Friends,
I’ve been privileged during my life in many ways. Near the top of the list has been the opportunity to work and become friends with incredible people across the country who’ve selflessly shared their time, talents and treasures to help others and to change the underlying conditions that harm people, places and the planet.
The separate and increasing numerous and interrelated economic, social, political and environmental problems that have been blatantly exposed in 2020 share several root causes. One of them is that people lack fundamental rights to make important decisions affecting their lives. This absence of our right to decide is due to a sad truth: we’ve never lived in an authentic democracy/democratic republic. We the People have never included all the people.
Making matters worse has been courts granting corporations constitutional rights (“corporate personhood”) that overturn passed laws and the constitutional right of wealthy individuals and corporate entities to spend huge sums of money to influence elected officials and public policies. Both prevent our ability to protect our health and safety and the welfare of our communities, country and ecosystem.
This needs to fundamentally change. That’s why I work and support Move to Amend, calling for the We the People Amendment and for real democracy. Please help me reach my personal goal of raising $5000 by the end of the year to support our efforts.
I’ve been working to end corporate constitutional rights for 25 years -- before most people ever heard of “corporate personhood” and more than a decade before the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. It began when it struck me that all the peace, justice and environmental problems I was working on for a social action organization in Ohio wasn’t addressing the core issues of: Who governs? Who decides? Who has the power to determine the kinds of laws and regulations we have? The answer to all these questions was “Not us, not people."
Past and present “surface” problems will never be solved unless we address the root solutions of abolishing corporate constitutional rights (“corporate personhood”), big money in elections (caused by the constitutional doctrine that money in elections equals free speech) and democratizing our Constitution. This will only happen by building a grassroots and racially, gender and age diverse democracy movement -- which is Move to Amend’s mission. Over 700 communities across the country have passed resolutions and initiatives in the spirit of the We the People Amendment while 75 Congressional Representatives are Amendment cosponsors.
We don’t chase the headlines or shift our strategy based on where major foundations this year want to put their money. We’re able to focus on root causes because we’re politically and economically independent -- not funded by corporations, big foundations, political parties, governments or billionaires. Instead, we depend on our supporters to help us continue the work.
The pandemic may have financially hit you hard. It did us. All staff, including me, worked as volunteers and went on unemployment for many months. It’s critical we get back on track for the start of 2021.
Please make an investment (it’s more than a donation or contribution) to help us together work for real people power to achieve justice in all their forms, a livable world and authentic democracy.
Thank you for considering.
Onwards and Upwards!
City of Cleveland Heights
Council Office
40 Severance Circle
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118
June 10, 2025
The Honorable Bernie Moreno
SR-284 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable Jon Husted
SR-304 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable Shontel Brown
2455 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Rob McColley
1 Capitol Square, Second Floor 201
Columbus, OH 43215
The Honorable Matt Huffman
77 South high Street 14th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
CC:
Mayor Kahlil Seren, City of Cleveland Heights
Director of Law William R. Hanna, City of Cleveland Heights
Dear Senators Moreno and Husted, Representative Brown, President McColley, and Speaker Huffman:
On behalf of the Cleveland Heights City Council, I am writing to share a summary of the 12th Annual “Democracy Day” Public Hearing, held on June 5, 2025, in Council Chambers.
This public hearing is required by a 2013 citizen-initiated ordinance titled “Calling on Congress to Amend the U.S. Constitution to Establish That Corporations Are Not People and Money Is Not Speech.” Passed by 77% of Cleveland Heights voters, the ordinance mandates an annual public hearing to examine “the political influence by corporations and big money in connection with the most recent election.” It also requires the City Council to notify elected officials of the hearing and to reaffirm the will of the voters, who in November 2013 called for a constitutional amendment declaring:
At the June 5 hearing, eight individuals provided oral testimony, and one submitted written remarks. Topics included:
As we protest authoritarianism this Saturday—and legitimately condemn the many anti-democratic and unjust actions of Trump—let us also remember the tyranny of our corporate overlords who have been—perhaps more quietly but not less aggressively—eroding our democracy.
by GREG COLERIDGE, Common Dreams, June 11, 2025
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/no-kings-corporate-power
The “No Kings Day” mass rallies and marches this Saturday across the country will be, hopefully, a political and cultural affirmation of the democratic vision that we should be a self-governing people, a vision that has never been fully realized. The events must not only reject the reemergence and expansion of authoritarianism of Trump from his previous administration. They should also acknowledge the much longer tyranny and authoritarianism of corporate rule.
Speeches, signs, chants, and petitions will undoubtedly address the numerous authoritarian actions by the Trump administration since the election. These include pardons and immunities for loyalists, the use of federal agencies against political opponents, use of disinformation and threats against elected officials, mass deportations and family separation, executive orders that trump local and state governments, government loyalty purges, crackdown on the media and dissent, and militarized response to protests – such as the overreacting deployment of the Marines in response to the largely peaceful protests against ICE immigration raids in Los Angeles.
As we protest authoritarianism this Saturday—and legitimately condemn the many anti-democratic and unjust actions of Trump—let us also remember that tyranny has many symbols. One is a red hat. The other is a corporate logo.
The No Kings Day actions are just the latest and important public resistance to Trump’s tyrannical actions that have included other nationwide demonstrations and civil disobedience, legal challenges, whistleblowers and leaks, mutual aid, sanctuary networks, state and local government pushback, worker and union actions, and campus resistance.
Yet the reality is that Trump and his Project 2025 playbook represent one form of authoritarianism that, while distinct in some respects, intersects with another deeply entrenched form: corporate domination.
Read moreMove to Amend is a partner of the June 14 NO KINGS National Day of Action and mass mobilization - organized in response to the increasing authoritarian excesses and corruption of the Trump regime.
We’ve watched as they’ve cracked down on free speech (of people, not corporations), detained people for their political positions, threatened to deport American citizens, and defied the courts. They’ve done this all while continuing to serve and enrich their billionaire and corporate allies. They think they rule—but we are more powerful than even their worst aspirations.
While flagrant and unapologetic authoritarian rule efforts are recent, corporate rule has gone on for more a century. Shielded by Supreme Court-anointed constitutional rights, corporations have crushed our efforts to provide quality health care, shelter, food, education and employment to all, a livable natural world and a real democracy.
We are asking our supporters to join thousands of people for No Kings Day in their local communities. This is an important moment to raise up the We the People Amendment.
Here's how you can help:
Read moreOrganized working people in factories, farms, offices and other settings have been historically the most powerful constituency in the U.S. to check corporate power and the capitalist economic system. There is an inverse relationship between the power of workers and organized capital, that is, corporations (especially when allied with the government) – which is sometimes called “fascism.” Privileges and rights granted to corporations and property were – and remain – privileges and rights denied to human beings.
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At the time of the American Revolution, 95 percent of the population was engaged in farming. Most of the rest were individual craftsmen, skilled in the hands-on creation and restoration of objects.
Craftsmen, including carpenters, were among the first workers to collectively organize themselves into independent groups – called unions. Many originally focused on mutual aid. Their education and advocacy led to an executive order in 1840 establishing the 10 hour workday for government employees and workers on government contracts.
The industrial revolution transformed work and workers in the U.S. in the 1840s as craftsmen, and former farmers began working in factories in New England. Poor working conditions, hazardous environments, long hours, low wages, child labor, and widespread pollution were common. Additionally, the concentration of people in urban areas where factories were located led to overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions.
Workers began educating themselves about the nature of their condition, including that only a small percentage of their time they labored went to pay their wages; the rest of the time paid for the factory, materials, tools and the income and profits of the corporate owners. They developed a class consciousness, that is, an understanding and awareness of their collective position in society, particularly as it related to the property owning class. This resulted in greater worker solidarity and a commitment to create a more just society. This represented the start of the labor movement.
Read morehttps://www.dispatch.com/picture-gallery/news/2025/05/24/nato-protest-rally-downtown-dayton-ohio/83840769007
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May 24, 2025
By Staff Report
The NATO Parliamentary Assembly is in Dayton for its spring session, which is causing a lot of changes downtown. Here are things to know about Saturday.
Read moreSam Allard | May 12, 2025
https://www.axios.com/local/cleveland/2025/05/12/democracy-day-city-hall-money-politics
A community-led "Democracy Day" hearing arrives at Cleveland City Hall Monday as part of the national movement to get corporate money out of politics.
The big picture: Cleveland is among more than 20 Ohio municipalities that have passed resolutions since 2012 pushing Congress to amend the U.S. Constitution to declare that money is not speech.
Corporate constitutional rights (also known as “corporate personhood”) were essentially “born” on this day in 1886 with the Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. The article below, published on this date last year, explores how this decision and those that followed have empowered corporations to override our rights and limit our ability to protect and improve our lives, families, communities, and the natural world.
We mark this anniversary each year to underscore a critical reality: corporate constitutional rights did not begin with the 2010 Citizens United decision. Nor are they limited to the Supreme Court’s creation of corporate First Amendment “free speech” rights.
This is exactly what makes Move to Amend unique among democracy-focused organizations. Simply reversing Citizens United or ending corporate political speech rights is not enough to achieve real democracy -- because we’ve never had a legitimate democracy.
That’s why we have always -- and always will -- call for the abolition of all corporate constitutional rights and for ending the doctrine that money spent in elections is equivalent to speech -- core elements of our We the People Amendment (HJR54).
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GREG COLERIDGE & JENNIE SPANOS
May, 10, 2024
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/corporate-constitutional-rights
On May 1, 2025, workers, immigrants, students, and families will rally in over 900 cities and all 50 states to protest what they are calling the “Billionaire agenda” and demand public investment in working people’s lives, not billionaires’ bank accounts.
The list of events are HERE
Attend an event near you…and show your support for the We the People Amendment as a solution to the many individual problems we’re currently facing.
Read more
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.
Read more
Letter to the Editor
April 19, 2025
https://miamivalleytoday.com/democracy-begins-at-the-local-level/
To the editor:
Democracy begins at the local level. It’s where we discuss community problems and find solutions. It’s also where we explore questions of principle—in particular, principles that guide our country and affect each of us, regardless of our political affiliation. This has been true since our nation’s founding.
In Ohio, 26 communities have explored the question of corporate power and big money in politics. As a result, they have passed resolutions, ordinances, and/or citizen ballot initiatives supporting an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that makes two things clear: (1) corporations and other artificial entities do not have constitutional rights and (2) money is not speech and campaign spending should be regulated.
Read moreOpEdNews Op Eds 4/14/2025
By Greg Coleridge
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.
Read moreUpdated: Mar. 11, 2025, 11:26 a.m. | Published: Mar. 11, 2025, 9:34 a.m.
https://www.cleveland.com/community/2025/03/a-more-than-capacity-crowd-attends-chagrin-falls-move-to-amend-day.html
CHAGRIN FALLS, Ohio -- In place of the usual Monday night Village Council meeting March 10, the village hosted “Move to Amend Day.”
Chagrin Falls hosts “Move to Amend Day” once every two years so that residents can speak their minds concerning government topics.
Specifically, the event looks at the impact on the village by political influence of corporate entities -- including unions and political action committees -- in regard to the most recent state and federal elections.
Kent voters in 2015 approved a ballot initiative for City Council to schedule Democracy Day every election year. Nearly 30 cities in Ohio also have approved resolutions calling for “We the People” constitution amendments and public hearings, including Akron, Canton and Cleveland. Democracy Day is part of the national Move to Amend movement to approve the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.
Any person wishing to be heard on the subject matter of the political influence resulting from campaign contributions by corporate entities should plan to give a 3- to 5-minute talk and submit a copy of the talk to the Clerk of Council at the public hearing. People also can attend and listen to the speakers.
For details on the amendment, go to movetoamend.org.
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.
Read moreAt 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 every social movement in this country and beyond. 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, sustainability and democracy.
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.
We’ve begun assembling an “art collection” of poems, music, literature, and films. This list is just the beginning.
To mark World Poetry Day, below are two poems from Move to Amend supporters, plus a poetic song on the corrupting influence of money in politics.
Read moreMiami Valley Today
March 1, 2025
By Deb Hogshead
Guest columnist
January 21 was the 15th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, a ruling that opened the floodgates of big money into political campaigns. At the Troy City Council meeting that night, I made a statement explaining why we need to close those floodgates and end the misguided doctrine that a corporation is a person with the same inherent, inalienable constitutional rights as you and me.
Since then, we’ve seen two very significant things happen.
First, we’ve seen how $288 million can buy a seat in the White House and a platform to speak from the Oval Office.
Second, we’ve seen the We the People Amendment get re-introduced in Congress as House Joint Resolution 54. The proposed amendment requires the regulation of campaign spending and makes clear that constitutional rights belong to natural persons only.
Read more
Greg Coleridge, national co-director of Move to Amend, will discuss corporate money in politics at 6 p.m. March 26 at Birchard Public Library, according to an announcement.
Coleridge said a record $20 billion was spent on the 2024 presidential campaign, with much of it coming from billionaires and corporations.
“Proposed corporate regulatory cuts, billionaire tax cuts and cuts to federal programs relied on by middle and lower-income people are simply the predictable results of a rigged political system,” Coleridge said.
Read more
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Move to Amend is a coalition of hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of individuals committed to social and economic justice, ending corporate rule, and building a vibrant democracy that is genuinely accountable to the people, not corporate interests. We call for an amendment to the US Constitution to unequivocally state that inalienable rights belong to human beings only, and that money is not a form of protected free speech under the First Amendment and can be regulated in political campaigns. Move to Amend © Move to Amend
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