Cultural Change for the We the People Amendment

[fourth in the series] 

Yevgenia Nayberg                                                                                                                    

Human beings are undeniably part of and dependent on nature. History is filled with stories of people and groups who understood this reality and of others who ignored it, who didn’t care, or who arrogantly believed nature could be made subordinate to humanity.

Religious texts, mythologies and hymes on ecological awareness date back 5000 years. Caring for the natural world, the sacredness of wilderness and the need to control human’s negative impact on nature are among the earliest recorded human stories. “The goal of life is living in agreement with nature,” stated Zeno, the ancient Greek philosopher. 

Conversely, anthropological evidence dating back even further documents animal and plant extinctions from human activity. Nomadic communities migrated after exhausting local resources, and once agriculture emerged, destruction of land, water, and climate increased.. Intensive farming led to deforestation, land degradation,soil erosion and desertification in the early civilizations of the Southern Arabian Peninsula, Central Asia, Central America, Peru, and Northern Africa.

The Industrial Revolution sparked a public reaction that helped give birth to the modern environmental movement. Massive coal-fueled factories in Great Britain, and later, the United States, produced unprecedented pollution, leading to the first first large-scale environmental laws in 1863 in Britain. The Revolution also sparked a deeper critique of industrial capitalism’s role in destroying the natural world.

The environmental movement is not easy to define given its global reach. Even within the United States, the focus of this piece, there is enormous diversity and range of organizations, individuals, missions, beliefs, goals, strategies, tactics and cultural elements. Any summary description of and cultural lessons learned from it, even from a U.S.-centric perspective, will be vastly incomplete. 

This Earth Day, while the world pauses to honor our planet, we invite you to go deeper—to the root.

Because what’s killing the Earth isn’t just climate change. It’s not just pollution, deforestation, or rising seas.

OpEdNews Op Eds 4/14/2025 

Of Course Donald Trump Pardoned a Corporation

By Greg Coleridge 

Article linked HERE

We at Move to Amend appreciate receiving emails and social media notices about the latest hideous corporate action or example of a corporation skirting public accountability. They simply add to our mounting evidence that corporations have too much political and economic power, and that the We the People Amendment is needed to unequivocally establish that the power and authority of people should be greater than the power of corporations.

More than usual communication was received recently when President Trump pardoned BitMex corporation, a cryptocurrency exchange that had pleaded guilty last year for violating the Bank Secrecy Act for doing business without establishing a legitimate anti-money laundering program. BitMEX was criminally fined $100 million in connection with its guilty plea, which was in addition to $130 million in previously imposed civil penalties.

Over the course of a powerful and packed week in Washington, DC, the Move to Amend national team and supporters met with members of Congress and their staff to build crucial support for the We the People Amendment (H.J.R 54): a constitutional amendment to end corporate constitutional rights and eliminate big money from our political system.

We have some exciting news to share with you—we’ve picked up 20 new co-sponsors since last month! That’s a huge step forward in our mission to pass the We the People Amendment (House Joint Resolution 54). We’re now up to 48 total cosponsors in Congress, and we couldn’t be more grateful for your continued support.

This is a major win, and it shows that our message is starting to stick. But here's the thing: we’re not done yet. Far from it.

At Move to Amend, we know that the fight to restore power to the people cannot happen in isolation. It’s a fight that intersects with the struggles of various movements pushing for justice in this country and around the world. This is why we were proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with thousands of passionate activists in Washington, D.C., at the recent Hands Off protest and the subsequent Defend the Students, Let Gaza Live March.

These actions were not just demonstrations against specific policies but were powerful statements about the deep-seated injustice that corporate control perpetuates across our political system. From the attacks on students' rights to protest to funding genocide to the ongoing attacks on reproductive rights, it is clear that corporate rule fuels injustice and inequality.

Affiliate & Advocate Spotlight: Santa Clara County Move to Amend & Sunrise Movement RGV

We’ve got some important updates that highlight just how far we’ve come in this fight—and how much farther we need to go.

We’ve now secured 45 cosponsors for the We the People Amendment! This is a great milestone, but we need to keep up the pressure. More lawmakers are recognizing the threat corporate influence poses to our political system, and thanks to your efforts, we are making real progress. But we can’t stop now.

Check if your Representative is a cosponsor!

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a shocking but somehow completely unsurprising move, the White House today announced a bold new initiative: "Democracy, Brought to You By…"—a corporate sponsorship program allowing billionaires and multinational corporations to officially sponsor U.S. laws, government agencies, and even entire branches of government.

“Congress is expensive,” said an unnamed White House spokesperson while sipping a Pepsi™ (now the Official Beverage of the Department of Justice™). “And since we all know corporations already write the laws, we figured it was time to cut out the middleman and start making democracy profitable again.”

Cultural Change for the We the People Amendment

[third in the series] 

Women had few legal rights in early U.S. history. Single women could serve as guardians, sue and be sued and act as executors of estates, but little else, including the right to vote. Married women, under the British laws of “coverture” which remained in place after the revolution, could not own property, control their own money, sign legal documents, or vote. In both instances, men represented women in these affairs. Despite Abigail Adams urging her husband and future President, John Adams, to “Remember the Ladies,” in establishing the new government, he responded, “We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems.”

Adams wasn’t the only prominent woman early on advocating for women's rights. The 1772 book by enslaved poet Phillis Wheatly challenged the narrative that blacks and women were inferior to men. “On the Equality of Sexes” by Judith Sargent Murray and “The Vindication of the Rights of Women” by Mary Wollstoncraft were other early writings affirming that women were human beings, not property, deserving of basic rights. A century later, Susan B. Anthony stated, “It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. Suffragette Mary Livermore, noted: “Above the titles of wife and mother, which, although dear, are transitory and accidental, there is the title human being, which precedes and out-ranks every other.”

The Abolitionist Movement was the spark for the century-long Women’s Right Movement. Women began to speak out publicly against slavery despite discrimination in male-led abolitionist organizations. More radical abolitionists in the 1830s demanded the immediate end to slavery and women’s rights split with those simply calling for a more gradual end to slavery. Women gained valuable experience in organizing, speaking and writing. The refusal to seat and hear from Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, two staunch abolitionists and women’s rights advocates at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, was a major factor in the eventual creation of a separate women’s rights movement.

A cultural shift toward women’s rights was underway.