Hi, Thom Hartmann here, author and progressive political commentator. Many of you know me from the #1 rated progressive nationally syndicated radio show, the Thom Hartmann Program.
I'm also a long time supporter of Move to Amend!
Please join with me in supporting their work to end corporate personhood and get big money out of politics.
This effort is more important than ever before. We will witness in 2025 much more blatant and intense schemes to capture the government and culture by corporations and billionaires to increase their power and profit. Resistance to single corporate assaults to individuals, communities and the environment will be important going forward in what will be a climate of attacks on marginalized groups and mass uprisings of people’s movements, and the increasingly corrupt and unjust neoliberal/conservative establishment that I report on daily.
However, equally, if not more, important, will be widening and deepening educating and mobilizing toward fundamental solutions like the We the People Amendment that increase people power over corporate power and the corrupting influence of money in politics.
No one else is doing the work Move to Amend does - confronting corporate personhood directly. Working with a committed, visionary and passionate group of individuals who understand the changes needed in the U.S. is rare, and something that I am incredibly proud to support. Move to Amend is on the frontlines in building a broad, deep, diverse and democratic democracy movement through community education, public speaking, movement education, direct action, lobbying and alliance and coalition building, which we urgently need to grow under the new Trump administration.
Their accomplishments to this point are impressive given their small staff and budget: a 90 Congressional supporters of the We the People Amendment, 785 organizational endorsements and 725 local resolutions and ballot initiatives – as well as visibility at numerous national mass actions.
For several decades, I have used my position in the media, as a speaker and as an author of Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights and scores of articles to help push for an end to “corporate personhood” and for the cause that Move to Amend leads across the country. Because I, like you, understand that corporate constitutional rights are standing in the way of every movement’s success -- from environmental justice and climate collapse, to the for-profit prison and health care systems and endless wars and occupations -- and we can’t win as long as these corporations and special interest groups have more rights and resources than we do.
The Move to Amend analysis is spot on: Our problem is structural that goes beyond elections. Chipping away at the edges of corporate political spending is not going to change the hundreds of ways corporations legalize bribery and overrule human and community self-determination.
Many groups talking about “corporate personhood” are only working on money in politics. History teaches us that’s not enough. The campaign finance system was already broken before Citizens United, so merely reversing the decision won’t return us to any democratic paradise. The problem is corporations with 1st, 4th, 5th, and 14th Amendment rights, coupled with limited liability and other benefits. We must abolish all corporate constitutional rights. When accomplished, we will have more political candidates who are more accountable to voters than donors and more communities able to legally protect their residents and environment from corporate abuses previously shielded by corporate constitutional rights.
I’ve supported Move to Amend since the very beginning -- and I intend to keep it up. It’s one of the best investments in democracy I’ve ever made. Please join with me in supporting this critical work.
Move to Amend needs to raise $100,000 to end 2024 in the black -- more than at the end of previous years due to so many contributions earlier this year diverted to political campaigns. This is all the more reason to please join me in supporting this critical people's movement.
Yours in the movement to amend,
Thom Hartmann
p.s. It’s all too easy right now to feel indifferent, resigned, defeated, overwhelmed, afraid and/or angry. These are the feelings those in power want us to feel – so that we become paralyzed and incapable of envisioning and actively creating a dramatically better future. The playwright, political dissident, and eventual President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel said, “There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive for a good cause.” Move to Amend is working for a good, if not great, cause to create meaningful democracy. Please contribute to Move to Amend today
