Local MTA Affiliate Addresses Troy, Ohio City Council

At the June 15th Troy City Council meeting, volunteers with Move to Amend Miami County, Ohio provided a history lesson in advance of the nation's 250th birthday. Our founders, imperfect though they were, understood the threat to democracy posed by wealthy factions and corporations. They took turns reading quotations from our founders and early presidents.

Scroll down to read the script the team used for this effective presentation.

JUNE 15, 2026: STATEMENTS TO TROY CITY COUNCIL ON NATION’S 250TH BIRTHDAY

PREFACE: volunteer

[Holding up a $5 bill] This is money, not speech. It’s property I possess.

[Holding up a corporate charter for FirstEnergy Corp] This is a corporate charter, not a person. It’s property shareholders own.

Billionaires and large corporations use their property to influence decisions that affect us, often in harmful ways. That’s why we need to end the misguided doctrines that “money is speech” and “a corporation is a person” with inherent, unalienable “constitutional” rights. This need is neither new nor radical. In fact, our nation’s founders, however imperfect they were, understood the threats posed by wealthy factions and corporations. Tonight, in honor of our nation’s 250th birthday, we will share what founders and early presidents had to say about these threats to democracy. 

Quote 1: volunteer

I’m reading a statement made by Gouverneur Morris, in 1787, at the Constitutional Convention.

The Executive Magistrate should be the guardian of the people, even of the lower classes, [against] Legislative tyranny, against the Great & the wealthy who in the course of things will necessarily compose the Legislative body. Wealth tends to corrupt the mind & to nourish its love of power, and to stimulate it to oppression. History proves this to be the spirit of the opulent. 

Quote 2: volunteer

I’m reading a statement by James Madison, 1792, writing anonymously for the National Gazette.

A government operating by corrupt influence; substituting the motive of private interest in place of public duty; converting its pecuniary dispensations into bounties to favorites, or bribes to opponents; accommodating its measures to the avidity of a part of the nation instead of the benefit of the whole: in a word, enlisting an army of interested partisans, whose tongues, whose pens, whose intrigues, and whose active combinations, by supplying the terror of the sword, may support a real domination of the few, under an apparent liberty of the many. 

Quote 3: volunteer

I’m reading a statement from George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address.

However combinations or associations . . . may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. 

Quote 4: volunteer

I’m reading a statement Thomas Jefferson wrote, in 1796, to Edward Rutledge, youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence, a wealthy South Carolina lawyer, and politician who became governor of that state.

I love to see honest men & honorable men at the helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses, nor pursue measures by which they may profit, & then profit by their measures. 

Quote 5: volunteer

I’m reading a statement Thomas Jefferson wrote, in 1816, in a letter to George Logan, a Pennsylvania politician, farmer and friend.

I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country. 

Quote 6: volunteer

I’m reading a statement made by James Madison, in1827, to J.K. Paulding, a Navy agent who later became U.S. Secretary of the Navy.

[I]ncorporated Companies with proper limitations and guards, may in particular cases, be useful; but they are at best a necessary evil only. 

Quote 7: volunteer

In his 1833 message to Congress, Andrew Jackson, 7th president of the United States, excoriated the Second Bank of the United States, one of the largest corporations at the time, describing it as "a permanent electioneering engine" and calling for the revocation of its charter, which it had violated.

Here’s what else he had to say:

. . . the question is distinctly presented whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions.

Quote 8: volunteer

In his 1837 First Annual Message, Martin Van Buren, 8th president of the United States, 1837, also addressed concerns about the corporate banking system in the United States. Here’s what he had to say:

[T]here will be neither stability nor safety either in the fiscal affairs of the Government or in the pecuniary transactions of individuals and corporations so long as a connection exists between them which, like the past, offers such strong inducements to make them the subjects of political agitation. Indeed, I am more than ever convinced of the dangers to which the free and unbiased exercise of political opinion—the only sure foundation and safeguard of republican government—would be exposed by any further increase of the already overgrown influence of corporate authorities.

Quotes 9 & 10: volunteer

There’s a bright line that extends from our founders up through the ages. I'd like to read two more quotations. They come 112 and 134 years, respectively, after our founding; however, they are consistent with our founders’ warnings and are worth sharing now.

In his 1888 annual message, Grover Cleveland said,

Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters.

Theodore Roosevelt had this to say in his 1910 New Nationalism Speech:

The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being.

CONCLUDING COMMENT: volunteer

Eleven years after the Declaration of Independence, our founders crafted the U.S. Constitution. They built into the Constitution a process for amending it, which has been done 27 times. It’s time to do it again with the proposed We the People Amendment, House Joint Resolution 54 in the current Congress. The survival of our democratic republic requires the regulation of political spending to ensure that everyone—not just those with the most money—has a voice in decisions that affect us. It is also essential that we make clear, once and for all, that a corporation, as a creation of the state, is not a person with inherent, inalienable constitutional rights. Move to Amend will continue to educate Miami County residents about the need to eliminate these very threats identified years ago by our founders and early presidents.