Forum Post: Change Wall Street? Eliminate Corporate Personhood / Corporate 1st Amendment Rights
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 8, 2011, 10:25 a.m. EST by powerfulpeace
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Discussion is good, but it's time to unite - GET BEHIND ONE BIG ISSUE AND HAVE SUCCESS WITH THAT. My suggestion is to begin with taking away Corporate Personhood. Do you know that I was at a gathering last night of very intelligent people and the woman beside me didn't know that corporations have been given 1st amendment rights? Occupy WallStreet is going to fade and is going to be remembered as bunch of unorganized complainers. We can be as powerful as Corporations if we act intelligently. Stop the drama, stop the swearing, and stop the disorganized complaining. We're in a world of hurt, so let's change it step by step. First step - Find an intelligent way to get out the word about Corporate First Amendment Rights and its consequences. Come up with a plan to appeal to ALL citizens in a way that they will want to take action. Occupying is not enough. The news media is sending a very poor message about the occupation. It's time to unite, plan and take action intelligently
Meeting Nov 12 at 60 Wall St - There are a huge number of great, well thought out, COMPLICATED ideas that will require a huge amount of "selling" and explanation" and will garner GREAT OPPOSITION.
We need to be realistic & pick an issue that is simple - that is popular -
that 83% of Americans already agree on -
that 56% of TP already agree on -
that will bring together the people in OWS with the people outside of OWS.
Everybody wins!
Our only goal should be to pass a constitutional amendment to counter Supreme Court decisions Citizens United (2010) & Buckley v. Valeo (1976), that enable unlimited amounts of anonymous money to flood into our political system.
“Corporations and organizations are not a persons & have no personhood rights”
and
“money is not free speech”.
We don’t have to explain or persuade people to accept our position – we have to persuade them to ACT based on their own position. Pursuing this goal will prove to the world that we, at OWS, are a serious realistic Movement, with serious realistic goals. Achieving this goal will make virtually every other goal – jobs, taxes, infrastructure, Medicare – much easier to achieve –
by disarming our greatest enemy – GREED.
THE SUCCESS STORY OF THE AMENDING PROCESS The Prohibition movement started as a disjointed effort by conservative teetotalers who thought the consumption of alcohol was immoral. They ransacked saloons and garnered press coverage here and there for a few years. Then they began to gain support from the liberals because many considered alcohol partially responsible for spousal and child abuse, among other social ills. This odd alliance, after many years of failing to influence change consistently across jurisdictions, decided to concentrate on one issue nationally—a constitutional amendment. They pressured all politicians on every level to sign a pledge to support the amendment. Any who did not, they defeated easily at the ballot box since they controlled a huge number of liberal, and conservative and independent swing votes in every election. By being a single-issue constituency attacking from all sides of the political spectrum, they very quickly amassed enough votes (2/3) to pass the amendment in Congress. And, within just 17 months, they were successful in getting ¾ of the state legislatures to ratify the constitutional amendment into law. (Others were ratified even faster: Eight —took less than a year. The 26th, granting 18-year-olds the right to vote, took just three months and eight days.)
If they could tie the left and right into a success -
WHY CAN'T WE??????????
I feel that we should stay with this simple text to overturn CU:
”corporations are not people” and “money is not free speech”
for four simple reasons and one – not so simple:
1
83% of Americans have already opposed CU in the ABC/Washington post poll and the above
IS THEIR POSITION ALREADY.
2
We don’t have to work to convince people on the validity of our position.
3
Simple is almost always better.
4
This simple Amendment is REQUIRED to overturn CU.
And all other electoral reform can be passed through the normal legislative process.
5
OWS and these pages are chock full of ( mostly ) excellent ideas to improve our country.
All of them have strong advocates – and some have strong opposition.
None of them has been “pre-approved” by 83% of Americans !
Pursuing this goal – without additional specifics is exactly what Americans want.
What do we want? Look at that almost endless list of demands – goals - aims.
Tax the rich. End the Fed. Jobs for all, Medicare for all. So easy to state! Can you imagine how hard it would be to formulate a “sales pitch” for any of these to convince your Republican friends to vote for any of them?
83% of Americans have ALREADY “voted” against CU. And 76% of the Rs did too.
All we have to do ask Americans is to pressure their representatives – by letters - emails – petitions.
Wanna take your family on vacation?
Convince the 7 year old and the 10 year old to go to Mt Rushmore.
Then try to convince them to go to Disneyland.
Prioritizing this goal will introduce us to the world – not as a bunch of hippie radical anarchist socialist commie rabblerousers – but as a responsible, mature movement that is fighting for what America wants.
I feel that using the tactics of the NRA, the AARP an the TP – who all represent a minority – who have successfully used their voting power to achieve their minority goals - plus the Prohibition Amendment tactics – bringing all sides together - is a straight path for us to success that cannot fail to enable us to create and complete one MAJORITY task.
Agreed! End Corporate Person-hood! A corporate entity, in and of itself, is NOT a person. Support the Human Worth Amendment! Learn more at: http://occupywallst.org/forum/human-worth-amendment/
The #OWS movement has "Ending Corporate Person-hood" as a lead issue! Get behind it!
The 12-step process documented in Wildfire, The Legislation that Ignited the Great Recession has mass appeal and it is hard to imagine anyone opposed to the ideas listed in this book....with the exception of the 1%.
If Corporations are stripped from their personhood, would they still be able to be held accountable for their actions?
Yeah, because they still dominate the state. It's still a corporate state in which democracy is more apparent than real. Nothing short of the confuscation of all corporate assets and reorganizing them from below on a democratic basis in the interests of everyone will be adequate.
Then we should hurry and get some gold-diggers to marry the corporations, divorce them and take all their shit.
Individual solutions may work for individuals some of the time (but not all the time), but they never work for society as a whole and they are not the route to fundamental social change.
well it was worth a try
Change Wall Street? Eliminate Wall Street! Seize all corporate assets and reorganize them democratically from below in the interest of everyone rather than the interest of a tiny, tiny minority.
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Why do you believe that a group of people should not have the same 1st Amendment rights as they have as individuals? I am just trying to understand the opposition to this.
The reason is that corporations have significantly different interests and abilities normal people lack:
They are immortal so long as they make enough money to continue. This makes their interests different from people who get sick, old or hungry. Their boards of directors are amoral by law. They are required to maximize profit for shareholders instead of doing the right thing by society and social norms. There is a completely different calculus involved between natural persons and corporate entities in terms of how they make decisions.
They cannot be drafted so they do not have to worry about getting shot in a war. It is easy therefore to push for war profits when you don't have to fight in it. They should not have a right to speak about wars they cannot be required to die for.
They have so much money they can buy justice and laws that benefit them to the detriment of real people. The last thing is to give fake entities a "right" to get even more laws going their way.
They cannot be imprisoned and are rarely convicted even of heinous crimes. Look at the BP oil spill. Nobody went to jail for that. Look at the robo signing of affidavits that were done thousands of times to repossess people's homes. That is called perjury in most states and the banks did it systematically and without remorse. It is probably suitable for a RICO action but such crimes are never prosecuted. If a natural person did it he would go to jail. If a bank does it, it is considered normal or at least only something for which the bank has only civil liability. Therefore there is little accountability outside of the civil justice system for bad behavior. Huge companies are literally too tough a nut to crack as a prosecutor and nobody wants to put them out of business since it will impact too many workers. Consequently, they tend just to get fined which they work into the cost of business. Therefore the last thing we need is to give unaccountable entities even more license to try and make looser laws for their benefit.
Their ability to buy elections is well documented and their buying of politicians is corrupting our republic to its core.
Finally, the constitution was created for WE THE PEOPLE not artificial legal fictions. Back in 1790 corporations hardly existed, the ones that did had a finite life span, and corporations were perceived with skepticism - now we now why. Corporations can be allowed to speak but not have a constitutional right to do so. Their rights should be governed by statutes which the people can modify as needed to rein in corporate excess.
Thanks for your reply. The issue isn't something I have focused on so you have been very helpful to outline the problems and issues. I am completely for keeping Corps. from abusing the laws and the system but I am also skeptical when anyone is pushing to limit or takeaway rights that are currently allowed. Allow me to play Devil's Advocate with a couple of these: Point #1 - Couldn't the same also be said for an elderly person? Point #2 - Couldn't a wealthy individual also potentially buy justice and laws? Point #3 - Aren't those concerns symptoms as opposed to the real problem of our Justice system failures? Point #4 - Couldn't a wealthy individual also do this?
Thank you for your kind remarks. I think I am unwilling to take rights away from natural persons which is why I am not going to tell a wealthy person they cannot have the right of free speech and the freedom to speak their mind. You have to draw the line somewhere and I draw it where natural people end and artificial entities begin. As far as limiting individuals I don't think we can limit speech per se, but I think limiting the amount of money spent on political campaigns and issues is fair game even for individuals. I disagree with the Supreme Court that money is free speech. Speech does not require money, and money does a lot more than talk - it buys influence.
I think you can talk all you want but when it comes to giving resources to advance a political agenda there needs to be limits. There is a proposal in the U.S. Senate right now proposed by Senator Udall and several others that seeks to allow congress on the federal level and the state at the local level to regulate campaign spending and political "in kind" spending to get the money out of politics. None of us will ever agree on everything, but I would rather see the debate be one of ideas rather than a fight to spend the most money. Conservatives and progressive need to listen to each other more and worry less about buying influence. There was a time not too long ago when compromise was possible and statesmen on both sides of the aisle were able to transcend ideology and do what was the right thing for our people. It is simply much harder to do that when you have to raise billions for a national campaign. Best regards.
Great thoughts. I agree completely on your views and what we need most are common sense middle ground agreement and a major campaign finance overhaul..Best regards to you as well.
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