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Forum Post: LA and Occupy LA Agree: It's Time to End Corporate Personhood

Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 8, 2011, 5:41 p.m. EST by looselyhuman (3117)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

What’s the issue that unites the occupiers and the city they’re occupying? Getting corporate money out of politics.

On December 3, just two days before Occupy L.A. was evicted by police, the General Assembly of the occupation passed a unanimous resolution calling for a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood.

Today, the City Council of Los Angeles also voted, also unanimously, for a resolution making the same appeal.

So what’s this issue that's uniting occupiers and the city they’re occupying? Corporate personhood is the legal concept that underpins rulings like the Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v the Federal Election Commission; it means that corporations are considered people under the law, with the constitutional right of free speech. Since the courts have also defined money as constitutionally protected speech, the upshot is that corporations are empowered to spend unlimited amounts of money trying to influence the political process.

In order to reverse Citizens United—and a long line of other rulings supporting corporate rights over human ones—the resolutions passed by Los Angeles and Occupy L.A. call for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution clearly stating that corporations are not people and money is not speech.

http://www.truth-out.org/la-and-occupy-la-agree-its-time-end-corporate-personhood/1323356911

11 Comments

11 Comments


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[-] 2 points by Lockean (671) from New York, NY 12 years ago

That is pretty cool.

I just got an email from Bernie Sanders - he's introduced an amendment - I guess a counterpart to Deutch's discussed here:

http://occupywallst.org/forum/rep-deutch-introduces-constitutional-amendment-to-/

Sign Bernie's petition here (please):

http://sanders.senate.gov/petition/?uid=f1c2660f-54b9-4193-86a4-ec2c39342c6c

[-] 1 points by looselyhuman (3117) 12 years ago

Right on, thanks.

[-] 2 points by richardkentgates (3269) 12 years ago

sweeeeet

[-] 1 points by looselyhuman (3117) 12 years ago

If there is a future for the United States, its historians will look back and see this as the issue of our day, and our victory as what saved this nation...

[-] 1 points by richardkentgates (3269) 12 years ago

agreed

[-] -1 points by FrogWithWings (1367) 12 years ago

Flail wildly at lofty branches when the roots are under your feet.

[-] 0 points by TIOUAISE (2526) 12 years ago

HURRAH!

Thanks for posting.

[-] -1 points by FrogWithWings (1367) 12 years ago

But they are wrong, it is Person-Corporatehood which needs to be ended for the greater good of humanity. The 2010 ruling basically boiled down to saying, "a corporation is a corporation".

[-] 0 points by D7ame2Uv (116) 12 years ago

Let's end person corporatehood and corporate personhood!

[-] 1 points by FrogWithWings (1367) 12 years ago

To date, there is only one way, of which I know, which cures the former. Once done it makes the latter quite moot. Citizens have to know who they are and object to the implied consent they've unknowingly given.

http://www.supremelaw.org/fedzone11/index.htm

[-] -2 points by D7ame2Uv (116) 12 years ago

I'm 100% behind eliminating corporate personhood. But why should people (not corporations) not be able to spend their money as they see fit?