Use the People’s Veto to End Citizens United

from YES! Magazine:



Use the People’s Veto to End Citizens United
Widespread, multi-sector activism is exactly what is needed to amend the constitution.

by Fran Korten
posted Jun 08, 2012


When I spoke at an event in February 2010, I gave the audience little boxes of matches. My point was that to achieve the change we were discussing we would need to light a prairie fire of activism. Two years later, I gave a similar talk. I needed no matchboxes. The prairie fire was well underway.

Both talks were about the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC (CU). The case was the crown jewel of decades of Supreme Court rulings that corporations are “persons” with constitutional rights, including free speech, and that spending money is a form of speech. CU allows unlimited spending on political campaigns directly from corporate treasuries right up to election day.

After the decision, most people I knew were in despair. Although polls showed that 80 percent of people who knew about the ruling opposed it, what were we to do? The highest court in the land had spoken. Corporate money would now flood our elections. Only a constitutional amendment could reverse the ruling. At my 2010 talk that possibility seemed remote indeed.

Two years later, when I spoke at a Move to Amend event, the mood was strikingly different. Organizers had just gotten the Port Townsend, Wash., city council to approve an amendment declaring that corporations are not people. They planned to press county officials and the state legislature to do likewise. Some planned to urge the League of Women Voters to support an amendment. Others wanted their churches to take a stand. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/making-it-home/use-the-peoples-veto-to-end-citizens-united