Updated: Jun. 20, 2023, 8:12 a.m.

At the podium in Cleveland Heights council chambers at City Hall, Carla Rautenberg served as moderator for the 10th annual Cleveland Heights Democracy Day, held June 7.Tom Jewell/Special to cleveland.com

https://www.cleveland.com/community/2023/06/no-time-like-the-present-as-cleveland-heights-holds-10th-annual-democracy-day.html

By Thomas Jewell, special to cleveland.com

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- Organizers of the 10th annual Democracy Day held at City Hall earlier this month pointed out that no money was exchanged for the people’s right to free speech.

June 7, 2023 in Council Chambers
Cleveland Heights City Hall
40 Severance Circle, Cleveland Heights, OH 44118

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Carla Rautenberg, Cleveland Heights – Introductory Remarks

WELCOME to the 10^th Annual Cleveland Heights Democracy Day. Many thanks to City Council and Cleveland Heights voters who made this annual public hearing possible. In a happy coincidence, with moving our Democracy Day to June, we now share the celebratory spirit of Pride Month and Juneteenth!

One update about the progress of our proposed Constitutional Amendment in the U.S. Congress. Rep. Pramila Jayapal reintroduced the We the People Amendment stating that corporations are not people and money is not speech, in the 118^th Congress, with one important change: it is now House Joint Resolution 54. You will need that number, HJR 54, to track the resolution’s progress in the U.S. House. It was only re-introduced in April, and there are already 49 cosponsors. Please contact Congresswoman Shontel Brown and ask her to be the 50th co-sponsor of HJR-54!

Back by popular request this year, we have a Ohio Democracy vs. Corporations Quiz. This is not a “gotcha” quiz. It’s a more of a “teaching” quiz, so the answers are given on the back of the sheet. I’ll read the first question now, then we’ll have five more interspersed with public testimony. I hope you find them interesting. This first question actually is a repeat from last year, so a few people might recall it and remember the answer.

1. Early legislative acts in Ohio created corporations one at a time, through petitioning the General Assembly, and stipulating rigid conditions. These privileges, not rights, included which of the following?
2. Limited duration of the charter or certificate of incorporation
3. Limitations on how much land a corporation could own
4. Limits on capitalization, or how much owners could invest in the corporation
5. Charters were restricted to specific, stated purposes, so a new purpose required a new corporate charter.
6. All of the above.

And the answer is: e. All of the above.

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Full report --  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jFhbSQam4-Gcq0XRX9c_1tR-50u4jhHt/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=103004605604714750559&rtpof=true&sd=true

Is this a legitimate question given several recent Supreme Court decisions? Are a majority of Justices shifting ideologically toward more “democracy” and/or less inclined to side with property and more with people?

The answers are an emphatic NO.

Why not?

Last month, the High Court made two decisions upholding the federal Voting Rights Act by striking down laws in Alabama and Louisiana that discriminated against African Americans in the drawing of Congressional maps. In both cases, congressional districts were drawn (or “gerrymandered”) by state officials to concentrate as many African Americans in as few districts as possible. Both were clear voting rights wins!

In addition, the “Supremes” in another somewhat surprising decision ruled last week against North Carolina Republicans who used a fringe legal argument, called the “independent state legislative” theory, to defend the drawing of congressional maps that heavily favored Republicans in elections. The ruling affirmed the right of the state supreme court to consider suits challenging the clear gerrymandered legislative action. Another win for voting rights!

That’s about it. 

Like any invasive plant that will destroy a garden if not ripped out, corporate “rights” continue to quickly spread throughout our culture and institutions causing massive democratic damage.  

The latest example would give corporate entities the "right to vote" in Seaford, Delaware. The sacred principle of “one person, one vote” would become “one person/entity/one vote” if a state law is enacted permitting the “CITY'S ABILITY TO AUTHORIZE ARTIFICIAL ENTITIES, LIMITED LIABILITY CORPORATIONS' PARTNERSHIPS AND TRUSTS TO VOTE IN MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS HELD IN SEAFORD.”

Every artificial entity in Seaford would be able to cast one vote if the law passes. Limited Liability Corporations (LLCs) are structured, in part, to shield the identity of their owners. This means a person living in another state or another country could cast a vote representing the LLC in Seaford in its local elections.

This law already exists in two tiny Delaware communities. Seaford is significantly larger. 

Move to Amend has used ballot initiatives across the country to promote abolishing corporate constitutional rights and money defined as free speech – the core components of the We the People Amendment, HJR54.

Citizens from coast to coast for more than 10 years have collected signatures to place on local and state ballots initiatives calling on Congress to take action. Ohio could possibly do the same in the future.

Citizen-driven ballot initiatives are examples of direct democracy – people taking charge in creating laws that bypass elected representatives. 

However, the ballot initiative as a viable democratic tool for direct democracy (including holding elected officials accountable), as currently defined in the Ohio Constitution, is under direct assault.

Issue 1 would raise the bar in significant ways to make it nearly impossible to pass ballot initiatives – which are already difficult.

State Issue 1 would gut our citizen-initiative rights and make it harder to promote abolishing corporate rule.

Please take action in these 2 ways.

1. VOTE NO ON ISSUE 1. The election is August 8. Early voting begins on July 11.

2. Spread the word. Here’s a link to a sheet to distribute to friends, neighbors, anyone. Each sheet, when cut, produces 4 fliers. Please share far and wide!

Thank you for taking action to send this anti-democratic measure to a well-deserved flaming defeat. 

Vote NO on Issue 1 and distribute the flier to everyone you know.

Eighteen people testified before Cleveland Heights City Council and the public, with Council President Melody Hart presiding in council chambers at city hall. Mayor Kahlil Seren and Councilors Anthony Maddox, Davida Russell, Craig Cobb, Tony Cuda and Gail Larson were also in attendance. Councilor Janine Boyd was absent.

U.S. House Joint Resolution 54, “Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States providing that the rights extended by the Constitution are the rights of natural persons only,” and also establishing that money is not speech, was introduced in the 118^th Congress two months ago by Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and a number of co-sponsors. Attendees were urged to contact their Congressperson, Rep. Shontel Brown, asking her to co-sponsor HJR-54. (Update: on the date of the hearing, June 7, the resolution had 49 co-sponsors. As of June 13, HJR-54 had 53 co-sponsors. Rep. Brown was not among them.)

A strong theme this year was the preemption of public goods and public functions by corporate actors for profit and other forms of private gain. In Ohio, this extends to state government preempting local laws to serve the interests of corporations and entire industries.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas claims it’s no big deal that he received lavish gifts and travel for more than 20 years from billionaire Harlan Crow. They claim they’re just “dearest friends.” Thomas crows that his friend “did not have business before the court.” Crow crows he’s never received anything in return. 

Question: What do the following realities have in common: raising the minimum wage, protecting worker safety, controlling money in politics, preventing fracking, regulating guns, providing paid leave, providing municipal broadband, outlawing loan sharking, rent controls, increasing business taxes, and even banning the use of plastic bags?'

The answer is, of course, preemption – the overturning of local laws by either a state legislature or federal court. Local laws intended to protect the health, safety and welfare of local residents and communities – whether enacted by local elected officials or citizen-driven ballot initiatives – are invalidated. 

Hundreds of these and other laws across the country are being challenged across the country. 

Violence comes in many forms: gunfire for sure, but also striking gavels. 

Thirteen unarmed students were shot, four killed, by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University on this day in 1970 during a peace rally opposing U.S. expansion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia. It marked the first time students were gunned down at an anti-war event in U.S. history. The massacre sparked organized walkout strikes by roughly 4 million students at colleges, universities and high schools across the nation that had been called on May 1. It resulted in an upsurge in public opposition to the Vietnam war. 

South Euclid Democracy Day organizer and emcee Madelon Watts speaks to those assembled for the biannual event Tuesday at the South Euclid Community Center. (Jeff Piorkowski, special to cleveland.com)

by Jeff Piorkowski/special to cleveland.com
https://www.cleveland.com/community/2023/05/south-euclid-holds-fourth-biannual-democracy-day-while-striving-for-elusive-28th-amendment.html

SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio -- In 2016, 77 percent of South Euclid voters approved Issue 201, which called for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution declaring that only human beings, not corporations, are legal persons with constitutional rights, that money is not equivalent to speech and that regulating political contributions and spending is not equivalent to limiting political speech.

Issue 201 also stated that, in order to see through the potential 28th Amendment to the Constitution stating the above goals, a Democracy Day Public Hearing event would be held every two years, during which residents would make their claims as to why corporations are not people.

TOLEDO CITY HALL | MARCH 23, 2023
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Dennis Slotnick

Today we are gathered to proclaim that a for-profit Corporation is not the same as a person and that money is not the same as free speech.

I speak for all the members of the two cosponsoring groups: Our Revolution in Northwest Ohio and Toledo Move to Amend. Thank you City Council for the recent passage of Move to Amend resolution and Medicare for all Resolution coming partly as a result of Democracy Days 2021 and Democracy Day 2022. You now join 22 states, and 800 cities and towns, who have also passed Move To Amend resolutions.

These communities understand what President Jimmy Carter declared. Let us take a moment to honor President Carter as he has just entered hospice care in Georgia. These are some of his words about the Citizens United 2010 Supreme court decision:

• Citizens United has turned America into an “oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.”
• Citizens United “violates the essence” of our democracy and represents “the biggest change in America” since he was elected in 1976.
• Citizens United has left everyday Americans “cheated out of” the chance to make their lives better.
• Citizens United has led to “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.”

Several banks have collapsed over the last several weeks.

• Silvergate and Signature were the two main banks used by risky, flawed and unproven crypto companies. 
  
  
• Silver Valley bank provided initial funding to the declining and volatile financial tech and pharmaceutical startups until those companies could, hopefully, raise money from initially selling stock. It also managed the wealth of the super rich founders of the successful startups. Many of their clients have accounts in the millions of dollars, well above the $250,000 FDIC insured levels. In fact, $150 billion of its $175 billion in deposits were uninsured

The failure of Silver Valley and Signature – the 2nd and 3rd largest bank failures in U.S. history – triggered panicked customers to withdraw nearly $100 billion from their accounts, mostly from mid-sized banks, in one recent week. Several other banks, First Republic and Western Alliance, have seen their market value plummet. Fears of a full-scale banking crisis can – as in the  past – deepen a larger financial and economic crisis. 

Risky and speculative business decisions, like making huge bets on crypto currencies and startups, should not be incentivized, but that’s how the current financial system works: keeping all your wins but shedding all your losses. Call it corporatizing gains and socializing pains. 

The Kids Aren’t Alright. In fact, they could soon be working in dangerous environments such as construction and meatpacking plants.

Child labor in the U.S. has long been thought to be a thing of the past. Although not the first state to do it, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently signed a bill that allows children as young as 14 to work up to 48 hours per week without parental permission. Additionally, children under 16 no longer need the Division of Labor’s permission to work in Arkansas.

Iowa and Ohio also introduced bills to make child labor easier. Here’s what those bills look like:

IOWA

The bill proposes that children aged 14 and 15 can work in dangerous industries such as meatpacking if they and the employer have the right exemptions. Those exemptions are:

• The child must be “participating in work-based learning or a school or employer-administered, work-related program.”
  
  
• The employer must demonstrate “the activity will be performed under adequate supervision and training; the training includes adequate safety precautions; and that the terms and conditions of the proposed employment will not interfere with the health, well-being, or schooling of the minor enrolled in an approved program.”

According to this bill, kids under 16 can work as late as 9pm, and until 11pm during the summer. Although a company can be held liable if a child is hurt during the commute to work, the labor commissioner of Iowa holds the right to waive any such penalty towards a corporation.

OHIO

The bill proposes that children aged 14-15 can work through 9pm year-round (this bill is actually being reintroduced after it failed to pass in 2021).

Such laws make it easier for children to be exploited in the workforce and ignore decades of hard-won precedent. In a specific example, the proposed bill in Iowa delicately dances around the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Act states that only teenagers who are 16-17 who are “bona-fide student-learners and apprentices” may work with meat-processing machines.

Proponents for the bills say that it puts power in the hands of parents by allowing their children to work more. The reality seems to be that they will be exposed to more hazardous work environments for longer periods of time, giving the corporations the hard labor that they so desperately desire.

In this sense, the bills that are being both introduced and passed are giving corporations more power. Corporations can now hire children as early as their middle school years for dangerous positions, rather than hiring a perfectly capable adult whom they deem unfit.

Corporations should not have the right to hire children. We need to stop child labor laws. And we must stop the ability of corporations to influence the introduction of and advocacy for child labor laws. That means ending corporate rule 

Take Action!

√ Share this blast with your networks.
Stopping child labor laws --- and corporate rule 
https://www.movetoamend.org/stopping_child_labor_laws_and_corporate_rule

√ Oppose efforts in your state to pass pro-child labor laws.

√ Sign up here to work with others to lobby your Representative to cosponsor HJR48, the We the People Amendment,

√ Get more involved with Move to Amend:

Stand United,

George, Dolores, Jason, Tara, Alfonso, Jennie, Shelly, Daniel, Jessica Joni, Keyan, Michael, Dylan, Margaret & Greg

- Move to Amend National Team

P.S. More background readings on the rolling back of child labor protections can be found here and here.

PRESS RELEASE

For immediate release, March 23, 2023

Contacts: Greg Coleridge, [email protected], 216-255-2184 | Dennis Slotnick, [email protected], 419-704-1863 | Brad Deane, [email protected], 440-488-1109 | Madelon Watts, [email protected], 216-291-4450 | Robert S. Belovich, [email protected], 440-503-8770 

Citizens Testify at Local Public Hearings in Ohio to End Corrupt Elections and Corporate Rule

Twelve public hearings are taking place in Ohio this year on the corruption resulting from the explosion of money spent in political elections and multiple harms due to increasing corporate power to influence elections and public policies.

The hearings are a result of citizen-driven ballot initiatives organized by supporters of the national Move to Amend Coalition working to pass the We the People Amendment (HJR48), introduced again this year in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D, WA).

The U.S.-led war against Iraq began 20 years ago yesterday. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and thousands of U.S. soldiers died or were severely injured. 

There are multiple ways to look at what happened in the past and current lessons to be learned. One perspective is reflecting on the Iraq war through a democratic lens.

Here are 20 “democratic” reflections.

1. Wars and democracy rarely go together. Wars throughout history, including the Iraq war and occupation, were largely about military, political and/or economic power projection – expanding or protecting empires, including controlling resources – by one or both sides of the conflict. The goal is not to promote “freedom” or “democracy,” despite the fact that the 2003 U.S. action was named “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Efforts by the U.S. to impose its version of “democracy” was a “democratic disillusionment.”

March 9, 2023

By Deborah Hogshead

March 6, 2023

The Norfolk Southern Corporation train derailment and subsequent hazardous chemical release into the air, water and land in and beyond East Palestine, Ohio are the inevitable result of multiple anti-democratic realities in the U.S. Many are interconnected and are the same for the roughly 1000 train derailments per year, most recently in Michigan.

Private ownership of railroads

Norfolk Southern Corporation’s record earnings in 2022 led to huge salaries for its top managers and stock buybacks and dividend payouts benefiting speculators and investors. Necessary investments have not been made in technology upgrades and worker safety as the corporation prioritizes maximizing profits over public safety and sustainable business practices. “Since the North American private rail industry has shown itself incapable of doing the job, it is time for this invaluable transportation infrastructure – like the other transport modes – to be brought under public ownership,” concludes the Railroad Workers United. Interstate highways are publicly owned. Railroads were under federal control during WWI. Railroads in many other nations are publicly owned and, therefore, publicly accountable.  

No community rights

Local public officials have few legal tools to protect the health, safety and welfare of their residents – especially conditions in any way related to interstate commerce. Communities possess  little authority to control material – including trash, chemicals, nuclear waste – coming into or even passing through their jurisdictions by trains or trucks if that material can be defined as “commerce.” The Constitution’s Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8) gives power to Congress and the President to “regulate commerce…among the several states.” While states have at least some ability under certain conditions to push back against “commercial material” in their states if they can redefine it as dangerous, localities have no rights. East Palestine officials weren’t even notified the derailed Norfolk Southern train was carrying vinyl chloride, ethylhexyl acrylate and other highly toxic chemicals since federal law doesn’t classify those chemicals as “high hazardous.”