapter of Move to Amend. His remarks are below.
Problem and Solution, by Rick Jurmain
Good evening and welcome. Thank you for coming tonight.
And thanks very much to Infinitea Tea House for their hospitality in hosting this event. I encourage all of you to have a cup of tea or other drinks. They also have salads and a selection of baked goods.
DIXON: What If BP Were A Human Being?
The third largest oil company in the world, BP was born in 1909 as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, and was partly owned by the British government. Its headquarters offices are in the UK.. So if it were a flesh and blood person, it would be far and away the wealthiest person on earth, and a nominal British subject. Assuming that our imaginary human BP got into the oil business at the youthful age of say, 20, and stayed at it for just over a century, BP the human being would be closing in on his 121st birthday. Damned few of us will see triple digits, and none of us that reach even our 60s and 70s retain the level of energy, or often of interest that we possessed only a couple decades before.
Bruce Dixon is the Managing Editor of the Black Agenda Report and a member of the Steering Committee of MovetoAmend.org
VIDEO: We the Corporations? Life & Law in the U.S.A. after Citizens United v. FEC
- Hosted by the UW-Madison National Lawyers Guild and the Liberty Tree Foundation
- Sponsored by the American Constitution Society, Center for Media and Democracy, and Wisconsin Democracy Campaign
- Cosponsored by the A.E. Havens Center for the Study of Social Structure and Social Change, UW-Madison Legal Studies Association, Madison Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, Student Progressive Dane, and the Student Labor Action Coalition.
