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Coleridge Greg MTA natl

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7 25 rally email g

Read Greg’s speech HERE

It calls on activists to confront and dismantle the entrenched power of corporations and the super-rich. Drawing on decades of organizing experience, Greg argues that political and constitutional systems are not broken but deliberately rigged to favor wealth and corporate interests. It describes how corporations gained constitutional rights and political influence – undermining real democracy – and advocates for passing the “We the People Amendment” to end corporate constitutional rights and the dominance of private money in politics. The path forward must include affirming our own dignity and organizing authentically democratic organizations that includes or supports mutual aid, radical education, and direct action to achieve a grassroots-based, people-powered democracy movement. Real democracy has never existed in the U.S., and it’s up to everyday people to create it for the very first time.

We hope to have a video of the talk and other images of the rally soon. Check HERE for updates.

MTA was a proud partner of the events in DC and in several local communities.

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remarksd DC bio

Money Out of Politics Rally Remarks | create real democracy

Chant: MONEY – OUT – OF – POLITICS (repeat)

Greetings Democracy Agitators. Just as the agitator is the part of the washing machine that breaks up stains, dirt and filth, you are among the growing tens of millions of people working to remove the stains of political corruption, the dirty pay-to-play political schemes and the filth and rot of political and constitutional systems influenced by billionaires and corporations that increasingly expand their power and profits at the expense of We, the People.

For 34 years, I worked in Ohio for a national Quaker-related organization, the American Friends Service Committee trying to change laws that, like many of you, helped people, communities and the natural world. Most of the time, we lost. We lost because, for one, we were up against the government, media, academia, think tanks, and other institutions corrupted by money and power from wealthy individuals and corporations. But the other reason we lost was because we were always playing defense: resisting, responding or opposing one or another injustice or harm – one low-income program cut at a time, one weapon system at a time, one toxic dump at a time, one boycotted article of clothing, fruit or vegetable at a time. The point is, most of the time we were reacting to the power elite’s agenda. We were always opposing. Never enough time for proposing fundamental change – for going on the offense.

I realized then that our entire political system wasn’t broken but, rather, was fixed – as in rigged – to benefit the super rich and corporations.

I became connected to a group in the mid 1990s called the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD) – a research think tank for frustrated activists. POCLAD was one of the first groups that coined the term “corporate personhood” – meaning that corporate entities were anointed with never-intended constitutional rights – rights that sometimes were used as swords to attack people, communities and the environment, and other times as shields to protect themselves from public accountability. Corporations were not intended to politically influence, rule, or govern like they do today.

The Colonial Revolution wasn’t just a revolution against King George or the Red Coats, but against the Crown Corporations – like the Virginia Company, Massachusetts Bay Company and Carolina Company – that in most cases made not only economic decisions, but political decisions on behalf of the British Crown. The Revolution “constitutionalized” or “democratized” these entities, thus the Virginia Company became the Commonwealth of Virginia, and so on.

POCLAD unearthed a reality that had long been buried – that of how We the People and our state legislators defined corporations via charters or licences. You see, the reality is corporations are creations of government – mostly at the state level. They were originally intended to serve the public, to be subordinate to people. Corporations were intended to have privileges, not rights, which were explicitly defined in their individual charters.

Slavery is the legal fiction that people are property, corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property are people.

Our research in Ohio showed how corporations were subordinate to the rule of We, the People. When corporations violated their charter, the company was revoked. In a ruling to dissolve a dairy corporation, the Ohio Supreme Court said,

*The time has not yet arrived when the created is greater than the creator, and it still remains the duty of the courts to perform their office in the enforcement of the laws, no matter how ingenious the pretexts for their violation may be, nor the power of the violators in the commercial world.

All this changed following the Civil War, which enriched corporations. Corporations converted their massive economic power into political power. Corpses escaped “democratic” control at the state level in four ways: by escaping to another corporate friendly state, by creating regulatory agencies, by escaping to the federal legislative arena (Congress)l, and by escaping to the courts (especially the Supreme Court).

Shifting the power to define corporate actions from the legislative arena to the judicial arena (that is, the courts) is a bit like shifting from being an active participant in a baseball game to simply being a spectator in the stands – we can boo or cheer, but that’s it. We’re no longer on the field of play – having a hand in the direct outcome of the game.

Corporations were first granted constitutional rights in the 1880s by the Supreme Court under the 14th Amendment – which was originally intended to define all human beings, including newly free slaves, as persons, with due process and equal protection rights. In the two decades that followed, the courts granted corporations 14th amendment rights nearly 300 times – all other persons, only a handful. That was only the beginning. Corporate agents, affirmed by the Supreme Court, hijacked the Bill of Rights, anointing corporate entities with 4th Amendment search and seizure rights, 5th Amendment takings rights, the 1st Amendment not to speak, the right to lie, and commercial speech rights, and finally in the 1970s 1st Amendment right to speak. This coupled with the constitutional right that money equals free speech in the 1970s provided corporations the power to not simply influence, but in many ways to govern. This includes the right corporations have acquired to donate – or more accurately invest – in elections.

All this happened before Citizens United in which the super rich and corporations widened and deepened their corrupting influence of money invested in elections – with tremendous returns on their investments.

I need your help right now in a call and response. I need everyone to say “I’ll believe a corporation is a person when…” I’ll then provide a few instances when we should be convinced. Ready?

*“I’ll believe a corporation is a person when…

… Texas executes one

… Arizona deports one

… Massachusetts marries two of them

… one sacrifices its life in military service

… it develops a conscience

… one gets a STD after jumping in bed with an elected representative

I want to make 3 points

  1. We must end private money in politics
  2. To achieve authentic democracy (for the very first time), we must connect ending private money in politics with ending constitutional corporate rights – and beyond.
  3. We must have a plan for doing all this.
  1. We must end private money in politics
  1. Ending private money in politics must be connected to ending corporate rule – for starters
  1. So what’s the plan? What do we do? Where do we go from here.
  1. We must internalize that “It’s up to us.” Radical feminist and meditation teacher Sally Kempton said, “It’s hard to fight an enemy that has outposts in your head.” Our minds have been colonized, captured by the dominant narrative of society of how things are, and who we are. Slaves, women, workers, LGTBQ+ individuals, American colonists, anti-nuclear activists, poor populist farmers, blacks in the south and others in our nation’s history all overcame the narrative that they were not fully equal or human, not deserving of rights, and/or not smart or experienced enough to organize social movements that resulted in fundamental legal or constitutional change in this nation. It won’t be supportive elected officials, the courts, institutional “guard rails,” the alternative press that will save us. IT’S US. It’s time to flush the outposts out of our heads. If we can’t change our minds to affirm that we are the people we’ve been waiting for – as Gandhi has said – then we can’t change anything.
  1. We must create organizations focused on building a democracy movement. Move to Amend is one of those groups. Money Out of Politics is another. They must be authentically democratic. Means and ends must be in harmony. They must be politically and economically independent. They must be transparent, and have a commitment to anti-oppression in all its forms. Their goal must be to build power that is proportionate in scale to the magnitude of the problems. And they must work to integrate changing the culture while changing the governing rules.
  1. We must create an appealing onramp for people to join. How do we recruit the masses? History shows addressing immediate needs is the best way to bring people in. That’s mutual aid today – to provide basic needs that the system is increasingly ignoring or reducing.
  1. Once people are recruited or in the door, we must provide radical education. By radical, we mean to get to the root of issues, problems and solutions. It can be in part through social media. But it also must be done in person. Small groups may be the best (that’s how the military works – people learning, living and training in small groups). But also large groups like community Citizen’s Assemblies or People’s Movement Assemblies, like those done at the end of the U.S. social forums over the last several decades in Atlanta, Detroit and Philadelphia. These are forums to dream, envision, learn from others, build trust and solidarity.
  1. Finally we must take action for democratic change.

There has never been a time like now. We are living in a moment of multiple and interconnected crises: political, constitutional, economic, social, ecological – what is called a polycrisis. But it also means a time of multiple, interconnected opportunities. The future is not determined. It’s not like gravity. It’s not inevitable or irreversible. With the exception of the environmental crisis, what has been done, can be undone.

As it has always been, is now, and will always be, It’s up to us.

Join me, Move to Amend and Money Out of Politics to create real, authentic democracy in this country – for the very first time.

Chant: *MONEY – OUT – OF – POLITICS (repeat)

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Corporate Coup Report #4 - Move to Amend

musk geo gp

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GREG COLERIDGE & JENNIE SPANOS

May, 10, 2024

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/corporate-constitutional-rights

The actual “birth” of corporate constitutional rights, often referred to as “corporate personhood,” wasn’t Citizens United; it dates to May 10, 1886 in the Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company ruling.
The origins of the current political influence by weapons corporations to profit from perpetual wars, occupations, and arm sales; the fossil fuel industry to continue burning oil, gas, and coal in the face of irrefutable evidence that it’s overheating the planet; and insurance and pharmaceutical corporations to prevent the enactment of Medicare for All aren’t any law, regulation, or executive decision. Rather, they’re Supreme Court rulings that define corporate entities as legal “persons” with many of the same rights as human beings under the U.S. Constitution.
This reality didn’t begin with the Citizens United v. FEC 2010 decision, contrary to common belief. Citizens United simply expanded corporate First Amendment “free speech rights” to directly donate (or, more accurately, invest) in elections that originated with the First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti case in 1978
The actual “birth” of corporate constitutional rights, often referred to as “corporate personhood,” dates to May 10, 1886 in the Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company ruling. The summary of the tax case, called the “headnotes”—not the actual decision—granted the railroad corporation with “equal protection rights” under the 14th Amendment.
All the good work by individuals and organizations to legalize protections of individuals, communities, and nature and hold corporate entities accountable for their harms will never be systemically achieved as long as we continue to constitutionalize corporate rights as equivalent to the rights of human persons.
The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S, including former enslaved human beings. Although it was not intended to apply to corporations, they hijacked the Amendment for their political and economic benefit. As former Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black declared, “Of the cases in this court in which the 14th Amendment was applied during the first 50 years after its adoption, less than one half of 1% invoked it in protection of the negro race, and more than 50% asked that its benefits be extended to corporations.”
Human persons are grossly unequal to corporations. Bankruptcy, tax, and criminal laws are more favorable to “corporate persons” than human beings. Corporations can write off certain legal expenses; real people can’t. Laws increasingly allow corporations to design arbitration rules that force employees and customers to settle disputes over unsafe products, consumer fraud, employment discrimination, nonpayment of wages, and other instances of corporate malfeasance. And unlike human persons with limited lifespans and physical mobility, corporations can live forever and legally and quickly move assets between physical locations to evade accountability.
The Santa Clara corporate perversion of the 14th Amendment profoundly shifted how corporations were defined. Until then, state legislatures granted individuals a corporate charter, or license, to conduct business. The charter established specific standards for a limited period, after which in many instances the business became public. The charter’s terms were privileges, not rights. If the business violated the charter’s terms, it was revoked by state legislatures or courts, which frequently occurred, and the company was dissolved. The same occurred following the shift from individually granted charters to the creation of state laws addressing entire categories of corporations, such as banks, railroads, and canals.
Santa Clararepresented a tectonic antidemocratic shift in the authority to define corporate entities—from the state legislative arena to federal courts, specifically the U.S. Supreme Court, which was beyond the direct reach of citizens and elected officials. It unleashed business corporations to massively plunder, profit, and protect themselves from democratic accountability, resulting in the declining protection of people, communities, and the ability to ensure a livable natural world.
Corporate First Amendment political “free speech” rights to invest money in elections, including the Citizens Uniteddecision, is the most recent constitutional descendant of the Santa Claraprecedent. There are many others.
√ First Amendment Right Not to Speak, Negative Speech Rights and Commercial Speech Rights
The Supreme Court overturned a California state law allowing a ratepayer advocacy group to enclose information in the utility corporations’ billing envelopes calling for regulations that would lower utility rates and a New York law that would save energy by banning the promotion of the use of electricity by a utility corporation. A court also overturned a Vermont law mandating the disclosure of a dangerous synthetic growth hormone on dairy products.These court-invented rights have been used by corporate entities to defy the legitimate rights of people to know factual information; the authority of government to protect the health, safety, and welfare of residents; the provision of basic health needs of employees; and the ability to hold corporations publicly accountable.
√ Fourth Amendment Search and Seizure Rights
The Supreme Court overturned laws mandating routine surprise inspections of corporate property, claiming the “right of the people to be secure in their persons [and] houses... against unreasonable searches and seizures” applied to corporations. These judicial decisions treat corporate entities like human persons, even though the Fourth Amendment’s original language applies only to human beings, their homes, and personal effects. Governmental attempts to protect the public from the dangers stemming from commercial activities like food contamination, drug impurities, automobile defects, and environmental hazards are thwarted by removing surprise inspections, thus allowing businesses to hide, alter, or disguise dangerous conditions.
√ Fifth Amendment Takings Rights
The Supreme Court has struck down regulatory laws protecting homeowners and workers from corporations, claiming the laws are a “taking of property without just compensation.” This includes a Pennsylvania law regulating the mining of coal beneath homes to prevent their sinking and a California law allowing union organizers from having access to agricultural employees at worksites under certain conditions. Public laws to protect residents, communities, and the natural world should supersede legally mandated compensation of lost present and future corporate profits. This is especially urgent as it becomes more evident that to tackle climate change, fossil fuels must be kept in the ground. This may simply not be possible as long as corporations can assert Fifth Amendment “takings rights.”
Corporate constitutional rights transcend Citizens United and corporate First Amendment political “free speech” rights. All the good work by individuals and organizations to legalize protections of individuals, communities, and nature and hold corporate entities accountable for their harms will never be systemically achieved as long as we continue to constitutionalize corporate rights as equivalent to the rights of human persons.
The We the People Amendment (HJR54) is the only current proposal that seeks the abolition of all corporate constitutional rights. More support is needed to add co-sponsors. The amendment, however, will never achieve sufficient power to make change until we decolonize our minds from believing that corporate rule and rights are inevitable and irreversible. A good place to start, especially on this day, is to internalize the statement: “Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that a property is a person.”
It’s time we quickly end the life of constitutional corporate persons.

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comm dr greg c 2024

let’s Wish Corporate Constitutional Rights a Very Unhappy Birthday

The actual “birth” of corporate constitutional rights, often referred to as “corporate personhood,” wasn’t Citizens United; it dates to May 10, 1886 in the Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company ruling.

GREG COLERIDGEJENNIE SPANOS

May 10, 2024Common Dreams

The origins of the current political influence by weapons corporations to profit from perpetual wars, occupations, and arm sales; the fossil fuel industry to continue burning oil, gas, and coal in the face of irrefutable evidence that it’s overheating the planet; and insurance and pharmaceutical corporations to prevent the enactment of Medicare for All aren’t any law, regulation, or executive decision. Rather, they’re Supreme Court rulings that define corporate entities as legal “persons” with many of the same rights as human beings under the U.S. Constitution.

This reality didn’t begin with the Citizens United v. FEC 2010 decision, contrary to common belief. Citizens United simply expanded corporate First Amendment “free speech rights” to directly donate (or, more accurately, invest) in elections that originated with the First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti case in 1978

The actual “birth” of corporate constitutional rights, often referred to as “corporate personhood,” dates to May 10, 1886 in the Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company ruling. The summary of the tax case, called the “headnotes”—not the actual decision—granted the railroad corporation with “equal protection rights” under the 14th Amendment.

All the good work by individuals and organizations to legalize protections of individuals, communities, and nature and hold corporate entities accountable for their harms will never be systemically achieved as long as we continue to constitutionalize corporate rights as equivalent to the rights of human persons.

The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S, including former enslaved human beings. Although it was not intended to apply to corporations, they hijacked the Amendment for their political and economic benefit. As former Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black declared, “Of the cases in this court in which the 14th Amendment was applied during the first 50 years after its adoption, less than one half of 1% invoked it in protection of the negro race, and more than 50% asked that its benefits be extended to corporations.”

Human persons are grossly unequal to corporations. Bankruptcy, tax, and criminal laws are more favorable to “corporate persons” than human beings. Corporations can write off certain legal expenses; real people can’t. Laws increasingly allow corporations to design arbitration rules that force employees and customers to settle disputes over unsafe products, consumer fraud, employment discrimination, nonpayment of wages, and other instances of corporate malfeasance. And unlike human persons with limited lifespans and physical mobility, corporations can live forever and legally and quickly move assets between physical locations to evade accountability.

The Santa Clara corporate perversion of the 14th Amendment profoundly shifted how corporations were defined. Until then, state legislatures granted individuals a corporate charter, or license, to conduct business. The charter established specific standards for a limited period, after which in many instances the business became public. The charter’s terms were privileges, not rights. If the business violated the charter’s terms, it was revoked by state legislatures or courts, which frequently occurred, and the company was dissolved. The same occurred following the shift from individually granted charters to the creation of state laws addressing entire categories of corporations, such as banks, railroads, and canals.

Santa Clararepresented a tectonic antidemocratic shift in the authority to define corporate entities—from the state legislative arena to federal courts, specifically the U.S. Supreme Court, which was beyond the direct reach of citizens and elected officials. It unleashed business corporations to massively plunder, profit, and protect themselves from democratic accountability, resulting in the declining protection of people, communities, and the ability to ensure a livable natural world.

Corporate First Amendment political “free speech” rights to invest money in elections, including the Citizens Uniteddecision, is the most recent constitutional descendant of the Santa Claraprecedent. There are many others.

√ First Amendment Right Not to Speak, Negative Speech Rights and Commercial Speech Rights

The Supreme Court overturned a California state law allowing a ratepayer advocacy group to enclose information in the utility corporations’ billing envelopes calling for regulations that would lower utility rates and a New York law that would save energy by banning the promotion of the use of electricity by a utility corporation.

A court also overturned a Vermont law mandating the disclosure of a dangerous synthetic growth hormone on dairy products.These court-invented rights have been used by corporate entities to defy the legitimate rights of people to know factual information; the authority of government to protect the health, safety, and welfare of residents; the provision of basic health needs of employees; and the ability to hold corporations publicly accountable.

VS TWITTER FILES BS?

√ Fourth Amendment Search and Seizure Rights

The Supreme Court overturned laws mandating routine surprise inspections of corporate property, claiming the “right of the people to be secure in their persons [and] houses... against unreasonable searches and seizures” applied to corporations. These judicial decisions treat corporate entities like human persons, even though the Fourth Amendment’s original language applies only to human beings, their homes, and personal effects. Governmental attempts to protect the public from the dangers stemming from commercial activities like food contamination, drug impurities, automobile defects, and environmental hazards are thwarted by removing surprise inspections, thus allowing businesses to hide, alter, or disguise dangerous conditions.

BOEING DOOR 737 MAX?

√ Fifth Amendment Takings Rights

The Supreme Court has struck down regulatory laws protecting homeowners and workers from corporations, claiming the laws are a “taking of property without just compensation.” This includes a Pennsylvania law regulating the mining of coal beneath homes to prevent their sinking and a California law allowing union organizers from having access to agricultural employees at worksites under certain conditions.

Public laws to protect residents, communities, and the natural world should supersede legally mandated compensation of lost present and future corporate profits. This is especially urgent as it becomes more evident that to tackle climate change, fossil fuels must be kept in the ground. This may simply not be possible as long as corporations can assert Fifth Amendment “takings rights.”

Corporate constitutional rights transcend Citizens United and corporate First Amendment political “free speech” rights. All the good work by individuals and organizations to legalize protections of individuals, communities, and nature and hold corporate entities accountable for their harms will never be systemically achieved as long as we continue to constitutionalize corporate rights as equivalent to the rights of human persons.

The We the People Amendment (HJR54) is the only current proposal that seeks the abolition of all corporate constitutional rights. More support is needed to add co-sponsors. The amendment, however, will never achieve sufficient power to make change until we decolonize our minds from believing that corporate rule and rights are inevitable and irreversible. A good place to start, especially on this day, is to internalize the statement: “Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that a property is a person.”

It’s time we quickly end the life of constitutional corporate persons.

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