Please join us as we discuss collaborating with other groups in LA which are also working to amend the Constitution and get money out of politics. This month we’ll also have a report from the CELDF Democracy School which a few us attended.
Potluck so bring something to share if you can!
Address:1233 S. Victoria Ave. Los Angeles, Ca. 90019
RSVP at Contact us.
Inspired by our friends at Occupy Wall Street, and Dr. Cornel West, Move To Amend is planning bold action to mark the second anniversary of the infamous Citizens United v. FEC decision!
Occupy the Courts will be a one day occupation of Federal courthouses across the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Friday January 20, 2012.
Move to Amend volunteers across the USA will lead the charge on the judiciary which created — and continues to expand — corporate personhood rights.
Americans across the country are on the march, and they are marching OUR way. They carry signs that say, “Corporations are NOT people! Money is NOT Speech!” And they are chanting those truths at the top of their lungs! The time has come to make these truths evident to the courts.
http://movetoamend.org/
Our Los Angeles group, composed of Move to Amend LA, Occupy Los Angeles and Common Cause California, is focused on making our action a multifaceted interactive and inclusive experience.
CALL TO ARTISTS: We are seeking to display art that has some relation to the Supreme Court or Occupy movement.
Speakers:
Jodie Evans Co-founder of CODE PINK
Jim Lafferty National Lawyer’s Guild and KPFK
Mimi Kennedy Actress and Activist
Ann Porter WILPF Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
Norman Goldman National Talk Show Host and Regular contributor to MSNBC’s the Ed Show
Anjuli Kronheim Common Cause California
Carlos Marroquin – Homeowner Advocate
Walter Hackett – Attorney and Foreclosure Expert
Pete Thottham – Former Goldman Sachs employee and organizer of Occupy the Rose Parade
A Performance by The Billionaires
Tobi Dragert from the California Clean Money Campaign
Mary Beth Fielder and Daniel Lee from Move to Amend LA
A Representative from ANSWER LA
Megan Wade Antieau, former staff with Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt county
Posters on display from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics
“We are the 99%” shirts donated by We Party Patriots and the AFL-CIO
The Roybal Federal Building and Courthouse
255 East Temple Street
Los Angeles, CA
11AM-6PM
LA resolution puts people first
By Eleanor Goldfield
Unlike most days when my lungs are filled with smog, and my east coast tongue twitches with curt, smart ass one-liners to spew at unsuspecting “dudes” and “dudettes,” today I am very proud to live in LA. December 6th 2011: Los Angeles becomes the first major US city to pass a resolution stripping corporations of their constitutional personhood rights. And, as a side note, it’s my 25th birthday. Not too shabby of a birthday gift. The vote was unanimous: 11-0. The line of supporters ran out the door and coiled around the block as if Splash Mountain had temporarily relocated to the statuesque old Hollywood glamour of LA City Hall. Continue reading
MELISSA BLOCK, host: Among the demands of Occupy Wall Street protestors is this, an end to corporate personhood. That demand has been spelled out on protestors signs, like one that reads: I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one. Corporate personhood has underpinnings in legal doctrine.
And to find out more about that, we’ve turned to Professor John Witt, who teaches law and history at Yale Law School. Professor Witt, welcome to the program.
JOHN WITT: Thanks so much for having me.
BLOCK: And when we talk about corporate personhood or corporate personality in the law, what do we mean? How are corporations treated as people or persons?
WITT: Well, the law has treated corporations as what some lawyers call metaphysical persons. That is, they’re persons for some purposes and they’re not persons for others. Continue reading
December 09, 2011
by Karl Rusnak — EconomyinCrisis.org
The influence of big corporations on our elections and our policies sits at a staggeringly high level. More and more Americans are disillusioned with our government, and more and more of them are realizing that corporate influence has a lot to do with their displeasure. As a result, there have been repeated calls for reform of how corporations can contribute to our elections. Continue reading
Stephanie Miller
Listen to Mary Beth Fielder from MTA-LA on the Stephanie Miller Show.
Hundreds of Citizens Pack Council Chambers, Council Votes
Unanimously to Support the “Move to Amend”
Los Angeles, CA – December 6, 2011 – Los Angeles today became the first major U.S. city to vote against corporate personhood and further call for a Constitutional Amendment asserting that corporations are not entitled to constitutional rights and that money is not free speech. The unanimous vote was witnessed in Council chambers packed by a standing room only crowd of hundreds of people as well as a overflow room filled to capacity by enthusiastic supporters. The resolution was sponsored by City Council President Eric Garcetti and seconded by Council Members Bill Rosendahl and Paul Krekorian with passionate support by Council Members Richard Alarcon,and Paul Koretz. The action is in response to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which gives corporations the same 1st Amendment protections as people and allows them to spend unlimited funds on campaign finance. Continue reading
LOS ANGELES, CA – After forty-five minutes of public testimony urging a yes vote, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to support a resolution calling on Congress to amend the Constitution to clearly establish that only living persons — not corporations — are endowed with constitutional rights and that money is not the same as free speech. The vote makes Los Angeles the first major city in the U.S. to call for an end to all corporate constitutional rights.
The campaign in Los Angeles is the latest grassroots effort by Move to Amend, a national coalition working to abolish corporate personhood. “Local resolution campaigns are an opportunity for citizens to speak up and let it be known that we won’t accept the corporate takeover of our government,” said Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, a national spokesperson for Move to Amend. “We urge communities across the country to join the Move to Amend campaign and raise your voices.” Continue reading
Move to Amend LA Press Conference Following Historic Vote (Video) Quote from Mary Beth Fielder, Move To Amend LA founder who spearheaded the effort to bring the resolution to the LA City Council. “This is an incredibly historic day. Los Angeles is the first major city in the United States to call for a Constitutional Amendment calling and clearly establish that only human beings are entitled to co n and that money is not the same as free speech thus providing the basis to overturn the Citizens United decision. And get the money out of politics and put the people back in charge, It’s a great day for Los Angeles and it’s a great day for the United States of America. I hope this is the vote heard around the world that really is a symbol to the rest of the country that they can do the same as we’ve done and together we’re going to develop the grassroots support we need to actually amend our constitution and that’s going to be done sooner rather than later.” Continue reading
On a unanimous vote (11-0-2), the Los Angeles City Council passed our resolution endorsing an end to constitutional rights for corporations and also endorsing the constitutional amendment introduced last week by Move to Amend’s Executive Committee (click to see amendment).
With an overflow crowd of supporters, the size of which city officials described as “unprecedented”, over 30 members of the public spoke in support of the resolution along with councilmembers Eric Garcetti, Paul Krekorian, Richard Alarcon, and Bill Rosendahl.
“We’re proud to be the first major city in the U.S. to take this step,” reported Move to Amend Los Angeles Co-chair Mary Beth Fielder from City Council Chambers. “This is only a first step on a long road to a constitutional amendment but if the turn-out and the enthusiasm and the eloquence shown here is any indication, we certainly have the will to succeed.”
Move to Amend Los Angeles and Move to Amend have recently announced The Race to Amend to be launched in 2012. The Race to Amend will be a relay race of Americans running, walking, skating and biking across the country to both educate and galvanize support for this critical issue for our democracy. Click on this link to sign up to participate or get more information.
On the night that Occupy Los Angeles protesters were given as a deadline to begin vacating the land around City Hall, their general assembly unanimously passed a resolution to end corporate personhood through constitutional amendment, completing a process that had been underway since before the occupation began.
“Though I would like this to have passed earlier,” said Chris Durian, who along with Suzanne O’Keeffe and other activists, shepherded the resolution through Occupy LA’s time-intensive consensus process, “I find it a little poetic that this was passed tonight. If the encampment goes down tomorrow, it went down shouting out against corporate personhood with a unified voice.” Continue reading
click on photo for link to Huffington Post Story
Annie Leonard and the Story of Stuff…
MTALA's Mary Beth Fielder on MSNBC Dylan Ratigan
Listen to Move to Amend Los Angeles co-chair Mary Beth Fielder on KPFK-FM’s morning show, Connect the Dots from Monday, November 28th talking about corporate personhood and how you can be an integral part of making history as Los Angeles is set to become the first major city in the U.S. to call for the end to the injustice of corporate constitutional rights. Listen now.
On September 2, 2009, the transnational pharmaceutical giant Pfizer pled guilty to multiple criminal felonies. It had been marketing drugs in a way that may well have led to the deaths of people and that definitely led physicians to prescribe and patients to use pharmaceuticals in ways they were not intended.
Because Pfizer is a corporation—a legal abstraction, really—it couldn’t go to jail like fraudster Bernie Madoff or killer John Dillinger; instead it paid a $1.2 billion “criminal” fine to the U.S. government—the biggest in history—as well as an additional $1 billion in civil penalties. The total settlement was more than $2.3 billion—another record. None of its executives, decision-makers, stockholders/owners, or employees saw even five minutes of the inside of a police station or jail cell.
Most Americans don’t even know about this huge and massive crime. Nor do they know that the “criminal” never spent a day in jail.
But they do know that in the autumn of 2004, Martha Stewart was convicted of lying to investigators about her sale of stock in another pharmaceutical company. Her crime cost nobody their life, but she famously was escorted off to a women’s prison. Had she been a corporation instead of a human being, odds are there never would have even been an investigation.
Yet over the past century—and particularly the past forty years—corporations have repeatedly asserted that they are, in fact, “persons” and therefore eligible for the human rights protections of the Bill of Rights.
In 2009 the right-wing advocacy group Citizens United argued before the Supreme Court that they had the First Amendment right to “free speech” and to influence elections through the production and the distribution of a slasher “documentary” designed to destroy Hillary Clinton’s ability to win the Democratic nomination. (Some political observers assert that they did this in part because they believed that a Black man whose first name sounded like “Osama” and whose middle name was Hussein could never, ever, possibly win against a Republican, no matter how poor a candidate they put up.)
– from “Unequal Protection”: The Battle to Save Democracy
by: Thom Hartmann
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Citizens United allowed corporations to hijack our government, and corporate money is silencing the voice of average voters. It’s time to take back our democracy and stop big business from using OUR legal system against US!
On Dec. 6 the LA City Council will be have the chance to vote on a resolution to amend the Constitution to establish that only HUMAN BEINGS, not corporations, have constitutional rights and that money is NOT speech.
JOIN US! for a mass demonstration to support the resolution and demand that LA City Council members support giving voters back their voice!
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6TH @ 9:30 AM
LA CITY HALL 200 N. Spring St. ROOM 340
Council Meeting begins at 10am, meet early to join the group and stand as one.
LET’S MAKE LA THE FIRST MAJOR U.S. CITY TO PASS THE RESOLUTION!
Do you part and spread the word!
FILL THE CHAMBER WITH THE 99%Here’s the draft of the resolution which will be voted on by the LA City Council on December 6 at 10 am. We’re planning a massive show of support! Join us and make history as LA becomes the first major city in the US to call for a constitutional amendment revoking corporate personhood.
Here’s the resolution that resulted from our input.
Resolution 11-0002-S123 (regarding Citizens United v. FEC).
RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, any official position of the City of Los Angeles with respect to legislation, rules, regulations or policies proposed to or pending before a local, state or federal governmental body or agency must have first been adopted in the form of a Resolution by the City Council with the concurrence of the Mayor; and
WHEREAS, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission rolled back legal restrictions on corporate spending in the electoral process, allowing unlimited corporate spending to influence elections, candidate selection, and policy decisions, thereby threatening the voices of “We the People” and the very foundation of our democracy; and
WHEREAS, corporations are not mentioned in the Constitution, and The People have never granted constitutional rights to corporations, nor have We decreed that Corporations have authority that exceeds the authority of “We The People”
WHEREAS, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in a 1938 opinion stated, “I do not believe the word ‘person’ in the Fourteenth Amendment includes corporations”; and
WHEREAS, money affects the quality and quantity of speech and is NOT, in itself, speech; and allowing corporations with great wealth to use it as speech effectively drowns out the protected free speech of the People in our diverse society;
WHEREAS, the Citizens decision supersedes state and local efforts to regulate corporate activity in their elections;
NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, with the concurrence of the Mayor, that by the adoption of this Motion, the City of Los Angeles hereby includes in its 20 I 1-20 12 Federal and State Legislative Programs SUPPORT for a Constitutional Amendment and other legislative actions ensuring that only human beings, not corporations, are endowed with constitutional rights and that money is not speech, and therefore the expenditure of corporate money to influence the electoral process is no longer a form of constitutionally protected speech.
Section 1 [Corporations are not people and can be regulated]
The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.
Artificial entities, such as corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities, established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.
The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.
Section 2 [Money is not speech and can be regulated]
Federal, State and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own contributions and expenditures, for the purpose of influencing in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.
Federal, State and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.
The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.
Section 3
Nothing contained in this amendment shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.
