At Move to Amend, we believe that creativity is a powerful tool for change. The arts—poetry, music, visual art, and literature—have always been integral to social movements. From the resistance of past generations to today’s battles against corporate rule, artists have led the charge in inspiring others to stand up for justice, equity, and democracy. This page serves as a showcase of the creative works that support our cause and as a space to gather, celebrate, and promote artistic activism aimed at ending corporate personhood and restoring democracy.

Big Money in Elections & Democracy: The Power of Art

The fight against corporate personhood and the corrupting influence of money in politics is deeply connected to the power of art. Through various forms of expression, we aim to expose the impact of big money in elections and corporate influence on our democratic processes. Whether through songs, films, poetry, or literature, artists are helping to shine a light on the dangers of corporate rule, and how it affects every aspect of our lives.

Featured Creative Works:

Documentaries & Videos:

• Legalize Democracy
  Watch the full documentary by Move to Amend that explores the need for the We the People Amendment and the power of money in politics.
  
• Why we need the We the People Amendment, narrated by Peter Coyote
• Move to Amend PSA

Music:

• Move to Amend -  – Shamako Noble, MTA Rap
• Corporations are People – Hank Woji
• I'm Gonna Marry GE – Gary Kanter
• The Big Corporation Plan – Charly Price
• End the Corporation – Sharon Abreu
• Sound from the Bench – Ted Hearne (Pulitzer Prize finalist) – An avant-garde composition that explores corporate personhood through the lens of landmark Supreme Court cases.
• Corporations Are Persons Now! - The Raging Grannies
  To the tune: Bicycle Built for Two

You can also explore this Spotify playlist of songs for social change spanning different genres, movements, and eras.

Literature:

• Corporate Relations – Jenna Osman
  
  
• "America Incorporated" – Sheldon Firem
  A powerful critique of corporate personhood, capturing the essence of corporate power through the voice of a fictional corporate entity.
  

  AMERICA INCORPORATED

  Sheldon Firem

  Call me Industry.

  Citizen!

  I am the Corporate Citizen.

  I am your liege.

  Your rights are my rights.

  I outrank you, I out-maneuver you, I outspend you.

  Democracy is my sandbox.

  Full disclosure, I rent your federal, state, and local elected representatives. Why buy the whole cow?

  My fathers are many: nineteenth century railroad magnates, robber barons, steel executives, and oil moguls. I was conceived in the belly of their coffers, birthed in the 1886 Supreme Court case, Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad, and found my voice in the 2010 Citizen’s United case. The Fourteenth Amendment was my midwife.

  My mothers are many: Congresspersons, Cabinet members, state legislators, governors, mayors, trustees, and board members. Ironically, they all suckle on my teats.

  While I am not expressly mentioned in the Constitution, Citizens United has given me my constitutional voice and an open checkbook.

  I speak with my voice and hard cash. Your elected representatives habitually have their hands in my deep pockets. They dine with me over escargot and dine with you over turbot.

  More to the point.

  Citizen, you have been uppity of late demanding consumer rights and protections.

  Billionaires and millionaires have taken notice. Your corporate overlords are displeased.

  Remember your place!

  We record and remember your keystrokes.

  Last time I looked, you are a consuming robot, a customer masquerading as a citizen. Your freedom is in “free-delivery,” your “cred” is in your credit score, and your malleable personality is reliant on purchasing product.

  You need “X” to tell you the truth, Tik-Tok to entertain you, a screen to sedate you, and a performative, partisan politician to silo you. Commercials are the “crack,” and influencers are the “speed” that keep you up at night. You main-line with your laptop never thinking to look out the window.

  I compose your thoughts so you do not have to wrestle with reality or trouble with truth.

  America’s home-grown, political autocrats jerry-rig your elections by gerrymandering your districts. The Democratic and Republican Parties pimp their principles in statehouses and dimly lit Capital staircases to win my approval.

  Donelon Mump and Elonald Trusk are the useful Frankensteins that are conceived in this blessed union of Free Market corporate citizens and pandering politicians.

  My ubiquitous commercials are your true love, home, purpose, and sustenance. They will sustain you. Domestic corporations wake you up in the morning, and global, multinational corporations rock you to sleep at night.

  You have ears to hear and eyes to see my digitized streaming. Forget yesterday’s news and remember tomorrow’s Super-Bowl commercials. Commercials are the message. The weather, celebrity scandals, house fires, car crashes, and unsedated sportscasters are filler and fodder.

  Allow my unceasing “breaking news,” addictive ads, and chuckling news anchors to break your spirit. Your desire to entertain your own thoughts and plan your own life is socialism. Pledge allegiance to unfettered capitalism. In Christmas sales and Easter discounts we trust.

  Swim in my corporate “Shark Tank.” “Americans Got Talent” for depleting their savings accounts. My digital billboards will direct you to the promised land. I am working on converting the sun into one large LED light that flashes the message, “Eat at Joe’s.”

  Advertise yourself to data brokers and data thieves. Sell your confidential soul for a Slurpee coupon. Your home is a good domicile for mortgage brokers. Your life is a good investment for futures traders.

  Narcissistic politicians, fad-men, ad-men, and corporations will lead you out of that Sodom of independent thought and Gomorrah of authentic emotions. Sail with them upon the swirling waters of the New York Stock Exchange.

  Citizen, you are my property and I am your purpose.

  I am the true citizen, the Corporate Citizen.

  I am your liege.

  Your rights are my rights.

  I outrank you, I out-maneuver you, I outspend you.

  “Veni, Vidi, Veci.”

  Representative democracy was once a pretty concept.

  Now, democracy is my sandbox and oligarchy is your home.
  
  

• Move to Amend Poems – By Greg Coleridge
  A collection of poems highlighting the deep impact of corporate rule on society and the need for systemic change.

February 2014

 This Sunday is the Academy Awards
Which will be seen by the hordes

But a film that wasn’t nominated
Shows how we’ve been dominated
By those who’ve ruled, plundered and oppressed
Hijacking those for democracy who have pressed

Persons of the wrong gender, ethnicity and race
Have never had in this nation an authentic democratic place

The film also shows how rights for corporations & big money
Are as realistic as the Easter Bunny
This entire system of oppression, oligarchy and corporatocracy
Is documented in the short film, “Legalize Democracy”

[Note: Legalize Democracy is produced by Move to Amend]

May 2019

No decree, regulation or law is sufficient
No election of any public official is efficient

Not simply about Citizens United cursing
Nor even Buckley v Valeo reversing

The only way to set our sites
To abolish corporate constitutional rights

Is an amendment to end corporate personhood
-- a big step toward making government good

And the only proposed Constitutional Amendment that is great
is the We the People Amendment, H.J.R. 48

January 2020

For the past decade, Move to Amend has tried to help others set their sights
On not only the need to abolish big money in elections and corporate constitutional rights

But to also end all oppressions and to understand that we’re facing multiple crises at their heights
That can only be solved not piecemeal, but systemically, which is as clear as day is to night

The power of those we face — corporations, the political elite, the super rich — have incredible might
Which use it to distort, distract, co-opt, threaten, legally bribe, and/or confuse many people from seeing the light

That authentic justice, peace, a livable world and democracy is a possible future that is bright
But can only be achieved by a powerful, independent democracy movement that has real nonviolent bite

MTA is doing its part to work for systemic change, despite finances that have always been, especially now, tight
Yet, we’ll together — despite the odds, powers-to-be, even pandemics — continue this now-more-than-ever-important fight.

November 2021

Among some groups the current trend
It to just work to Citizens United end
But what we feel
And what we spiel
If that corporations are NOT people, my friend

<><> 

Claims that corporations are persons by the High Court
To existing Amendments have been a major contort
So one must ask
And seek to unmask
What up their noses did and do Justices snort

<><> 

While a democracy crisis equaled the capital breach
As well as the twice Congressional efforts to impeach
But just as much a threat
Has been the High Court’s duet
Rulings that corpses are people and money is speech

<><> 

Is it enough for the Constitution to be reformed
Or is it so fundamentally deformed
That the only solution
For a democratic evolution
Is for it to be transformed

• "The Corporate Coup & The People's Stand" – By Bryson Cline (16 years old).
  A call to action for reclaiming our democracy from corporate control through grassroots organizing and the We the People Amendment.

The Corporate Coup & The People's Stand
by Bryson Cline (16 years old)

They bought the elections, they silenced the poor,
Stacked up their profits and on our backs that are sore.
A government stolen, its power misused,
By hands that see people as tools to be used.

Laws for the wealthy, deals made in smoke,
A system where justice is nothing but a joke.
They call it free speech, but dollars decide,
Whose voice will be heard, whose rights denied.

Yet in the shadows, a movement ignites,
Rising like dawn, reclaiming our rights.
No longer will money determine our fate,
The people unite before it’s too late.

The We the People Amendment stands bold,
A promise of freedom that cannot be sold.
No more shall corporations pretend to be men,
Their rule must end—Move to Amend!

They call it democracy, but we see the game,
Where money buys power and justice is maimed.
Corporations whisper, their pockets run deep,
Drowning out voices, making laws cheap.

But people are rising, their voices are strong,
A movement is building, we’ve waited too long.
From cities to towns, we take  the pen,
Demanding real change—Move to Amend!

From cities to towns, the message will spread,
A government truly by people, instead.
We rally, we fight, we take back our land,
For a future where justice is ours to command.

So stand with us now, make your voice known,
Sign the petition, let seeds of change be sown.
The tide is shifting, the people defend,
Together we rise—Move to Amend!

Additional Works:

• "The Goose and the Common" – — The Privatization of Public Space" / Anonymous
  An anonymous poem from the 18th century critiquing the privatization of public resources, resonating with today’s struggles against corporate land grabs.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who takes things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back."

• "Birth of We, The People" – Gus Speth’s vision of a new democratic framework free from corporate influence.

"Birth of We, The People" poem
Gus Speth

"If we could restart the US of A,
where then would we begin
to give the clock new spin
and take the role creators play?

We will mainly focus on the Founders
and their badly flawed creation,
the much-revered Constitution.
On it the country nearly founders.

To start, there will be no first sin.
Humans will not be slaves.
Our story better then behaves,
so much evil gone with the wind.

Our democracy very nearly dies
when states not people vote.
It’s time for us to now demote
the not-so-great Great Compromise.

 The Electoral College must also go.
The popular vote is ignored.
The People once again get gored.
To that, our new democracy says no.

All this is made worse when corporations
are “people” and their money “speech.”
They now have extraordinary reach,
matching the power of ordinary nations.

The Commerce Clause must be rethought.
It can block community action
and easily undermine local traction.
Our priority cannot be to have things bought.

It is odd that states control elections.
The foundation of national government
easily shaken by corrupt state ferment.
We’ll make a new deal for voters’ selections.

We will enshrine the right to privacy,
making it explicit in our new document.
There, it would be the Choice complement
to all the other rights we see.

The right of individuals to carry a gun
wasn’t there, until in 2008 the Court said yes.
We will reclaim gun control from this mess
and return our streets to having fun.

We humans invented having rights,
but gave them all to ourselves.
Omitting “rights of nature” compels
action to correct the oversight.

We know we can’t start America again.
It is a day dream that comes to this end.
But there is much that we can mend
if together we make history bend.

For our democracy’s shortfalls
there are now work arounds.
We can get to better ground,
bursting new and ancient walls.

Government of, by, and for the people,
that is the essence of democracy,
the meaning of popular sovereignty,
the bright light in the steeple."

• “We Are the Scorpion in Your Jackboot” – Doug Rawlings, a poem from a March 21 action in Portland, Maine, targeting banks that invest in fossil fuels. Rawlings is editor of Peace & Planet News, published by Veterans For Peace.

“Corporate America
be forewarned:
We are your karma
We are your Orion
rising in the night sky
We are the scorpion
in your jackboot
Corporate America
be forewarned:
We will not buy
your bloody parades anymore
We refuse your worthless praise
We spit on
your war memorials
Corporate America
be forewarned:
We will not feed you
our bodies
our minds
our children
anymore
Corporate America
be forewarned:
If we have our way
(and we will)
the real war memorials
will rise
from your ashes”

Submit Your Own Creative Work

Do you have a poem, song, artwork, or any other form of creative expression that supports the movement to end corporate rule? We invite you to contribute your voice to the cause! Whether it’s in celebration of World Poetry Day or in response to current events, your creative resistance is an essential part of the fight to restore democracy to the people.

Send your submission to [email protected].

Move to Amend Arts & Culture

The arts are integral to the fight for justice. Through Arts and Culture, we create spaces for artists and cultural workers to collaborate and support our cause. This includes generating materials for creative resistance, collaborating with artists using their medium to fight corporate power, and exploring the deep connection between art, culture, and social/policy change.

Join us in this effort to use creativity as a force for social transformation!