The 
Although tyranny may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it first destroys the national institutions of its own people.
Publications & Talks
REBECCA MANSKI: What Liberty Square Means
October 7, 2011
Occupy Wall Street Journal, Vol 1, Issue 2
A year ago, New Yorkers watched in horror as voters in the progressive heartland of Wisconsin replaced progressive standard-bearer Russ Feingold with a Tea Party mega-millionaire, and the state’s capitol came under the control of self-described Tea Party Republicans. Months later, the impact of that electoral change became clear. Governor Scott Walker unleashed attacks on the right to organize, to engage in collective bargaining, to access health care, food, shelter, a quality education and even on the right to vote.
BRINTON & SCHULTZ: Big Sky Populists Fight Back Against Big Corporate Money
September 29, 2011
Corporate Attack on Democracy in Montana: Communities Do Battle with Modern-Day “Copper Kings”
A year and a half after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission that corporations are “people” with expanded constitutional rights, the impacts of the ruling continue to reverberate. 24 states have been forced to re-examine their legal limitations on campaign financing by corporations. Among them is Montana, a state with some of the country’s strongest campaign finance laws.
TRUTHOUT: Local Resistance to Corporate Personhood Wages Crucial Battle
September 25, 2011
In the 2010 US Supreme Court case, Citizens United v. Federal ElectionCommission, the judges of the highest court in the land narrowly ruled that corporations were "people" with First Amendment free speech rights. The corollary of this judgment is that corporations, as "persons," have the right to contribute unlimited funds to political campaigns as an exercise of their free speech.
Boulder Should Vote on Corporate Personhood
August 14, 2011
Large multinational corporations today wield enormous power. They determine whether our oceans are filled with oil, whether we get more floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes and other signs of an accelerating climate crisis, whether Americans have jobs or our jobs are outsourced to low-wage countries, whether our military budget keeps expanding, and whether our economy implodes, to name a few of the thousands of ways that mega corporations impact us on a daily basis.
The fundamental question here is, who is in charge of our country -- the big corporations or the people and their elected officials? Who should make the decisions about our well being, our future, our environment and our jobs?
SOPOCI-BELKNAP: Movement to Abolish Corporate Personhood Gaining Traction
July 1, 2011
In the year and a half since the Citizens United decision, Americans from all walks of life have become concerned about corporate dominance of our government and our society as a whole. In Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court (in an act of outrageous “judicial activism) gutted existing campaign finance laws by ruling that corporations, wealthy individuals, and other entities can spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns.
Throughout the country people have responded by organizing against “corporate personhood,” a court-created precedent that illegitimately gives corporations rights that were intended for human beings.
VERMONT COMMONS: Interview with Move to Amend's David Cobb
March 3, 2011
VERMONT VOX POPULI: Human Rights for Human Beings, Not Corporations - An Interview with Move To Amend’s David Cobb
By Rob Williams, Vermont Commons
Call for a Wisconsin Wave of Resistance
February 14, 2011
the WISCONSIN WAVE against Corporatization and Austerity and for Democracy and Shared Prosperity
We recognize the rising Wisconsin wave of resistance to corporatization and austerity and call on our fellow Wisconsinites to join it.
ALLISON and ALLISON: The Climate of Corporate Personhood
January 11, 2011
Corporations have no rights under the Constitution or its amendments. However, their constitutional rights as granted by the Supreme Court have multiplied like rabbits since the Santa Clara decision in 1886, and the end is not in sight.
The Supreme Court “. . . avoided meeting the constitutional question [of corporate personhood] in the [Santa Clara] decision.” (Morrison Waite, Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, to his Court Reporter, 1886.) Nevertheless, the Court has repeatedly misused this decision as precedent for bestowing constitutional rights on corporations.
Summary
How the fiction of corporate personhood arose in the 1880s, perhaps based on a deliberate lie about the intent of those who drafted the Fourteenth Amendment. How a Supreme Court adjudicated railroad cases while being showered with major gifts from railroads. How the Court played fast and loose with Court records. How a Court Reporter’s notes passed as official Supreme Court opinion. How the Court declared a precedent that wasn’t, as the media slept through it all. How the story played out against a background of unregulated speculation, the ensuing Panic of 1873, and fervent class conflict. How the present Court used the very same fiction to renew the subversion of democratic government at the hands of wealthy corporate CEOs. How to put things right.
Document:
BADER: Review of The Lost Soul of Higher Education
June 1, 2010
Ellen Schrecker, a history professor at New York City's Yeshiva University, starts "The Lost Soul of Higher Education" with a blunt assessment: "In reacting to the economic insecurities of the past forty years, the nation's colleges and universities have adopted corporate practices that degrade undergraduate instruction, marginalize faculty members, and threaten the very mission of the academy as an institution devoted to the common good."
Additional Information:
Original article here... http://www.truth-out.org/the-lost-soul-higher-education-corporatization-...
DIXON: What If BP Were A Human Being?
May 5, 2010
The third largest oil company in the world, BP was born in 1909 as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, and was partly owned by the British government. Its headquarters offices are in the UK.. So if it were a flesh and blood person, it would be far and away the wealthiest person on earth, and a nominal British subject. Assuming that our imaginary human BP got into the oil business at the youthful age of say, 20, and stayed at it for just over a century, BP the human being would be closing in on his 121st birthday. Damned few of us will see triple digits, and none of us that reach even our 60s and 70s retain the level of energy, or often of interest that we possessed only a couple decades before.
Additional Information:
Bruce Dixon is the Managing Editor of the Black Agenda Report and a member of the Steering Committee of MovetoAmend.org
WILLIAMSON and ALPEROVITZ: Community Stability and the Challenge of Climate Change
May 3, 2010
The Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland
Additional Information:
Community-Wealth.org, a project of the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland.
VIDEO: We the Corporations? Life & Law in the U.S.A. after Citizens United v. FEC
April 16, 2010
"We the Corporations?" Life & Law in the U.S.A. after Citizens United v. FEC was a one-day conference addressing that historic decision, and featuring reactions to it from some of the nation's leading democracy campaigners and experts on the doctrine of corporate constitutional rights.
Additional Information:
- Hosted by the UW-Madison National Lawyers Guild and the Liberty Tree Foundation
- Sponsored by the American Constitution Society, Center for Media and Democracy, and Wisconsin Democracy Campaign
- Cosponsored by the A.E. Havens Center for the Study of Social Structure and Social Change, UW-Madison Legal Studies Association, Madison Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, Student Progressive Dane, and the Student Labor Action Coalition.
AZ: David Cobb on Citizens United v. FEC
April 13, 2010
On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. Human beings are people; corporations are legal fictions. The Supreme Court is misguided in principle, and wrong on the law. In a democracy, the people rule. Join Liberty Tree and our many partners in this movement, as we move to overrule the Supreme Court. Go to www.MovetoAmend.org right now and sign the motion.