East Palestine Train Derailment Caused and Worsened by Real Democracy Derailment

OpEd News

By Greg Coleridge | March 9, 2023

https://www.opednews.com/articles/East-Palestine-Train-Derai-Democracy_Democracy-History_Real-Democracy_Train-Crash-230309-199.html

The Norfolk Southern Corporation train derailment and subsequent hazardous chemical release into the air, water and land in and beyond East Palestine, Ohio are the inevitable result of multiple anti-democratic realities in the U.S. Many are interconnected and are the same for the roughly 1000 train derailments per year, most recently in Michigan.

Private ownership of railroads

Norfolk Southern Corporation’s record earnings in 2022 led to huge salaries for its top managers and stock buybacks and dividend payouts benefiting speculators and investors. Necessary investments have not been made in technology upgrades and worker safety as the corporation prioritizes maximizing profits over public safety and sustainable business practices. “Since the North American private rail industry has shown itself incapable of doing the job, it is time for this invaluable transportation infrastructure – like the other transport modes – to be brought under public ownership,” concludes the Railroad Workers United. Interstate highways are publicly owned. Railroads were under federal control during WWI. Railroads in many other nations are publicly owned and, therefore, publicly accountable.

No community rights

Local public officials have few legal tools to protect the health, safety and welfare of their residents – especially conditions in any way related to interstate commerce. Communities possess little authority to control material – including trash, chemicals, nuclear waste – coming into or even passing through their jurisdictions by trains or trucks if that material can be defined as “commerce.” The Constitution’s Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8) gives power to Congress and the President to “regulate commerce”among the several states.” While states have at least some ability under certain conditions to push back against “commercial material” in their states if they can redefine it as dangerous, localities have no rights. East Palestine officials weren’t even notified the derailed Norfolk Southern train was carrying vinyl chloride, ethylhexyl acrylate and other highly toxic chemicals since federal law doesn’t classify those chemicals as “high hazardous.”

Lack of worker power

Strikes are powerful tactics of workers to exert leverage against management. It’s different for railroad workers given the importance of railroads in the nation’s commerce. Unions representing rail workers have been virtually unable to strike since passage of the Railway Labor Act in 1926, which gives the government, specifically the President and Congress, vast powers to force workers to accept alternative means of resolving disputes – including mediation, arbitration and a Presidentially-appointed panel to make a recommendation. Without the legitimate threat to strike, rail workers, including those of Norfolk Southern, lack the power to press for ending dangerous working conditions.

Corporate campaign contributions

Railroad corporations are major political donors/investors to federal and state political races. The industry has poured $85 million into federal candidate campaigns, political parties and outside spending groups since 2002 with Republicans historically being the preferred recipients until recent years. Norfolk Southern – along with BNSF, Union Pacific Corp. and CSX Corp. – are the major industry contributors/investors. Norfolk Southern’s political investments have been $17 million since 1990. At the state level, Norfolk Southern has invested $98,000 into Ohio political races since 2018, with Gov. Mike DeWine (who at first didn’t call for federal assistance following the E. Palestine disaster since he didn’t see a problem) being the largest recipient. Another recipient, Rep. Bill Seitz, supports his home city of Cincinnati selling its publicly owned rail line to none other than Norfolk Southern. At the very least, political campaign contributions buy access to public officials; at worst, buys favors.

Corporate lobbying

The railroad industry invested $24.6 million to employee 265 reported lobbyists to influence the federal government in 2022. Norfolk Southern’s portion was $1.8 million. The combination of corporate campaign contributions and lobbying by Norfolk Southern and other railroads results in legislation and regulations favorable to the industry, harmful to workers and threatening to communities. Rail lobbyists and $6 million from the rail industry to GOP campaigns in 2017, backed by President Trump, were effective in reversing requirements that rail cars carrying hazardous flammable materials install modern electronic braking systems to replace Civil War-era systems. Lobbyists have pressed for fewer workers on trains, longer and heavier trains, and reduced fines for penalties – as well as against paid sick leave for workers and having to define trains carrying hazardous chemicals like the Norfolk Southern that derailed in East Palestine as “high hazard,” which would increase additional safety requirements, costs and public notification. Lobbyists are already working to prevent “burdensome regulations” that, no doubt, include provisions of the proposed Rail Safety Act of 2023, supported by Democratic and Republican Senators in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Supreme Court decisions

Courts have granted corporate entities with a long list of constitutional rights which were intended exclusively to human beings. This includes corporate entities having the “right” to contribute to political campaigns. This has permitted all corporations, including Norfolk Southern, to corrupt the political process favorable to their interests, such as the previously mentioned laws and regulations profitable for railroads, but harmful to persons without the means to spend large sums of money to have their voices heard, communities helped and environment protected. Supreme Court-granted corporate Fourth Amendment search and seizure rights prevent surprise inspections of corporate property intended to protect workers and communities.

Ineffective and/or captured regulatory agencies

Railroads were the first federal government regulated corporations with the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887 in response to widespread public rage over railroad abuses and malpractices. The railroads preferred government regulation over direct public ownership, which was a growing public call over many natural monopolies. Railroad executives felt they could have influence over agencies through appointments of regulators and limiting the scope of their oversight, which has proven true. Public safety inspections are also limited by regulatory agency funding, which impacts technology needs and human inspectors. The Federal Railroad Administration, the major railroad regulatory agency, has only 400 inspectors to inspect the nation’s rail system covering 140,000 miles. This has forced the FHA to increasingly allow railroad corporations to inspect their own trains, tracks and signals, an increasingly common practice across all regulatory agencies. The EPA recently announced that it’s requiring Norfolk Southern to directly test for dioxins in East Palestine. Where’s the public accountability when, in effect, an entity charged with a crime gets to be the prosecutor, judge and jury?

Criminalization of protest

The response by the state, supported by corporations, to public protests and organizing responding to corporate assaults has been to pass laws criminalizing such activities to punish and smear individuals who exercise their right to peaceful assembly. Forty-five states have considered 265 bills, 39 of which have already passed in 20 states since 2017. Penalties of felonies serve as a deterrent to individuals to attend public events where they might be arrested and plant the message that those who protest must be extremists. This mindset is reflected in the reaction by federal and Ohio “law enforcement” agencies to the recent visit of whistleblower Erin Brockovich to East Palestine. A report by the agencies “assesses that special interest extremist groups will continue to call for changes in governmental policy, which may lead to protests in/around East Palestine and/or at the Statehouse in Columbus.” Clearly, even a public meeting that Brockovich was planning was deemed as dangerous.

The East Palestine tragedy, while dramatic and horrific in its hardships to those who live nearby, wildlife and the environment, is sadly merely a symptom of current political realities. Essential is fundamental systemic change to address not only all the above mentioned conditions, but also to structurally increase the power of people to have legitimate influence over decisions affecting their lives, communities and beyond.

Enacting the We the People Amendment, HJR48 that would abolish all corporate constitutional rights and political money defined as free speech, is urgent. But fundamental self-governance goes beyond the amendment. Independent people’s movements led by individuals who’ve been historically treated unjustly is a prerequisite for how to get real democracy on track – for the very first time.

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Greg Coleridge is Co-Director of Move to Amend. He previously worked for more than three decades with the American Friends Service Committee in Ohio where he educated, advocated and organized on a range of justice, peace, environmental and democracy issues — including helping coordinate Move to Amend activities in the Buckeye state. He is the author of The Depth of Change: Selected Writings and Remarks on Social Change (2022); Citizens over Corporations: A Brief History of Democracy in Ohio and Challenges to Freedom in the Future (2003), writer of the documentary CorpOrNation: The Story of Citizens and Corporations in Ohio (2003), and contributed several articles to the anthology Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy – A Book of History and Strategy (2001). He currently maintains and distributes via email a weekly REAL Democracy History Calendar (https://realdemocracyhistorycalendar.wordpress.com/) and Monetary History Calendar (https://monetarycalendar.wordpress.com/) He is a Board Member of the Alliance for Just Money (AFJM). He previously served an elected term on the national governing board of Common Cause and was a Principal with the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD).

The Corporate Weaponization of Government

“Abolishing corporate constitutional rights,” writes Coleridge, “shifts back from the judicial to the legislative arena the public ability to define corporate actions to ensure that the health, safety, and welfare of people, communities and the natural world are prioritized.” (Photo: Sean Gladwell / iStock via Getty Images)

Abolishing all corporate constitutional rights by enacting the We the People Amendment (HJR48), soon to be introduced again by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, is the only strategy to make corporations authentically democratically accountable.

GREG COLERIDGE

Feb 15, 2023 Common Dreams

A subcommittee of the full House Judiciary Committee held a hearing last week on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government.” Two panels discussed the “politicization of the FBI and DOJ and attacks on American civil liberties.” It rehashed old grievances about how Trump and others were treated by the two agencies over the last few years.

If exposing and ending “weaponization of the government” is the target, then the Judiciary Committee should take aim at the single biggest culprit: corporations. This investigation would be enlightening since the corporate “weaponization” or hijacking of the government has been so blatant, widespread and persistent for more than a century.

Most corporations in the U.S. were originally chartered or licenced at the state level by legislatures one-at-a-time. Corporate charters stipulated specific conditions to ensure that corporations served the common good. Charters were routinely revoked when corporations acted “ultra vires,” that is. beyond their defined authority. None of those conditions included bestowing inherent rights to corporations to dominate virtually every aspect of society and government as they do today.

Corporations have amassed enormous political and economic power by escaping state legislative authority and public accountability by “weaponizing” four sectors of government.

1. Corporations “weaponize” states against one another.

Corporate agents moved corporate charters from states that limited corporate independence to states with corporate friendly laws, thanks to the corruption of state legislators. Originally that was New Jersey. Today it’s Delaware, where over 60 percent of Fortune 500 firms are incorporated.

2. Corporations “weaponize” legislatures.

Corporate agents sought federal laws to preempt state laws and state laws to preempt local laws limiting corporate powers. The federal Sherman Antitrust Act, for example, was a tepid federal response to strong laws enacted in over 20 states to prevent corporate monopolies and, in some cases, calls for public ownership. The pro-corporate Senator John Sherman warned that Congress “must heed [the public’s] appeal or be ready for the socialist, the communist, and the nihilist.” Sherman is still used to preempt state laws. Meanwhile, local laws protecting residents from guns, fracking, minimum wage and many other local concerns passed by municipal councils have been preempted by state laws.

3. Corporations “weaponize” regulatory agencies.

Corporations supported the creation of “regulatory agencies” as many states sought public ownership over several types of companies – including utilities and transportation. These agencies regulated vs prohibited harms and insulated companies from direct legislative oversight and public pressure and mobilization. Moreover, companies advocate for the appointment by executives (i.e. Presidents and Governors) of corporate-friendly regulators.

4. Corporations “weaponize” the courts.

The ultimate escape of public control over corporations was granting “constitutional rights” to corporations. Though there’s no mention of corporate entities in the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court proclaimed over the course of a century that a corporation is a person with First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment protections – rights that go well beyond corporate First Amendment free speech “rights” to contribute money in elections. This makes public accountability impossible over corporate entities. Corporate constitutional rights are the impenetrable shield against efforts to assert human rights and the right to a livable world over never-intended “corporate rights.”

Abolishing all corporate constitutional rights by enacting the We the People Amendment (HJR48), soon to be introduced again by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, is the only strategy to make corporations authentically democratically accountable.

This requires building a people’s movement. Abolishing corporate constitutional rights shifts back from the judicial to the legislative arena the public ability to define corporate actions to ensure that the health, safety and welfare of people, communities and the natural world are prioritized. Ending all the other ways corporations have “weaponized government” to consolidate political and economic power becomes much easier once corporations are disarmed of all constitutional rights.

If Congress isn’t going to expose the corporate “weaponization of government,” then it’s up to us to not only do so, but to end it.

GREG COLERIDGE

Greg Coleridge is Co-Director of Move to Amend and former Director of the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee.

Full Bio >

Testimony at Kent Democracy Day Public Hearing

KENT DEMOCRACY DAY TESTIMONY

Greg Coleridge, Co-Director, Move to Amend 

October 5, 2022

I’m Greg Coleridge, Co-Director of the national Move to Amend campaign.

There is a Chinese proverb that says, “Unless we change direction, we are likely to end up where we are going.”

If we’re honest with ourselves about the direction of what little democracy we have, which truthfully was never as much as it should have been from day one in our country, then where we’re headed is a monocracy, plutocracy and corpocracy – not to mention an autocracy – all rolled into one. 

There is no single cause for this, but major factors are the more than century-long series of bizarre Supreme Court decisions anoinging corporations with constitutional rights – corporate personhood some call it – and decades-long series of bizarre Supreme Court decisions anointing money in elections as equal to First Amendment-protected “free speech.” 

Abolishing corporate constitutional rights and money as speech are the two central components of HJR48, the We the People Amendment – now supported by 95 U.S. Representatives – including Tim Ryan – more than 650 organizations and over 700 communities that enacted either a municipal resolution or passed, like Kent, a citizen-driven ballot initiative. 

The leadership of this national effort has come from the bottom-up – from people like Bill Wilen, Lee Brooker and others in Kent who educated, advocated and organized for passing the initiative calling on Congress to pass HJR48.

But people like you, elected officials – both individually and collectively – have an extremely important role – if you so choose – to complement this effort. 

Here are six actions you can take to move this movement forward:

1. Publicly call out any “pay-to-play” instances – in which developers or others who want something in Kent donate (or, more accurately, invest) to political campaigns of one or more councilpersons just before or after they receive what they want. 
2. Don’t be intimidated to pass ordinances that protect the health, safety or welfare of Kent residents by corporate threats that they will preempt the law by going to the state legislature or to court claiming their corporate constitutional so-called “rights” have been violated. 
3. Encourage council colleagues you know in Ravenna and/or any other communities in Portage County and beyond to join the hundreds of other communities that have passed resolutions calling for abolishing money as free speech and corporate constitutional rights. Sample resolutions in support of the We the People Amendment are at https://www.movetoamend.org/pass-local-resolution
4. Introduce a resolution supporting passage of HJR48 to your County political party. 
5. If Tim Ryan wins his race, pass a resolution encouraging him to introduce HJR48 in the U.S. Senate – since he already cosponsored the measure in the House.
6. Finally, personally, don’t accept large individual contributions and corporate PAC funds for your political campaigns. I realize that under the current political reality, it takes an increasing amount of money to run and the threat of so-called “independent” funding from Super PACs and dark money groups is real, but commit to working at collecting smaller donations from more individuals as much as you can – while at the same time calling for passing HJR48.

It’s time to abolish the corrupting influence of big money in elections – which is legalized bribery – and corporate rule. It’s a major way to change direction before we end up where we are headed. 

Feel free to contact me at greg@movetoamend.org for any questions or ways I can assist any of you individually or Kent City Council collectively.

Thank you. 

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

The Depth of Change

_________________________________________________________________

Order Now!

Selected articles, columns, editorials, letters, sermons, poems, talks and testimonies over four decades on economic, environmental and social justice; democracy; foreign policy/peace/nonviolence and systemic change/movements. Their analysis and calls to action are as timely today as ever.

Greg Coleridge is Co-Director of the national Move to Amend coalition, which works to enact a Constitutional Amendment to abolish corporate constitutional rights (“corporate personhood” for short) and political money defined as First Amendment-protected “free speech.” He previously worked for more than three decades for the Midwest Region of the American Friends Service Committee in Ohio where he educated, advocated and organized with diverse individuals and organizations at the local, state and national levels employing a range of strategies and tactics on issues of peace/anti-war, nonviolence, international trade, economic conversion, local and federal budget priorities, monetary reform, housing, privatization/corporatization of public services, hunger, jobs, poverty, local currencies, alternative media, toxic/radioactive pollution, campaign finance reform and corporate power/rule/rights.

301 pages. $14.95

Order HERE

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION 1

SELECTIONS

More defense dollars only worsen inflation (letter to editor) 4
North’s secrecy was objectionable (letter to editor) 5
KSU/May 4 and the need for action (letter to editor) 5
The Future of National Security and Economic Conversion (talk) 6
Agenda for the peace builders (editorial) 9

Spirituality, Nonviolence and Social Change (sabbatical report) 12
Nonviolent Revolution (sermon) 21
Bosnia: Military Intervention Is Not The Answer (letter to editor) 26
A few resolutions for public officials (letter to editor) 27
Gift-buying for the conscientious (column) 28

Visions of an alternative “Contract” for America’s cities (editorial) 31
Nuclear weapons still addictive (column) 34
Submarine floats as cities sink (column) 38
No need for bombs – Japan on verge of surrender (letter to editor) 41
U.S. must learn from the past (column) 42

Do we live to U.N. standards (column) 47
Put people power back on agenda (article) 50
GM strike localizes world woes (column) 55
The Costs of Technology (article) 59
U.S. takes easy way out on China (column) 63

Our Friend John (poem) 69
Has time for HOURS finally come? (column) 70
Apathy Funeral Service (talk) 73
Ethics and the Culture of Development: Building a Sustainable Economy (Cuba conference report) 75
Change in Relationship to Corporations Urged (talk) 78

Yes-Simple math: Less money, more democracy (editorial) 80
A Call for Help for Uniontown, Ohio (article) 82
Public Hearing sponsored by Robert Martin, U.S. EPA Ombudsman, on Industrial Excess Landfill (testimony) 84
Democracy, Corporations and the World Trade Organization (article) 88
Wrong Turn in Ohio: A wake up call for other states (article) 90

Rumors of USA Democracy Counterfeit (article) 92
Personal Reflections on 9/11 (letter) 99
Corporate Invading and Escaping (article) 103
Evolution and Social Change (article) 107
U.S. Hypocrisy and Immorality (talk) 108

The Invasion has Begun…But so has the Resistance (spoken word) 109
Citizens over Corporations: A Brief History of Democracy in Ohio and Challenges to Freedom in the Future (forward to booklet) 113
Mantra of US Mainstream Left (article) 117
A Fraction of Democracy (article) 117
Statement on Department of Defense Spying on AFSC 120

Request to Rep. Dennis Kucinich to Introduce Legislation Renaming Department of Defense to Department of War (letter) 122
Closing Remarks at U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW) National Conference 123
Ranting and Raking on Eminent Domain (article) 129
Keynote address at Martin Luther King Community Gathering 133
10 Democratic Reasons to Oppose Senate Bill (SB) 117 (article) 140

Electronic Voting Machines Undermine Democracy (testimony) 143
Auctioning the Magna Carta (article) 145
The U. S. Constitution: Pull the Curtain (article) 145
Reducing the Power of Juries (article) 155
The Spirit of Change (article/play script) 156

Municipalizing Democracy (article) 163
Democracy Taxed (article) 165
Local Economic Self-Determination (workshop presentation) 167
Six Ways Corporations Profit from War (article) 173
Pillars of Peace (sermon) 175

Opening Remarks at United National Action Conference – on Iraq and Afghanistan 179
Letter to Senator Sherrod Brown on BP Deepwater Horizon and IEL disasters 181
“One Nation” March Organizers Should Remember Coxey’s Army (editorial) 183
The Rigor of Research and Fundamental Monetary Change (talk) 186
Fracking issue tests citizen’ authority (letter) 192

Testimony on Ohio’ New “Plunder Law” – House Bill 193
Corporate Power: The Legacy of Santa Clara (talk) 196
Banking Political Influence (talk) 198
Lessons from Past Movements that Inform our Current Movement (talk) 202
Participation in our undemocratic democracy (article) 204

Organizing for the Right Rights (article) 204
Corporate Chameleons (article) 208
Four Problems with Billionaires Privatizing American Science (article) 209
The Wrath of Steinbeck: Corporate Personhood (article) 210
Supreme Authority: The Growing Power of the US Supreme Court and Democratic Alternatives (article) 212

Different problems. The same solution.(article) 220
Ronald McDonald is not a person (article) 223
Pope Heats Up Climate Change Debate (article) 224
Trans-Pacific Partnership would be assault on U.S. democracy (letter to editor) 225
Monetary History Calendar (intro) 226

Flint’s Water AND Democracy Crisis (article) 227
Testimony on Political Campaign Contribution Limits 228
3 lessons from organizing for justice during the RNC (editorial) 232
Trumped Up Democracy: 10 Reflections on the 2016 Elections and the Future (article) 234
Commit to seeking common ground (letter to editor) 240

This is What Democracy in Ohio Looks Like! Ohio’s Self-Determination “Infrastructure” (intro to directory) 241
Hacked Off by the Electoral College (article) 244
Democracy Convention (article) 249
With Democracy So Sick, Medicare for All Will Be Uphill Battle (editorial) 252
Winter Solstice (article) 256

Big Love Fest Mentors of Love (talk) 256
Don’t Let the Ability to Rein In Corporate Rule Slip Through Our Hands Like Water – Time to Amend the Constitution Now! (article) 258
Knowing history is key to saying no to corporate rights (article) 262
Remarks at Uniting Families Rally 265
Curing the cancer of the body politic (article) 267

Holy Toledo! (article) 270
How Wealth RULES the World (book review) 271
The Declaration of Independence, Then and Now (quiz) 272
Move to Amend poems 274
Simply reversing Citizens United will not stem the tide of corporate money polluting politics (editorial) 276

Ending the Monetary Pandemic (article) 278
Changed “Modes of Thinking” Needed to Create Real Justice and Livable World (editorial) 285
The U.S. Constitution is hopelessly outdated. It’s time to re-envision it (article) 288
Big Tech Shouldn’t Be the Arbiter of Our Free Speech Rights (editorial) 291
Thank you Darnella Frazier (article) 294

FirstEnergy should be put out of business (editorial) 295
Kent “Democracy Day” Public Hearing (testimony) 296
Holistic Solutions to Holistic Problems (talk) 298

APPENDIX 303

ADDITIONAL BIOGRAPHY 307

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 14^th 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 28^th 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.

Citizens United may soon be embraced by the Left

This is an unpublished letter to the editor in response to the above titled Opinion piece by John O’Shea, a regular columnist and retired circuit court judge
https://qctimes.com/opinion/columnists/citizens-united-may-soon-be-embraced-by-the-left/article_582df966-de31-5a91-9b87-c09419210f2c.html

I’ve given up any hope it will be printed.

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To the Editor,

The bizarre 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision won’t “soon be embraced by the Left” anytime soon, as claimed by John Donald O’Shea, in his July 5th column “Citizens United may soon be embraced by the Left.”

His assertion that conservatives who feel unfairly silenced by Google, Facebook or Twitter may start their own search engine and social media platforms has little connection to Citizens United. Starting in the 1880s, long before Citizens United, the Supreme Court hijacked many parts of our constitution — including the First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments — to invent so-called corporate constitutional rights.

The Constitution doesn’t mention corporations. Therefore it gave them no rights. One of
the causes of the American Revolution was unfair treatment of colonists by the East
India Company, a British corporation, as well as many colonies, which were corporate entities (e.g. the Massachusetts Bay Company, Virginia Company, etc.) chartered by the KIng of England. Corporations following the Revolution were designed to be subordinate to We the People through their democratically-enacted charters. The Bill of Rights and other Amendments were intended to apply solely to human beings. The Supreme Court has never explained or justified why an artificial person like a corporation should have the same constitutional rights as natural persons.

Why media corporations have First Amendment rights is because of their function — the critical role that the press plays in American democracy — not the legal form that they are organized under. Corporate free speech rights weren’t why the court ruled in favor of the New York Times on the question of libel in New York Times v Sullivan or the Washington Post in the Pentagon Papers case.

Non media corporations don’t need First Amendment rights to counter messages in the media. If Boeing corporation doesn’t have First Amendment rights, their employees still have them. Its shareholders still have them. Individuals who work for companies that supply Boeing corporation everything from steel to copy paper still have them. All these human persons can express their First Amendment free speech rights on behalf of Boeing corporation. The truth is political campaign contributions/investments by the super rich and corporations shielded by the legal doctrines that political money is free speech and corporations are legal persons have drowned out the political voices of the vast majority of the public.

It’s true that Google, Facebook and Twitter corporations aren’t media corporations, yet they are crucial media platforms. Concerns, however, over whether their internal guidelines fairly include/exclude some voices but not others should be secondary to the concern that their decision-making process is private/corporate and not public/democratic.

Why shouldn’t Google be a public utility with democratically enacted public protections? After all, its ambitious creation was funded and coordinated by government research grants. If we believe Facebook and Twitter provide important public services and must treat all their users justly, why have we allowed them to operate with virtually zero public accountability?

We the People have increasingly ceded our public authority to define our own legal creations, which is dangerously anti-democratic.

If we believe the rights of people, communities and a livable world should take precedence over the rights of corporate entities, then we certainly need to work for the overturning of Citizens United. But that’s not enough. Also needed is a constitutional amendment ending all never-intended corporate constitutional rights, which is what the We the People Amendment, (H.J.R. 48) with its 74 Congressional co-sponsors promotes.

Greg Coleridge, Outreach Director, National Move to Amend Coalition