Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It (28 page)
Authors: Jeffrey D. Clements,Bill Moyers
Congress and the states can and should take many steps short of amendment to make elections more fair and to improve the likelihood that legislatures will reflect the will of the people, from approving public funding mechanisms to eliminating barriers to registration and voting. None of these will be sufficient, however, without the People’s Rights Amendment.
I don’t think we should amend the First Amendment or any other part of the Bill of Rights. That’s never been done, and we shouldn’t start now.
I don’t think we should amend the Bill of Rights either. That’s why we need the People’s Rights Amendment to restore the Bill of Rights to real people. The fight to change the Bill of Rights has been going on for three decades, and the humans are losing.
With the creation of corporate “voices,” “speech,” and “rights,” the Bill of Rights has been radically altered. The Twenty-Eighth Amendment will protect the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights for people and end the distortion of turning corporations into “people.”
Eliminating corporate money in politics or eliminating the ability of corporations to strike down laws that they think will blunt their marketing campaigns will not affect the speech rights of a single person.
There are a lot of ways to connect to people and organizations working to overturn
Citizens United
and restore an economy that works for everyone. Here are some useful sources of information.
Citizens United
Free Speech for People has extensive resources regarding the
Citizens United
decision, its background and implications, and tools for joining the campaign for the People’s Rights Amendment and other actions to balance corporate power.
http://www.freespeechforpeople.org
)
The Story of Stuff Project has produced a clever explanatory video titled “The Story of
Citizens United
v. FEC.”
http://storyofstuff.org/citizensunited
For a satirical take on the
Citizens United
decision, watch the Murray Hill Inc. campaign video
http://www.murrayhillincforcongress.com
On the implications of
Citizens United
for American business, visit the American Sustainable Business Council.
Business for Democracy
http://www.businessfordemocracy.org
American Independent Business Alliance
Corporations Are Not People
http://www.corporationsarenotpeople.com
Free Speech for People
http://www.freespeechforpeople.org
Business for Democracy
http://www.businessfordemocracy.com
Move to Amend
http://www.movetoamend.org
(and member groups listed there)
People for the American Way
Public Citizen
http://www.democracyisforpeople.org
Common Cause
United for the People
http://www.united4thepeople.org
(and groups identified there)
Center for Media and Democracy
We the People Campaign
Corporations Are Not People
http://www.corporationsarenotpeople.com
Free Speech for People
http://www.freespeechforpeople.org
Center for Media and Democracy
Center for Corporate Policy
http://www.corporatepolicy.org/
Green Change
B Corporations
Reclaim Democracy
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org
Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy
Community and Environmental Legal Defense Fund
Corporate Ethics International
American Sustainable Business Council
B Corporations
Social Venture Network
CERES
New Voice of Business
http://www.newvoiceofbusiness.org
Slow Money
Main Street Alliance
http://www.mainstreetalliance.org
American Independent Business Alliance
New Rules Project
Business Alliance for Local Living Economies
http://www.livingeconomies.org
Public Campaign
Demos
Common Cause
Public Citizen
Campaign Legal Center
http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org
MoveOn/The Other 98%—Fight Washington Corruption
http://fightwashingtoncorruption.org
Center for Responsive Politics
National League of Women Voters
American Constitution Society
Equal Justice Society
http://www.equaljusticesociety.org
Brennan Center for Justice
Constitution Accountability Center
http://www.theusconstitution.org/
Transpartisan Center
http://www.transpartisancenter.org
Constitution Party
http://www.constitutionparty.com/
Alliance for Democracy
http://www.thealliancefordemocracy.org/
I have provided a sampling of possible resources here. There are many other groups—international, national, regional, and local. If you can’t find one in your area, contact me at Free Speech for People ([email protected]) and I’ll point you in the right direction.
The following list is by no means exhaustive. Many excellent and important works are not mentioned, but these are some of my favorites.
The Constitution
Declaration of Independence
United States Constitution
Amar, Akhil Reed.
America’s Constitution: A Biography.
New York: Random House, 2005.
Cogan, Neil H., ed.
The Complete Bill of Rights: The Drafts, Debates, Sources and Origins.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Frohnen, Bruce, ed.
The American Republic: Primary Sources.
Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 2002.
Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay.
The Federalist.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. (Originally published 1788.)
Handlin, Oscar, and Mary Flug Handlin.
Commonwealth: A Study of the Role of Government in the American Economy, Massachusetts, 1774-1861.
Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1947.
Horwitz, Morton J.
The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Horwitz, Morton J.
The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860.
Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Kammen, Michael, ed.
The Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History.
New York: Viking Penguin, 1986.
Kyvig, David E.
Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the Constitution, 1776-1995.
Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996.
Schwartz, Bernard.
The Bill of Rights: A Documentary History.
New York: Chelsea House/McGraw Hill, 1971.
Corporations and the Constitution
Hartmann, Thom.
Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People” and How You Can Fight Back
(2nd ed.). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2010.
Kerr, Robert L.
The Corporate Free Speech Movement: Cognitive Feudalism and the Endangered Marketplace of Ideas.
New York: LFB, 2008).
Nace, Ted.
Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy.
San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003.
Corporate Power and Human Life
Bakan, Joel.
The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power.
New York: Free Press, 2004.
Kelley, Marjorie.
The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy.
San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2001, 2003.
Klein, Naomi.
No Logo.
New York: Picador, 2002.
Korten, David C.
When Corporations Rule the World
(2nd ed.). Bloomfield, Conn.: Kumarian Press/San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2001.
Potter, Wendell.
Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans.
New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010.
Schor, J.
Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture.
New York: Scribner, 2004.
Schwartz, Ellen, and Suzanne Stoddard.
Taking Back Our Lives in the Age of Corporate Dominance.
San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2000.
Corporate Law
Greenfield, Kent.
The Failure of Corporate Law.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Henn, Harry G., and John R. Alexander.
Law of Corporations,
3rd ed. Saint Paul, Minn.: West, 2002. (Originally published 1983.)
Cleaning the Swamp
Hacker, Jacob S., and Paul Pierson.
Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.
Kaiser, Robert G.
So Damn Much Money.
New York: Vintage Books, 2009.
Other Related Works
Chute, Carolyn.
The School on Heart’s Content Road.
New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008.
Diamond, Jared.
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
New York: Viking, 2004.
