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Tag Archives: money in politics
Ohio Advocate Podcast
May 29th, 2022 Show
The Ohio Advocate
Matt and Justin give an update on the redistricting battle in Ohio, and discuss Starbucks unionization efforts, police surveillance networks, the fight to get marijuana legalization on the ballot this year, and issues with Youngstown’s water meters.
Kathleen Caffrey interviews Greg Coleridge from Move to Amend Ohio about their efforts to reduce the effect of money in politics, and their current fight to revoke FirstEnergy’s corporate charter.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/may-29th-2022-show/id1615298248?i=1000564411534
Localizing Monetary Reform
Alliance for Just Money | June 16, 2021
https://www.monetaryalliance.org/localizing-monetary-reform/
By Greg Coleridge and Steven Norris
Organizing for any solution to a national problem presents multiple challenges, among them is to make the proposed solution relevant locally to people’s lives.
Bigger problems require proportionally bigger solutions, but those solutions can be difficult for individuals to relate to unless there are tangible ways presented to both understand the problem and solution and to take actions to bring change.
Educating on our destructive monetary system and proposing ways to democratize it to benefit people, places and the planet certainly falls into this category of a big problem needing a big solution. But how to localize it?
There are multiple strategies available to monetary reformers. One strategy is to study an approach of Move to Amend (MTA), a national group addressing the problems of big money corrupting elections and corporations increasingly dominating our lives by organizing to pass a Constitutional Amendment that would abolish the legal doctrines of “political money equals free speech” and corporate constitutional rights (i.e. “corporate personhood” for shorthand).
Like authentic monetary reform, ending “money as speech” and corporate rule via a Constitutional Amendment is a massive national solution. It’s a challenge to connect the proposal to local individuals and public officials. It’s also tough to find local educational and organizing “hooks” to get people to not only think and talk about it, but to take meaningful action.
Local ballot initiatives
MTA organizers in Ohio came up with the idea of organizing legal initiative petition campaigns to place on local ballots. Voters were asked whether they support Congress passing the proposed Amendment affirming that corporations do not have constitutional rights and money is not free speech, in the spirit of the national MTA We the People Amendment.
Anyone who’s ever been involved in local initiative petition campaigns knows that they are terrific ways to educate, organize and develop local leadership. Gathering signatures involved training petitioners, who were grounded in talking points and in how to approach individuals. Soliciting signatures educated potential voters. Once the campaigns were successful in gaining ballot access, the campaign flips to educate the entire community to vote in favor of the initiative — which, in many cases, gained media attention and invitations to speak at voter education forums.
While people-driven initiative campaigns at the local level on all kinds of issues are common, an additional feature of the Move to Amend initiatives was very unique in the 12 Ohio communities where the initiatives were enacted and became law.
That feature was the legal mandate that the local government (i.e. city or village) sponsor, publicize and have representatives at an annual or biennial public hearing where residents and, in some instances, others could testify on the impact of money in politics and corporate rule on their lives, community, state, nation or world. While details varied on several features, all 12 communities have been holding these public hearings — some since 2012.
The public hearings have been significant in keeping the problems of money in elections and corporate rule, as well as the We the People Amendment, alive beyond the original local ballot campaign in several ways:
First, the public hearings provide an opportunity for local MTA organizers to recruit representatives from other groups working on solutions to problems that are thwarted by money spent in elections by special interests and corporate constitutional rights. This helps those representatives, whether physically in person or virtually together at the hearing, see the connections between their concerns and the need to pass the We the People Amendment.
Second, the public hearings are a means to continually educate local MTA supporters and expose the larger community to both the problems and the solution promoted by MTA. The exposure is all the more effective if the hearings are publicized in the media beforehand and/or reported on afterwards.
Third, the hearings are a chance to directly educate local public officials who attend the hearings, who are both testified to and invited to testify themselves. After all, the public policy influence of money in elections and the preemption of local laws by corporate entities legislatively and in the courts are increasing realities to local elected officials. Besides, it’s a fact that some local public officials become state officials and some of those state officials become our U.S. Senators and Representatives — building a relationship with them now increases the chances they’ll become champions to our cause later.
One more provision of the dozen MTA-driven ballot initiatives is worth noting. Following each public hearing, the municipality is required to summarize the testimony, send it to the appropriate federal and state elected officials and remind them that voters in their communities want the We the People Amendment to be passed. Sometimes, the summary is coupled with written copies of all the testimony presented. When the municipality hasn’t included the written testimony, local MTA organizers have sent it themselves to the relevant public officials.
At a recent Cleveland Move to Amend public hearing, AFJM members John Howell, Steve Norris and Greg Coleridge (who’s also National Outreach Director for Move to Amend) spoke. You can view the public hearing held on Zoom this year here with the AFJM members speaking at 12:01, 50:41 and 62:59 respectively.
This is certainly not the only strategy to make a national call for monetary reform locally relevant. But it is one way to educate the community and public officials, outreach to local groups, develop local leadership grounded in the issue, recruit new supporters and attract media attention. Oh, and by the way, it also sends a recurring message to elected officials that the people of the community en masse support authentic fundamental change.
Connecting monetary reform to corporate constitutional rights
There’s a vicious symbiotic relationship between current laws on monetary policies and money in politics and corporate power. Economic power almost always translates into political power.
Monetary policies that continue to enrich banking corporations that perpetually profit from the creation of money as debt and through subsidies and, when needed, bailouts, allow these financial entities to flex their political muscle through political campaign contributions (i.e. what some call “legalized bribery”).
Senator Dick Durbin stated in a moment of candor in 2009: “And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” The Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) remains “far and away the largest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates and parties”. This condition is a reflection of corporations both hijacking First Amendment “free speech” rights, which were intended exclusively for human beings, and the constitutional doctrine that “political money is free speech,” instead of what money actually is — property.
The power of the financial industry is also a function in what they can shield — namely their internal financial affairs — from public scrutiny. Like many business corporations, their defense from being transparent hinges on the corporate hijacking of Fourth Amendment Constitutional privacy rights, which again were rights originally intended solely for human beings. This has emboldened in the case of banking entities to claim without independent verification the need for greater financial subsidies and other support lest these increasingly “too big to fail” institutions, in fact, fail and risk pulling the entire economy into an abyss. Yet another instance of their increased power to influence public policies.
It should be noted that original public charters creating banks in many states mandated that the bank’s books be open to periodic public inspection. This ensured that banking corporations remained publicly accountable and subordinate in power to the public.
These current realities have created an outsized economic and political influence of financial corporations. In such a legal and political environment in which the fundamental constitutional ground rules are rigged to benefit the very rich and business corporations, there’s little chance of passage of monetary reform or, frankly, any solution that addresses fundamental change and/or reduces corporate power.
It also, quite frankly, makes it enormously difficult to pass the We the People Amendment. That’s why it’s essential that AFJM continues to work on passing one or more laws creating authentic monetary change and other organizations working on their respective agendas to change laws or regulations creating more justice in all their forms. Yet, it’s critical to understand the limitation of working exclusively to improve any condition legally if constitutionally the rules are stacked against us, rules that can and have time and again preempted democratically passed laws benefiting workers, consumers, the environment and the natural world.
It’s why AFJM and other groups need to devote some energy to changing the constitutional ground rules — to create a level political playing field where We the People can actually mean all the people working to pass authentic monetary change and create other laws and regulations to the benefit of all people and all living things.
Cleveland Heights’ Democracy Day presented powerful testimony
March 31, 2021
http://www.heightsobserver.org/read/2021/03/31/chs-democracy-day-presented-powerful-testimony
by Greg Coleridge
Cleveland Heights City Council members, speakers and virtual viewers called January’s 8th annual Democracy Day public hearing “inspiring,” “informative,” and “enlightening”—hardly the “waste of time” claimed by Robert Shwab in a letter published in the March issue of the Heights Observer.
Federal and state court decisions, and laws created by the president, governor, U.S. Congress, and state legislature directly impact our city government and residents. Those decisions and policies are increasingly influenced by, and disproportionately benefit, the super-rich and corporations.
Most Cleveland Heights residents understand we don’t live in a cocoon, which explains how 77% of voters in 2013 passed the local ballot measure calling on Congress to support a Constitutional Amendment ending corporate constitutional rights and political money in elections defined as free speech. That initiative also mandated, by ordinance, the annual public hearing in Cleveland Heights, where individuals can testify on the impact of big money in elections, and of corporate power on their lives and community.
Powerful testimony at this and previous CH Democracy Day hearings addressed the undemocratic influence of corporations on education, health care, energy, agriculture, transportation, employment, the environment and many other issues. One could add pandemic relief funds, which have gone disproportionately to large corporations, including Paycheck Protection Program funding intended for small business. Can anyone legitimately claim such policies and actions have no impact on Cleveland Heights and its residents?
It’s true the ACLU supports corporate constitutional rights—at least its leadership does. Many of its members do not. The We the People Amendment is hardly radical.
As more people understand how our society has been captured and corrupted by the outsized influence corporations have gained via never-intended inalienable constitutional rights, support for House Joint Resolution 48 grows. More than 700 communities and 600 organizations are part of a growing movement to build power and a democratic culture to pressure Congress. Cleveland Heights’ annual Democracy Day plays an important role in this movement.
Greg Coleridge
Greg Coleridge is outreach director of the Move to Amend Coalition and a Cleveland Heights resident.
Testimony at Chagrin Falls Democracy Day
CHAGRIN FALLS DEMOCRACY DAY PUBLIC HEARING
Testimony of Greg Coleridge, Outreach Director, Move to Amend
March 4, 2021
Happy Democracy Day!
There is a growing movement in this country to create authentic democracy — for the very first time. The U.S. Constitution prevented all but white, male, property-owners from having inalienable rights. Women, people of color, indentured servants and others organized themselves into groups and powerful movements to change laws and pass Constitutional Amendments to gain basic rights. Those efforts continue.
At the same time, there’s been and continues to be a parallel track by the super rich and corporate entities to create and expand their power and rights. Their goal is not just to acquire rights to protect themselves, but to have fundamental power over the rest of us and our communities — to govern, to rule,
The super rich and corporate entities have hijacked Constitutional Amendments. Political money has been defined by the Supreme Court as First Amendment-protected free speech. Many of the Bill of Rights and 14th Amendment, intended to apply solely to human persons, have been expanded to apply to corporate entities
The results have been devastating to people, places, the planet…and to democracy.
The public opposes tax breaks for the super rich, bank bailouts and subsidies for fossil fuel corporations while at same time supports reasonable gun control, sustainable energy, healthy food, affordable and comprehensive health care, better education, living wages and sweeping pandemic relief that helps people and provides Paycheck Protection Program funding exclusively to small businesses, not mega corporations. Yet, political influence by large corporations prevents these and many other popular programs from being enacted. The source of this corporate political influence was the Supreme Court invention of so-called First Amendment corporate free speech rights to spend or invest money in elections.
But the political influence of corporations transcends money in politics.
Communities and states have sought unsuccessfully to demand that harmful ingredients or chemicals, like Monsanto’s glyphosate, be labeled on commercial packaging in the name of food safety. Courts have said such laws violate a corporation’s First Amendment right not to speak.
States have created many regulations to protect workers, the environment and consumers requiring surprise inspection of businesses. Such inspections have been overturned in court as violations of a corporation’s Fourth Amendment search and seizure rights.
There’s a movement to protect the environment from cataclysmic climate destruction by leaving oil and coal in the ground. But the right to protect the planet if such laws were passed could be challenged, as similar efforts have in the past, in court as a violation of corporate Fifth Amendment taking rights — meaning corporations would have to be compensated for tens of trillions of dollars of lost corporate profits.
Local communities, just like Chagrin Falls, that prides itself on small businesses are unable to provide special benefits that are not equally offered to out-of-town chain stores. To do so would be, as has been decided multiple times in court, unconstitutionally “discriminatory” against chain stores under the Fourteenth Amendment (which was enacted to protect freed slaves) — yet another amendment corporations have hijacked to expand their rights at the expense of the rights of people and communities.
Corporations don’t need constitutional rights to conduct business. Laws passed by legislative bodies created all the tools they need.
We will never, ever have authentic political democracy unless we end the twin constitutional doctrines of political money equaling free speech and corporate rights. Money is property, not speech. Only people are persons, not artificial legal entities like corporate entities.
Chagrin Falls voters understood this when voting 2:1 in 2014 for a ballot initiative supporting these changes — one of 705 communities that have taken a stand nationally along with more than 600 organizations in support of Move to Amend’s We the People Amendment.
Thanks to Chagrin Falls voters for being part of this broadening and deepening democracy movement.
Thank you.
Testimony at Brecksville “Democracy Day” public hearing
BRECKSVILLE “DEMOCRACY DAY” TESTIMONY
February 23, 2021
Greg Coleridge | Outreach Director, National Move to Amend Coalition
Happy Democracy Day!
Democracy is founded on the premise that the People are the source of all power.
‘We the People’ created corporations as tools to serve us, not themselves. As sovereigns we can regulate and restrict corporations as we see fit. The Supreme Court’s invention of constitutional rights for corporations has turned this fundamental principle on its head.
For the first century-plus of our history, corporations were strictly controlled and had no constitutional rights. Corporations couldn’t even exist unless state legislation—called charters—created them.
Statutes created corporations to give them the powers needed to conduct business for the peoples’ benefit. Logic dictates that corporations have only those rights granted them by statute. Statutes cannot create constitutional rights.
Corporations do not need constitutional rights to conduct business. Logically, an entity created to serve people should not have the same constitutional rights as those people it is supposed to serve.
Corporations aren’t mentioned in the Constitution. So the framers didn’t think they should have constitutional rights. But, starting with the 1819 Dartmouth case, the Supreme Court inserted corporations into the Constitution and progressively invented rights for corporations, anointing them with many of the same constitutional rights as natural persons like you and me.
Logic, history or law does not support the corporate constitutional rights doctrine created by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has never explained why artificial entities like corporations should have the same constitutional rights as natural persons when corporations do not need constitutional rights to do business and have special advantages that individual persons do not have, e.g. perpetual life and limited liability.
This court-invented constitutional doctrine has allowed corporations to abuse and harm the human beings they are supposed to serve. In addition to using their so-called free speech rights under the First Amendment to buy politicians, corporations have used other constitutional rights such as the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to undemocratically impose pollution, water contamination, environmental destruction, harm to workers and other assaults on unwilling local communities and individuals.
Increasingly, state legislatures and even municipal governments – such as Mayors and City Councils – have seen their police powers to protect the health, safety and welfare of their residents erode as corporate entities have successfully overturned locally passed ordinances on any number of consumer, economic, worker or environmental concerns by preemption or by going to court claiming that those laws “discriminate” under the 14th Amendment or are an infringement of trade under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.
Hundreds of such laws have been invalidated across the country over decades, creating a chilling effect on local officials since increasingly corporate rights trump local rights. Given this trend, one might reasonably ask why local governments should even exist if their only purpose may at some point be limited to determine stop sign placements, floral arrangements in planters on main street or the date of next summer’s apple festival. Decisions of real importance are increasingly hijacked. Increasing corporate constitutional rights decreases the need and taxpayer expense for mayors, councilpersons and local governments everywhere – including in Brecksville. The authority of local public officials – not to mention we the People in general — are under fundamental assault.
This is why passage of a 28th Constitutional Amendment, the We the People Amendment (HJR 48), is so important, which will end all never-intended, inalienable constitutional rights for corporate entities (corporate personhood) and the equally bizarre constitutional doctrine that political money in elections is equal to free speech —both doctrines of which were expanded in the 2010 Citizens United decision
We wouldn’t be here this evening if not for the tireless efforts of Brecksville residents to place the issue of ending big money in politics and corporate rule on the ballot in 2012 and to create this annual public hearing — as well as for Brecksville voters to pass this initiative – one of 705 communities across the country that have take a stand.
Thank you Brecksville citizens for being part of this growing transparitsan democracy movement.
Hold public officials accountable to the people, not corporations, via We the People Amendment
Letter to the Editor
State officials are reconsidering whether to use information posted on a website where employers could report employees who don’t show up to work after the site was attacked by hackers. While obviously not the technically appropriate venue, the website was a place where the general public could have symbolically performed their public duty to report every Ohio public official who doesn’t show up and do their job serving the public interest.
Public officials are paid with public tax dollars, yet too many increasingly serve the interests of big corporations and the rich. The list is long of Ohio elected, appointed and agency officials more beholden to energy, insurance, agricultural, financial, real estate and a slew of other corporations — and the richest 1% — than to the general public
We the People’s ability to have our voices heard and basic needs met continues to diminish, due in part to Supreme Court decisions declaring that “political money in elections is free speech” and “corporations have constitutional rights.” The We the People Amendment would abolish both constitutional doctrines.
As conventional arenas for the public to be heard and hold public officials accountable decline, it’s inevitable that the 99% will explore unconventional ways to make democracy real.
Greg Coleridge,
Cleveland Heights
Greg Coleridge is outreach director of the national Move to Amend campaign.
Corporate Hijacking of the U.S. Constitution
http://poclad.org/BWA/2019/BWA_2019_Oct.html
Move to Amend recently issued a series of written documents detailing the many constitutional rights awarded to corporations by the Supreme Court. The series, Corporate Hijacking of the U.S. Constitution , includes a four-page summary of many corporate constitutional rights. It’s followed by seven separate two-page douments describing the “corporate hijacking” of individual constitutional amendments and portions of the original U.S. Constitution.
What follows is an abridged version of each of the seven documents.
As stated in the introduction:
Many believe corporate hijacking of the constitution begins and ends with money in elections (i.e. First Amendment ‘free speech’ rights permitting corporations to spend money to influence elections). But the threat to people, communities, the environment and democracy itself is much greater and includes additional parts of the First Amendment, as well as other amendments of our constitution.
Ending corporate constitutional rights is more than simply reversing the 2010 Citizens United vs FEC Supreme Court decision and more than simply ending political money defined as First Amendment-protected ‘free speech.’
The entire series is at https://movetoamend.org/toolkit/corporate-hijacking-us-constitution
Understanding the totality of corporate constitutional rights (better known as “corporate personhood”) is critical. Corporations did not originally possess constitutional rights in this country.
Several legislative and amendment alternatives to Move to Amend’s “We the People Amendment, HJR48 (https://movetoamend.org/amendment) reference corporate constitutional rights, but only focus on the Citizens United Supreme Court decision or only address corporate political money in elections. These alternatives provide a gaping hole for the power elite by simply using their remaining constitutional rights to assert control over people and communities and to further plunder the planet — as they once did prior to winning corporate political free speech rights.
Reversing Citizens United isn’t enough. Simply ending corporate political free speech rights isn’t enough. We must abolish all forms of corporate personhood if we expect as self-governing people to assert our authority to protect ourselves, families, communities and what remains of a livable world…not to mention creating a political system for the very first time where We the People include All the People.
-Greg Coleridge. Member of the POCLAD Collective and Move to Amend Outreach Director
Rest of article at http://poclad.org/BWA/2019/BWA_2019_Oct.html
Working to restore the voices of ordinary people
October 3, 2019
https://www.tdn-net.com/opinion/columns/71364/working-to-restore-the-voices-of-ordinary-people
By Deb Hogshead
It’s neither a conservative nor liberal issue. It’s a constitutional issue, and that’s what Greg Coleridge will talk about when he visits Troy on October 12.
Greg is the national outreach director for the non-partisan, grassroots coalition Move to Amend, and he will explain how a proposed 28th Amendment to the Constitution will restore the voices of ordinary people — individuals like you and me — in government decisions.
Large corporate entities (for example, business corporations, associations, labor unions and non-profit organizations) have a louder voice than we do in Washington and Columbus. Through a series of rulings over the course of many years, the Supreme Court made this possible by ruling that corporations are people with constitutional rights — including free speech rights that allow them to spend large amounts of money to influence elections and legislation.
Corporate entities play a critical role in society and warrant privileges and protections, but they should not have a louder voice than we do when it comes to decisions that affect our daily lives — decisions about such things as the quality of our water supply, access to affordable healthcare, disclosure of ingredients in our food, the dumping of out-of-state toxic materials in our communities and protections for locally owned businesses and family-owned farms against chains stores and out-of-state agribusinesses.
A 28th Amendment would shift political power away from corporate entities and back to the people. It would move decisions about corporate privileges and protections from the Supreme Court back to the people, through their elected representatives, where it had been at the beginning of our nation’s history.
There’s already a resolution in Congress with language for a proposed amendment. It’s HJR 48, and it has 64 co-sponsors, including three from the Ohio delegation. HJR 48 makes clear (1) constitutional rights belong to human beings only — not artificial entities such as corporations, associations, unions and nonprofit organizations — and (2) money spent on elections is not a protected form of speech and shall be regulated.
Support for a 28th Amendment has been growing since the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v FEC. Let me give you a few examples:
Across the nation, nearly half a million people have signed a petition supporting a 28th Amendment; of those, more than 16,000 are Ohio residents and 1,215 live in Ohio District 8.
Well over 600 communities have passed citizen initiatives or council resolutions in support of a 28th Amendment. In Ohio the number is 24.
Of the 50 states, close to 20 have passed ballot initiatives or resolutions calling for a similar amendment. In Columbus, resolutions calling for a 28th Amendment have been re-introduced in both the House (HR 140) and the Senate (SR 221).
These numbers will grow as more people understand the impact of corporate dominance in our governance.
Please join us from 1-3 p.m. Oct. 12 at the Lincoln Community Center, 110 Ash St.
Talking Democracy on Oct. 12
https://www.miamivalleysunday.com/2019/09/12/talking-democracy-on-oct-12/
TROY—Greg Coleridge, national outreach director for the non-partisan, grassroots coalition Move to Amend, will be the featured speaker at “Stand Up for Democracy,” 1 to 3 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 12, at the Lincoln Community Center, 110 Ash St. The program is hosted by We The People Miami County and Move to Amend.
Also speaking will be Mary Sue Gmeiner, affiliate coordinator of Greater Dayton Move to Amend. Representatives from area justice and peace organizations will be on hand to share information about their work and ways for people to get involved.
The program will begin with the screening of the 30-minute documentary “Legalize Democracy.” Gmeiner will explain how corporate power relates to the issues faced by the participating justice and peace organizations. Coleridge will discuss solutions to the problem of corporate dominance in politics and offer suggestions for restoring the voice of the people. A Q&A will follow.
In addition to his work with Move to Amend, Coleridge is a principal leader of the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD) and an advisor to the American Monetary Institute (AMI). He previously served on the national governing board of Common Cause. For more than three decades, Coleridge worked with the American Friends Service Committee in Ohio. He is the author of “Citizens over Corporations: A Brief History of Democracy in Ohio” and “Challenges to Freedom in the Future” and script writer for the documentary “CorpOrNation: The Story of Citizens and Corporations in Ohio.”
Move to Amend is a national, non-partisan grassroots affiliation of people and organizations working for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that makes clear constitutional rights belong to human beings only and money spent on elections is not a protected form of speech and shall be regulated. We The People Miami County is a local ad hoc working group in partnership with Move to Amend
For questions or more information about We the People Miami County, contact wethepeoplemiamicounty@gmail.com. For information on Move to Amend, visit movetoamend.org.
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