Dayton Daily News | January 21, 2025

Heather Sturgill is a resident of Troy, OH and volunteers with the local “Move to Amend.” (CONTRIBUTED)

January 21 marks 15 years since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which equated corporate political spending with free speech and reinforced the notion of “corporate personhood”. This ruling has had profound impacts, granting corporations outsized influence over our political landscape. Recent events underscore the dangers of equating corporate rights with individual rights, particularly when such actions undermine public welfare.

News articles about ByteDance, being forced to sell TikTok over national security issues underscores these risks. But TikTok isn’t the only foreign owned company in the US. According to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, as of January 2023, 252 Chinese companies were listed on the top three U.S. stock exchanges. This figure excludes smaller private businesses and companies with over 50% foreign-owned stockholders.

Please consider spending an hour or so at a polling location on primary election day in your state to hand out leaflets and collect signatures on the Move to Amend petition.

Go HERE to find out when your primary election day takes place.

The leaflet states, “We need to elect better representatives. But we also need to expand the growing peoples’ movement to end corporate constitutional rights by enacting HJR54, the We the People Amendment.”

Our petition declares, “We the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizen United ruling and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.”

Watch and listen to Mike Ferner, Veterans for Peace Director, at the 7'30" mark speak on the need to end corporate rule (i.e. go after the arsonists, not just put our fires) as a fundamental requirement to create peace, mentioning Move to Amend in the process.

Thirty years ago today, President Bill Clinton signed legislation supporting U.S. entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Removing restrictions on trade between the U.S., Mexico and Canada, NAFTA was aggressively opposed by organized labor, environmental organizations, and many “good government” groups for two major reasons.

First, NAFTA’s provisions prioritized “trade” of goods and services produced by multinational corporations over protecting workers, consumers and the environment.

Second, disputes brought by corporate investors directly against foreign nations over claimed “barriers to trade” were decided by unelected and unaccountable Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) "tribunals" largely composed of corporate-friendly members -- beyond the reach of citizens or even national legislatures or courts.

The “inflation” of Thanksgiving summarized below is not about the increased mass marketing hoopla that corporations create every holiday to make us think the more stuff we buy, the greater will be the enjoyment, if not “meaning,” of the day or season. Thanksgiving is actually a lousy holiday to commercialize. Afterall, there’s only so much profit to be gained from peddling Turkeys/Tofurkys, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce.

Nor are we focusing on the "inflation" of the giant Thanksgiving Day Parade floats that will wind their way through the streets of New York City.

The more significant Thanksgiving “inflation” is the inflated prices of consumer products, including food, which have skyrocketed. We can thank major food corporations for this.

Tomorrow is election day. Please vote if you already haven’t by mail or in person. 

But voting isn’t enough. We also need a People’s Movement like Move to Amend to abolish corporate rule, an essential step toward achieving legitimate democracy.

Electing better representatives at every level of government who represent the interests of voters rather than large donors is critical. That can be a challenge, especially when candidates swimming in campaign cash from the super rich and business corporations flood our airwaves, mailboxes and inboxes. 

Interview of Greg Coleridge, Co-Director

Staying in Contact with London Mitchell

November 2, 2023

https://londonmitchell.podbean.com/e/guest-greg-coloridge-move-to-amend/

There were two main reasons why Move to Amend held a vigil and rally at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce during our recent trip to Washington, DC to lobby for HJR54, the We the People Amendment. 

The two reasons were to highlight what the Chamber represents and what the Chamber does. 

While the public, investors and many leaders abroad exhaled in relief when Congress agreed to a 45-day temporary spending bill to avoid a government shutdown, the shutdown of real democracy in our country endures.

Representative democracy decreasingly represents the public, particularly for people of color, women and other groups who have never possessed equal rights. 

SUMMARY OF TESTIMONIES SHAKER HEIGHTS DEMOCRACY DAY
September 11, 2023

With passage of Issue 95 in Shaker Heights in November 2016, the voters of Shaker Heights supported a 28^th amendment to the U.S. Constitution saying that money is not speech and that corporate entities do not have constitutional rights which were intended for natural persons only.  Passage of the issue also established a biannual public forum called Democracy Day where individuals could speak before the mayor and city council of Shaker Heights about how money in politics and the construct of corporate personhood are undermining our democracy with the purpose of informing our state and congressional legislators of the will of Shaker Heights voters to establish the We the People Amendment.