by Greg Coleridge
By What Authority
an article prepared and posted by the
Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy
August, 2009
Pdf: http://www.poclad.org/bwa/BWAAug09WebArticle.pdf
Text: http://www.poclad.org/bwa/August09.htm
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Supremes Summer Surprise — Expanding Corporate Rights
The Supreme Court is laying the foundation for granting a dramatic expansion of corporate rights — specifically, whether corporations can directly donate/invest to political candidates.
In March, the Court heard arguments on the question of whether it was legal for Citizens United, Incorporated to broadcast the film, Hillary: The Movie.
Citizens United produced and sought to distribute the film during the 2008 Presidential race. They challenged existing federal law regulated corporate funding and participation in “electioneering communications” within 60 days prior to a federal election. The group claimed the regulations (the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, BCRA) was a violation of its First Amendment free speech rights.
Citizens United lost its case in a lower federal court and appealed to the US Supremes which first heard arguments in March.
On June 29, the Supremes had not decided on the original narrow case. They ordered, instead, a re-argument for September 9 on not only the BCRA law but on whether two other laws concerning corporate limits on campaign contributions should be overturned— Austin v Michigan Chamber of Commerce and McConnell v. Federal Election Commission. This is a dramatic expansion of attention since, in particular, the Austin law directly prohibits corporations from using their treasury funds in support of or opposition to political candidates.
The Supremes put the case on a blinding fast-track — with a deadline of July 31 for briefs to be filed and arguments for a expanded case for September 9.
The Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD — www.poclad.org) is one of 5 groups that filed an Amicus Brief (legal document of support) calling for the upholding of restrictions on corporate political campaign expenditures. The main point of the brief (links to press release and Brief below) is simple — corporations are not people so the First Amendment does not apply.
All of this is happening during the heat of summer — when many are escaping the stresses of the rest of the year and enjoying the beauty of the outdoors. Since corporations are not people, however, they never sleep — or rest.
The threat to self-governance will dramatically expanded if we lose.
POCLAD in the next few days will be considering sponsoring a public action outside the Supreme Court to coincide with the September 9 oral arguments — to raise awareness and provide some degree of pressure on the 9 robed ones. Calls, letters, and faxes to the court will also be encouraged. (Unfortunately, our choices are limited since the Court is beyond direct democratic control thanks to the Constitution).
While a corporation is not a person without a conscience, the members of the Supreme Court are human beings who do have a conscience that can be appealed to --- or, at the very least, pressured to some degree.
Spread the word. Review the information below. Stay tuned...
POCLAD http://www.poclad.org
Amicus Brief press release
http://www.poclad.org/amicus/Amicus%20Brief%20release.pdf
Amicus Brief http://www.poclad.org/amicus/Amicus%20Brief.pdf
A Century-Old Principle: Keep Corporate Money Out of Elections, By ADAM COHEN, Published: August 10, 2009, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11tue4.html
In March, the Court heard arguments on the question of whether it was legal for Citizens United, Incorporated to broadcast the film, Hillary: The Movie.
Citizens United produced and sought to distribute the film during the 2008 Presidential race. They challenged existing federal law regulated corporate funding and participation in “electioneering communications” within 60 days prior to a federal election. The group claimed the regulations (the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, BCRA) was a violation of its First Amendment free speech rights.
Citizens United lost its case in a lower federal court and appealed to the US Supremes which first heard arguments in March.
On June 29, the Supremes had not decided on the original narrow case. They ordered, instead, a re-argument for September 9 on not only the BCRA law but on whether two other laws concerning corporate limits on campaign contributions should be overturned— Austin v Michigan Chamber of Commerce and McConnell v. Federal Election Commission. This is a dramatic expansion of attention since, in particular, the Austin law directly prohibits corporations from using their treasury funds in support of or opposition to political candidates.
The Supremes put the case on a blinding fast-track — with a deadline of July 31 for briefs to be filed and arguments for a expanded case for September 9.
The Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD — www.poclad.org) is one of 5 groups that filed an Amicus Brief (legal document of support) calling for the upholding of restrictions on corporate political campaign expenditures. The main point of the brief (links to press release and Brief below) is simple — corporations are not people so the First Amendment does not apply.
All of this is happening during the heat of summer — when many are escaping the stresses of the rest of the year and enjoying the beauty of the outdoors. Since corporations are not people, however, they never sleep — or rest.
The threat to self-governance will dramatically expanded if we lose.
POCLAD in the next few days will be considering sponsoring a public action outside the Supreme Court to coincide with the September 9 oral arguments — to raise awareness and provide some degree of pressure on the 9 robed ones. Calls, letters, and faxes to the court will also be encouraged. (Unfortunately, our choices are limited since the Court is beyond direct democratic control thanks to the Constitution).
While a corporation is not a person without a conscience, the members of the Supreme Court are human beings who do have a conscience that can be appealed to --- or, at the very least, pressured to some degree.
Spread the word. Review the information below. Stay tuned...
POCLAD http://www.poclad.org
Amicus Brief press release
http://www.poclad.org/amicus/Amicus%20Brief%20release.pdf
Amicus Brief http://www.poclad.org/amicus/Amicus%20Brief.pdf
A Century-Old Principle: Keep Corporate Money Out of Elections, By ADAM COHEN, Published: August 10, 2009, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11tue4.html
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Put an end to private health insurance
http://blog.cleveland.com/letters/2009/07/put_an_end_to_private_health_i.html
Categories: Letters
Coleridge is the director of the Economic Justice & Empowerment Program, Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee.
Since President Barack Obama will be at Shaker Heights High School on Thursday, taking questions on health care, I've got one for him:
Who should have the final say on the type of health care patients receive under any reformed system?
A. Patients and their doctors
B. Insurance corporations
If A is his answer, his solution should be one that shuts out insurance corporations that make billions of dollars by denying coverage to millions of Americans.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Community asserts their rights to water
Here’s a wonderful example of a community taking charge of their own community by proactively passing an ordinance (which is a law with teeth vs passing a resolution which is merely an expression of sentiment or feeling) protecting their water. It affirms the rights of people and their community over the so-called rights of business corporations — which are no more than creations of the state.
Residents of Mt. Shasta draft an ordinance to assert community rights to water
June 16 Community Water Forum invites citizen input on cutting-edge law
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 05, 2009
CONTACT:
Ami Marcus, 530.918.9444, for more information about the ordinance and community forum.
Shannon Biggs, Global Exchange, 415.575.5540, for information on rights-based ordinances
(Mt. Shasta, CA)— Local concern has been growing about corporate control of local water though groundwater withdrawl and chemical weather manipulation more commonly known as cloud seeding. Following a series of well attended public events, a group of concerned Mount Shasta residents began to examine strategies to ensure that local residents — not corporations — make the policy decisions around local water resources.
The result is a cutting-edge draft ordinance that would assert the rights of the community to protect water systems by prohibiting cloud seeding and resultant chemical trespass, banning corporate extraction and export, and increasing citizen participation in the decision making process for the Mt. Shasta headwaters.
Residents are encouraged to learn about the proposed ordinance, which, among other things, strips corporations of their legal authority to site unwanted water projects in the municipality by attending the second in a two-part community water rights forum Thursday, June 16th from 5:30-8:00 pm at the Stage Door in Mt. Shasta. The forum is intended to engage the diverse interests of Mount Shasta citizens to ensure that the ordinance accurately reflects public sentiment.
"We took a good look at how large corporations are engaged in a grab for water in communities across the country, and we examined the role our state agencies play in enabling those corporations," said group spokesperson Angelina Cook, "It became clear to us that if the people of Mt. Shasta don't come together as a community and make key decisions about our resources and our local ecosystem, someone in a corporate board room is going to do it for us."
The group developed the ordinance with the assistance of California-based Global Exchange rights-based organizer Shannon Biggs and Ben Price from the PA-based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, who have assisted over 120 communities to successfully pass rights-based laws that subordinate corporations to democratic local governing authority.
Attendees are encouraged to remain after the water rights forum for a screening of "Flow", a powerful and inspiring film that documents our global water crisis.
#####
http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/6217.html
Residents of Mt. Shasta draft an ordinance to assert community rights to water
June 16 Community Water Forum invites citizen input on cutting-edge law
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 05, 2009
CONTACT:
Ami Marcus, 530.918.9444, for more information about the ordinance and community forum.
Shannon Biggs, Global Exchange, 415.575.5540, for information on rights-based ordinances
(Mt. Shasta, CA)— Local concern has been growing about corporate control of local water though groundwater withdrawl and chemical weather manipulation more commonly known as cloud seeding. Following a series of well attended public events, a group of concerned Mount Shasta residents began to examine strategies to ensure that local residents — not corporations — make the policy decisions around local water resources.
The result is a cutting-edge draft ordinance that would assert the rights of the community to protect water systems by prohibiting cloud seeding and resultant chemical trespass, banning corporate extraction and export, and increasing citizen participation in the decision making process for the Mt. Shasta headwaters.
Residents are encouraged to learn about the proposed ordinance, which, among other things, strips corporations of their legal authority to site unwanted water projects in the municipality by attending the second in a two-part community water rights forum Thursday, June 16th from 5:30-8:00 pm at the Stage Door in Mt. Shasta. The forum is intended to engage the diverse interests of Mount Shasta citizens to ensure that the ordinance accurately reflects public sentiment.
"We took a good look at how large corporations are engaged in a grab for water in communities across the country, and we examined the role our state agencies play in enabling those corporations," said group spokesperson Angelina Cook, "It became clear to us that if the people of Mt. Shasta don't come together as a community and make key decisions about our resources and our local ecosystem, someone in a corporate board room is going to do it for us."
The group developed the ordinance with the assistance of California-based Global Exchange rights-based organizer Shannon Biggs and Ben Price from the PA-based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, who have assisted over 120 communities to successfully pass rights-based laws that subordinate corporations to democratic local governing authority.
Attendees are encouraged to remain after the water rights forum for a screening of "Flow", a powerful and inspiring film that documents our global water crisis.
#####
http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/6217.html
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Economic Security Possible Through Monetary System Changes
Public News Service-OH
July 16, 2009
Seminar: Economic Security Possible Through Monetary System Changes
Cleveland, OH – As Ohio grapples with its own economic woes, some residents will gather for a seminar tonight to look a way to change the nation’s monetary system - the American Monetary Act, which is being proposed by Congressman Kucinich.
Greg Coleridge, a director with the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee, says fiscal policy gets a lot of attention, but it’s time citizens learn more about how monetary policy can affect their lives.
"The problem today in our society is that the creation of money, the actual issuance of money is not a public decision, but a private one, for the most part, done by our banks and the Federal Reserve."
A move from the bank-centered, debt-based monetary system to the direct creation of money would be responsive to the needs of consumers, says Coleridge.
"It would spend it into circulation on all sorts of legislative, government things that we need; infrastructure, including education, healthcare, improving our roads, and sewers."
Dramatic reform of monetary policy is needed, he adds, in order to protect the economic well-being of America.
"A transparent, public, accountable system is the best way to keep it responsible and close to meeting the needs and requirements of people and our needs at a community, a nation and a state level."
Currently, the Federal Reserve is partly public, with some private components. Part of the new proposal would make the money issuing system all public. Those against the government issuance of money say it would drive up inflation, but proponents say that won’t happen if the money is used to create goods and services. Congressman Kucinich's senior counsel, Marty Gelfand, will speak at tonight’s event, which begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Peace House in University Circle in Cleveland.
Click here to view this story on the Public News Service RSS site and access an audio version of this and other stories: http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/9744-1
The broadcaster version of the story can be viewed by clicking here: http://www.newsservice.org/pdfStory.php?StoryGroup=9744=1
---
To be removed from this list please send an e-mail to remove@publicnewsservice.org and put the word "remove" in the subject line.
July 16, 2009
Seminar: Economic Security Possible Through Monetary System Changes
Cleveland, OH – As Ohio grapples with its own economic woes, some residents will gather for a seminar tonight to look a way to change the nation’s monetary system - the American Monetary Act, which is being proposed by Congressman Kucinich.
Greg Coleridge, a director with the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee, says fiscal policy gets a lot of attention, but it’s time citizens learn more about how monetary policy can affect their lives.
"The problem today in our society is that the creation of money, the actual issuance of money is not a public decision, but a private one, for the most part, done by our banks and the Federal Reserve."
A move from the bank-centered, debt-based monetary system to the direct creation of money would be responsive to the needs of consumers, says Coleridge.
"It would spend it into circulation on all sorts of legislative, government things that we need; infrastructure, including education, healthcare, improving our roads, and sewers."
Dramatic reform of monetary policy is needed, he adds, in order to protect the economic well-being of America.
"A transparent, public, accountable system is the best way to keep it responsible and close to meeting the needs and requirements of people and our needs at a community, a nation and a state level."
Currently, the Federal Reserve is partly public, with some private components. Part of the new proposal would make the money issuing system all public. Those against the government issuance of money say it would drive up inflation, but proponents say that won’t happen if the money is used to create goods and services. Congressman Kucinich's senior counsel, Marty Gelfand, will speak at tonight’s event, which begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Peace House in University Circle in Cleveland.
Click here to view this story on the Public News Service RSS site and access an audio version of this and other stories: http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/9744-1
The broadcaster version of the story can be viewed by clicking here: http://www.newsservice.org/pdfStory.php?StoryGroup=9744=1
---
To be removed from this list please send an e-mail to remove@publicnewsservice.org and put the word "remove" in the subject line.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Where, O Where have the Progressives All Gone?
Where, O Where have the Progressives All Gone?
A Lament for a Lost Generation
by Kevin D. Annett
We cannot come to terms with what we don't understand.
Rian Malan
(My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience)
The undeniable proof that Canada's churches and government deliberately exterminated entire generations of native people, and specifically their children, has finally been acknowledged, albeit with a cunning duplicity, by the official guardians of public order.
The fact that even the Globe and Mail and other flagships of the Canadian establishment have admitted the truth of a fifty percent death rate in Indian Residential schools illuminates exactly how undeniable is this genocide. Fifty thousand or more children died over a century. The butchers can no longer deny the blood on their hands; they merely brush it off now as dried blood, an antiquated curiosity of no particular importance to anyone.
The dead were, after all, Indians. And The Others, as we all know, do not respond the same as you or I when nails are pounded through their tongues, or when their newborns are thrown live into roaring furnaces.
Being Other, they didn't really suffer and die, to we who caused it. How else can a prominent government pundit claim, remarkably,
"None of those deaths were the result of deliberate malice ...".
Two and two equals five, clearly. But what I find even stranger than such standard doublethink on the part of the perpetrators of a crime is the fact that this exposure of Christian Canada's savagery has evoked an odd reaction among those whom one would assume would delight in such proof of the system's bloody deeds: that political species known affectionately if inaccurately as "the Left".
That reaction, in a word, is absent; and even more odious is the fact that, when pressed for a response to their own home-grown genocide, "leftists" in Canada will shake their heads and squint disapprovingly with even more vigor than so-called conservatives, and will, almost to a comrade, avoid residential school protests, survivors, and the whole bloody issue like the plague.
A classic case in point was when I showed proof of the huge death rate in United Church residential schools to an editor of the Communist Party's newspaper in Vancouver. The man looked shocked, then began shaking his head, exclaiming,
"The church couldn't have done that! I mean, my own wife is a United Church member!".
Allow, for a moment, the terrible irony of this truth to outweigh any of the reasons for it, for the cause is clear enough. How magnificently ironic that the same "radicals" who for so long have decried church and state have refused to publicize the very proof of what they have alleged so abstractly: that our society is murderous, that church, state and corporations are a blood-soaked triangle that built Canada on ethnic cleansing and mass killing, and that this slaughter continues.
It's not even that progressives have had to work hard to learn any of this, either. The proof has already been documented, painstakingly, by others: in detail, eye witnessed, and corroborated, and now even acknowledged by the mainstream press. Yet the voices of the Left continue to stay mute about the Canadian Holocaust, and their numbers are nowhere to be seen at the struggling protests and press conferences held by the residential school survivors.
Is the Left merely a pretense in Canada? If not, then why is it so comatose when it comes to the worst crime in Canadian history?
Even from a purely partisan position, cannot socialists grasp the incredible implications, and political potential, evoked by the Canadian Holocaust's complete indictment of the Canadian ruling class and all its major institutions? When have Leftists ever been handed such a thorough validation of their beliefs: that our society was born in blood and is maintained by oppression and lies? And yet to the Canadian Left, if one can judge by their actions and attitudes, genocide never happened in Canada.
Such gross political idiocy makes no sense whatsoever; assuming, that is, that the Left actually possesses a modicum of life and intelligence anymore. But regardless of this, it behooves anyone who is committed to human liberation and justice, and especially every native person, to ponder why the Canadian Left has missed the boat, once again, and abandoned the most oppressed people in their midst.
....................................................................................................................
Flashback to February of 2007, and a cluttered office in Ottawa belonging to a non-descript Member of Parliament named Dennis Bevington. Dennis belongs to the NDP, that stillborn, ostensibly "left wing" party that stands like a neglected child, perpetually outside the doors of power in Canada.
Dennis was distinctly cowed that morning, for his appointment with me had been hijacked at the last minute by a more senior NDP politician, Jean Crowder, that party's national "Aboriginal Affairs" critic and a good friend of the United Church of Canada, one of the main actors in the residential school crimes.
The air was as stifled as Dennis Bevington as Ms. Crowder breezed into his office, and looked at me with something more than caution.
"I don't have much time..." she began, hovering. "But I heard you were here."
I nodded, and my partner Carol pulled out pen and paper, which seemed to unnerve the politician even more.
"That's okay" I replied. "Since you're here, I might as well ask you a few questions."
"Questions?" Jean said nervously.
"Yeah. I'm just wondering if the NDP would support a motion in Parliament to set up an investigation into the children who died in the Indian residential schools."
Jean blinked hard, as if I'd hit her. She glared at Dennis, who sank more deeply into his chair.
"That's a complex issue" she finally blustered. Looking lost, she fell back onto her political cue cards.
"We in the NDP are committed to working with First Nations to bring about healing from the residential schools ..."
I smiled at her, which halted the rhetoric.
"Look, we couldn't act unilaterally like that without consulting the appropriate First Nations groups first" she said.
"Which groups?" I asked.
Jean said nothing.
"So does that mean you won't support such a motion?" I continued.
"Not at this time, no" Jean answered.
"When would you?" I asked, as Carol scribbled.
Jean Crowder stared at me with a sudden look that had cold daggers in it. The meeting was adjourned.
Two months later, a conservative politician, not a "socialist", stood up in the Parliament of Canada and spoke for the first time of the missing and dead residential school children.
.......................................................................................................................
It's perhaps not accidental that Conservative Prime Minister Steven Harper is the first person ever to occupy that position who is not tied personally to one of the churches that ran the residential schools and killed children there. He's also the first Prime Minister since 1968, save one, who isn't part of the Roman Catholic church, which set up the residential schools and ran two-thirds of them.
Jean Crowder, Bill Blaikie, leader Jack Layton and lots of other NDP Members of Parliament are either loyal United Church members or actual clergymen. And, again not coincidentally, it was the NDP government in British Columbia who in 1995 helped have me fired and who covered for the United Church, when I challenged the church about its secret horse trading in stolen native land on Vancouver Island.
The Canadian Left has never drifted far from the NDP in practice, and regardless of their politics has looked forlornly to that party to carry its hopes and dreams. Even the Communist Party still prattles on about a "progressive alliance" with the NDP. So whenever the latter frowns upon a person or a cause, you can rest assured that progressives of every brand will follow step.
Maybe that's all there is to it: genocide in Canada, and me, are on the official shit list, to be avoided at all costs. But I suspect the rot goes much deeper.
I had a white South African friend called Neil Cohen, who split from his country back in the seventies so he wouldn't have to shoot black people as a military reservist. Neil had a few good insights about his people, and they remind me a lot of my own.
"Every white feels better than every black, it doesn't matter their politics" Neil described to me one night.
"I liked the right-wing Boers 'cause they were honest about that. Who I couldn't stand were the other whites, the so-called socialists, who wouldn't admit it. They'd never go near a black person, they never went into one of the Bantustans, they were too scared to. You never saw a black person in one of their groups or at any of their protests. They just talked a good line about ending apartheid but they didn't know what the hell it was, and how they were just as much a part of it."
Change "blacks" to "Indians", and you have an accurate account of Canada and its "Left".
I remember when I was a member of a marxist group called the International Socialists, during my twenties, about the same time I first met Neil Cohen in Hamilton, Ontario. Our lily-white radical grouplet of several dozen people spent most of our time denouncing oppression, but none of us knew what it actually was: especially when it came to aboriginals.
Native people were not simply exotic and distant to us: they didn't exist in our minds, and certainly not in the columns of our newspaper or leaflets or discussion bulletins. Like every other white Canadian, to we "revolutionaries", Indians were invisible and of no account.
Native militancy, Red Power and the American Indian Movement began to change that, but like a bus we ran after to catch, we jumped aboard the "native solidarity" bandwagon because it was moving and we weren't; and once there, we never took the time to come to know and learn from the people we had joined, because we didn't want to know them.
I see firsthand how none of this built-in racism has changed among the Left in Canada in thirty years, whenever a radical conference or a protest begins with the obligatory token "prayer from a native elder", or a thanking of the local native nation for meeting on their land - as if we had ever asked permission.
The fact that such patronizing and insulting behavior never seems to change among white radicals suggests the presence of an even more entrenched, pervasive mental apartheid in Canada that makes South Africa look like a liberated zone.
Maybe it's not a fair comparison. After all, unlike South Africa, we whites are 90% of the population here, and we won the war against our original peoples, so why would we ever have to change?
Part of winning means that your official mythology and self-image gets enshrined and so ingrained that it becomes invisible, and therefore all-controlling. Every single white person in Canada is born into a snug and self-justifying mythology, and rarely leaves it, regardless of his or her politics. We are all, to quote Neil Cohen, "automatic imperialists".
That's not a reason for personal guilt, for we aren't unique in the world. Any citizen of Empire carries its mindset. Lenin helped diagnose this malaise in 1916, when he described, in his brilliant work on Imperialism, how the super-profits of European empires had created an "aristocracy of labor" in the home countries, and shaped the consciousness of workers and the Left to identify with Imperial rule over colonized peoples.
Of course, the old political labels and distinctions clearly mean nothing anymore, on the ground, any more than do the terms "white" or "aboriginal". For we are in a post-Imperial epoch, our species is in a final battle for survival, and the enemy is ourselves.
................................................................................................
Once upon a time, there was a radical counter-culture in the world, and even in Canada, that felt in its gut every injustice done to a man or woman, and tried to raise the most crushed soul to become the subject of history. In my youth, during the waning glow of the sixties, I encountered the remnants of that culture, not in the media-focused "flower child" fad, but among individual men and women who for their entire lives had stood by and never abandoned itinerant workers, the homeless, immigrants, the underpaid and unorganized, and the most endangered people among us.
Most of these bright souls called themselves socialists and communists, the real kind, not politicians but visionaries: those who saw and fought for of a world of actual equality where none would rule over or profit from or bomb another - the kind of dreamers whom Jesus called blessed. But their kind died or withdrew somehow as the seventies gave way to the long despair called Reaganism and Thatcherism, and the global technocratic fascism that emerged from it.
One of those dreamers was my strongest teacher, an aging radical named Don Eperson, whom I met the same year that Neil Cohen and I did, when I was an unemployed metal fitter in Hamilton's east end.
I first glimpsed Don outside Hamilton city hall one noon hour, where he was conducting a one-man picket against the Mayor, unemployment and the whole rotten system.
Don was seventy eight years old and the kind of loud and ornery type that Canadians abhor, because he always said exactly what he felt.
"Vote?" Don exploded at a reporter who asked him if he'd thought of running for office.
"Join that motley crew of thieves and liars? Those henchmen of the rich? Do I look like one of them black tie parasites?"
Don and I got to know each other well in the year remaining to him. He had been an itinerant union organizer most of his life until he became too radical for the unions and the NDP, simply by remaining true to his principles
"I figure the only thing to do is keep making a stink. People forget they got that power. Nobody looks out for their neighbor anymore, like we did in the thirties. How the hell do you figure we survived all that shit? By helping the guy below you, lifting him up, and bringing down them that's keeping them down. You gotta make it hard for the rich to treat us like dirt, keep making a stink. That's the only way we'll stop all of these kids from being sacrificed again, in their next war."
I kept nodding as Don regaled me thus, as we slurped our drinks in a local bar soon after we met. He looked at me through rheumy eyes and said suddenly,
"You know what your only problem is, son? That skin color of yours. It'll keep you too safe, and stupid."
Offended, I tried a response, but he cut me off.
"I knew this old Injun once, back in my Montreal days. We was drinking buddies and I dated his sister 'til she killed herself. A Mohawk war chief, he was, name was Red. I tried introducing him to all my Communist Party friends, tried to bring him to our branch meeting, but they kept him out, wouldn't have nuthin' to do with him. Red took it easier than I did. Used to it, I guess. He said somethin' to me later I'll never forget."
Don paused and stared at me for full effect.
"Red said, 'Don, I like you, you're the only white man who's ever treated me like a friend. But you'll always be a white man. And I'll always be an Indian.' "
Maybe Red was wrong. It didn't seem to make any difference to Don, who kept fighting the lost causes to the end. To him, it all came down to whose back you're sitting on, and what kind of blinders you need to stay perched there.
What I do know is that Red and Don are standing with me, all the time, but especially at those moments when only a few of us confront the immovable edifices of church and state, and call out the names of their victims.
Our whiteness keeps us safe, and stupid, it's true. And short of being tossed out of the Beast and finding ourselves on the killing floor alongside the next group of expendable people, that isn't going to change.
But that doesn't matter, of course, since, as scions of Empire, things aren't in our hands. The last really will be the first, and although it's our turn to become the last, that's where truth always finds you: when there's nothing left.
June 10, 2009
............................
Open Letter to Senate Judiciary Committee re Nomination of Sonia Sotomayor
I helped develop this letter...
Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy
Instigating democratic conversations and actions that contest the authority of corporations to govern
Box 246 S. Yarmouth, MA 02664 www.poclad.org people@poclad.org 508-398-1145
OPEN LETTER TO MEMBERS OF THE US SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
from the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD)
July 14, 2009
Dear US Senate Judiciary Committee Members,
The Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD) calls on you to continue your questioning of US Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Judge Sotomayor’s position on the larger issue of this nation's democracy, trampled by the rights and powers of corporations to govern, have so far been left untouched and unexplored in Senate confirmation hearings.
The vast majority of non-criminal cases to be brought before the nine robed ones of the Supreme Court in the next few years will relate to matters of corporate "rights," protections, and dominance and their impact on the rights of human beings in this so-called democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that questions be asked concerning the doctrines of corporate autonomy and authority that insulate these collections of capital and property from control by the people and their legislatures – a control that existed at one time in this nation.
Have the judiciary's efforts been so successful over the last 200 years to find corporations within the US Constitution and bestow constitutional "rights" upon them that current lawmakers fail even to question this democratic and illegitimate reality? Indeed, for two centuries Supreme Court justices, the closest institution we have to Kings and Queens, have been at the center of affirming and expanding corporate rule and placing corporations well beyond the authority of the people. We hope you do not concur with this history and its consequences.
We hope the questions on the following page are asked of nominee Sotomayor during her Senate hearings. Only after she responds to these concerns and her answers promptly made available to the general public and to all U.S. Senators should voting on her confirmation occur. It should be noted that these questions were the same that we requested be put to Judge Samuel Alito during his January, 2006 confirmation hearings. To our knowledge, none of them were asked.
The appointment for life of a person who will assume a position of vast and seemingly ever growing power in our society demands an exhaustive review of every issue area that he/she is likely to address on the high court. Corporate constitutional rights and their impact on our rights as self-governing human beings certainly qualify as one such area of questioning. This decision is of the utmost importance to the fate of the country.
Respectfully,
The Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy
Attachments: Questions for Supreme Court Justice Nominee Sonia Sotomayer
Quotes from Previous Supreme Court Decisions and Justices on Corporations
Questions for Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor
First a bit of background. In a 1978 case, First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, the Supreme Court decided, 5 to 4, that business corporations -- just as flesh and blood like you and me -- have a First Amendment right to spend their money to influence elections. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist dissented. "It might reasonably be concluded," he wrote, "that those properties, so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere." The late Chief Justice went on to write: "Furthermore, it might be argued that liberties of political expression are not at all necessary to effectuate the purposes for which States permit commercial corporations to exist."
-- Do you believe that corporate money in our elections poses "special dangers in the political sphere"?
--Do you believe "that liberties of political expression" are necessary "to effectuate the purposes for which States permit commercial corporations to exist"?"
-- Do you believe that money is speech? Or is it property?
In 1886, only eighteen years after the people ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court had before it Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. The issue was whether the Amendment's guarantee of equal protection barred California from taxing property owned by a corporation differently from property owned by a human being. Chief Justice Morrison Waite disposed of it with a bolt-from-the-blue pronouncement: "The Court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a state to deny any person the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does." The conferring of Fourteenth Amendment rights on the corporate form appeared in a clerk's headnote to the case.
-- How would you characterize the Court's refusal to hear argument in a momentous case before deciding it?
-- Was the "person" whose basic rights the framers and the people sought to protect through the 14th amendment to the Constitution the newly freed slave?
-- Was the "person" a corporation?
-- Is a corporation a person "born or naturalized in the United States"?
-- In proclaiming a paper entity to be a person, was the court faithful to the intent of the framers of the Amendment and to the intent of the people who ratified it?
-- How would you characterize the court's refusal to hear argument in a momentous case before deciding it?
--Would you describe the court's action in Santa Clara as conservative? As radical? As open-minded?
-- Would you characterize the Court’s Santa Clara action as being an example of judicial activism?
Quotes from Previous Supreme Court Decisions and Justices on Corporations
Standard Oil of New Jersey v. United States, 221 U.S. 1 (1911):
All who recall the condition of the country in 1890 will remember that there was everywhere, among the people generally, a deep feeling of unrest. The nation had been rid of human slavery-- fortunately, as all now feel--but the conviction was universal that the country was in real danger from another kind of slavery sought to be fastened on the American people: namely, the slavery that would result from aggregations of capital in the hands of a few individuals and corporations controlling, for their own profit and advantage exclusively, the entire business of the country, including the production and sale of the necessities of life.
Liggett Co. v. Lee 288 U.S. 517 (1933) (dissent by Justice Brandeis):
The prevalence of the corporation in America has led men of this generation to act, at times, as if the privilege of doing business in corporate form were inherent in the citizen; and has led them to accept the evils attendant upon the free and unrestricted use of the corporate mechanism as if these evils were the inescapable price of civilized life and, hence, to be borne with resignation. Throughout the greater part of our history, a different view prevailed. Although the value of this instrumentality in commerce and industry was fully recognized, incorporation for business was commonly denied long after it had been freely granted for religious, educational and charitable purposes. It was denied because of fear. Fear of encroachment upon the liberties and opportunities of the individual. Fear of the subjection of labor to capital. Fear of monopoly. Fear that the absorption of capital by corporations, and their perpetual life, might bring evils. . . There was a sense of some insidious menace inherent in large aggregations of capital, particularly when held by corporations.
Justice Brandeis warned ominously of the threat to democracy that justifies sovereign control of corporations:
Able and discerning scholars have pictured for us the economic and social results of thus removing all limitations upon the size and activities of business corporations and of vesting in their managers vast powers once exercised by stockholders--results not designed by the states and long unsuspected. . . . Through size, corporations, once merely an efficient tool employed by individuals in the conduct of private business, have become an institution--an institution which has brought such concentration of economic power that so-called private corporations are sometimes able to dominate the state. The typical business corporation of the last century, owned by a small group of individuals, managed by their owners, and limited in size by their personal wealth, is being supplanted by huge concerns in which the lives of tens or hundreds of thousands of employees and the property of tens or hundreds of thousands of investors are subjected, through the corporate mechanism, to the control of a few men. Ownership has been separated from control; and this separation has removed many of the checks which formerly operated to curb the misuse of wealth and power. And as ownership of the shares is becoming continually more dispersed, the power which formerly accompanied ownership is becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. The changes thereby wrought in the lives of the workers, of the owners and of the general public, are so fundamental and far-reaching as to lead these scholars to compare the evolving "corporate system" with the feudal system; and to lead other men of insight and experience to assert that this "master institution of civilized life" is committing it to the rule of a plutocracy. Liggett, pp. 564-565.
First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765 (1978) Dissents by Justices White, Brennan, Marshall
...the special status of corporations has placed them in a position to control vast amounts of economic power which may, if not regulated, dominate not only our economy but the very heart of our democracy, the electoral process... The State need not allow its own creation to consume it.
Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy
Instigating democratic conversations and actions that contest the authority of corporations to govern
Box 246 S. Yarmouth, MA 02664 www.poclad.org people@poclad.org 508-398-1145
OPEN LETTER TO MEMBERS OF THE US SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
from the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD)
July 14, 2009
Dear US Senate Judiciary Committee Members,
The Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD) calls on you to continue your questioning of US Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Judge Sotomayor’s position on the larger issue of this nation's democracy, trampled by the rights and powers of corporations to govern, have so far been left untouched and unexplored in Senate confirmation hearings.
The vast majority of non-criminal cases to be brought before the nine robed ones of the Supreme Court in the next few years will relate to matters of corporate "rights," protections, and dominance and their impact on the rights of human beings in this so-called democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that questions be asked concerning the doctrines of corporate autonomy and authority that insulate these collections of capital and property from control by the people and their legislatures – a control that existed at one time in this nation.
Have the judiciary's efforts been so successful over the last 200 years to find corporations within the US Constitution and bestow constitutional "rights" upon them that current lawmakers fail even to question this democratic and illegitimate reality? Indeed, for two centuries Supreme Court justices, the closest institution we have to Kings and Queens, have been at the center of affirming and expanding corporate rule and placing corporations well beyond the authority of the people. We hope you do not concur with this history and its consequences.
We hope the questions on the following page are asked of nominee Sotomayor during her Senate hearings. Only after she responds to these concerns and her answers promptly made available to the general public and to all U.S. Senators should voting on her confirmation occur. It should be noted that these questions were the same that we requested be put to Judge Samuel Alito during his January, 2006 confirmation hearings. To our knowledge, none of them were asked.
The appointment for life of a person who will assume a position of vast and seemingly ever growing power in our society demands an exhaustive review of every issue area that he/she is likely to address on the high court. Corporate constitutional rights and their impact on our rights as self-governing human beings certainly qualify as one such area of questioning. This decision is of the utmost importance to the fate of the country.
Respectfully,
The Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy
Attachments: Questions for Supreme Court Justice Nominee Sonia Sotomayer
Quotes from Previous Supreme Court Decisions and Justices on Corporations
Questions for Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor
First a bit of background. In a 1978 case, First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, the Supreme Court decided, 5 to 4, that business corporations -- just as flesh and blood like you and me -- have a First Amendment right to spend their money to influence elections. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist dissented. "It might reasonably be concluded," he wrote, "that those properties, so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere." The late Chief Justice went on to write: "Furthermore, it might be argued that liberties of political expression are not at all necessary to effectuate the purposes for which States permit commercial corporations to exist."
-- Do you believe that corporate money in our elections poses "special dangers in the political sphere"?
--Do you believe "that liberties of political expression" are necessary "to effectuate the purposes for which States permit commercial corporations to exist"?"
-- Do you believe that money is speech? Or is it property?
In 1886, only eighteen years after the people ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court had before it Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. The issue was whether the Amendment's guarantee of equal protection barred California from taxing property owned by a corporation differently from property owned by a human being. Chief Justice Morrison Waite disposed of it with a bolt-from-the-blue pronouncement: "The Court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a state to deny any person the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does." The conferring of Fourteenth Amendment rights on the corporate form appeared in a clerk's headnote to the case.
-- How would you characterize the Court's refusal to hear argument in a momentous case before deciding it?
-- Was the "person" whose basic rights the framers and the people sought to protect through the 14th amendment to the Constitution the newly freed slave?
-- Was the "person" a corporation?
-- Is a corporation a person "born or naturalized in the United States"?
-- In proclaiming a paper entity to be a person, was the court faithful to the intent of the framers of the Amendment and to the intent of the people who ratified it?
-- How would you characterize the court's refusal to hear argument in a momentous case before deciding it?
--Would you describe the court's action in Santa Clara as conservative? As radical? As open-minded?
-- Would you characterize the Court’s Santa Clara action as being an example of judicial activism?
Quotes from Previous Supreme Court Decisions and Justices on Corporations
Standard Oil of New Jersey v. United States, 221 U.S. 1 (1911):
All who recall the condition of the country in 1890 will remember that there was everywhere, among the people generally, a deep feeling of unrest. The nation had been rid of human slavery-- fortunately, as all now feel--but the conviction was universal that the country was in real danger from another kind of slavery sought to be fastened on the American people: namely, the slavery that would result from aggregations of capital in the hands of a few individuals and corporations controlling, for their own profit and advantage exclusively, the entire business of the country, including the production and sale of the necessities of life.
Liggett Co. v. Lee 288 U.S. 517 (1933) (dissent by Justice Brandeis):
The prevalence of the corporation in America has led men of this generation to act, at times, as if the privilege of doing business in corporate form were inherent in the citizen; and has led them to accept the evils attendant upon the free and unrestricted use of the corporate mechanism as if these evils were the inescapable price of civilized life and, hence, to be borne with resignation. Throughout the greater part of our history, a different view prevailed. Although the value of this instrumentality in commerce and industry was fully recognized, incorporation for business was commonly denied long after it had been freely granted for religious, educational and charitable purposes. It was denied because of fear. Fear of encroachment upon the liberties and opportunities of the individual. Fear of the subjection of labor to capital. Fear of monopoly. Fear that the absorption of capital by corporations, and their perpetual life, might bring evils. . . There was a sense of some insidious menace inherent in large aggregations of capital, particularly when held by corporations.
Justice Brandeis warned ominously of the threat to democracy that justifies sovereign control of corporations:
Able and discerning scholars have pictured for us the economic and social results of thus removing all limitations upon the size and activities of business corporations and of vesting in their managers vast powers once exercised by stockholders--results not designed by the states and long unsuspected. . . . Through size, corporations, once merely an efficient tool employed by individuals in the conduct of private business, have become an institution--an institution which has brought such concentration of economic power that so-called private corporations are sometimes able to dominate the state. The typical business corporation of the last century, owned by a small group of individuals, managed by their owners, and limited in size by their personal wealth, is being supplanted by huge concerns in which the lives of tens or hundreds of thousands of employees and the property of tens or hundreds of thousands of investors are subjected, through the corporate mechanism, to the control of a few men. Ownership has been separated from control; and this separation has removed many of the checks which formerly operated to curb the misuse of wealth and power. And as ownership of the shares is becoming continually more dispersed, the power which formerly accompanied ownership is becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. The changes thereby wrought in the lives of the workers, of the owners and of the general public, are so fundamental and far-reaching as to lead these scholars to compare the evolving "corporate system" with the feudal system; and to lead other men of insight and experience to assert that this "master institution of civilized life" is committing it to the rule of a plutocracy. Liggett, pp. 564-565.
First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765 (1978) Dissents by Justices White, Brennan, Marshall
...the special status of corporations has placed them in a position to control vast amounts of economic power which may, if not regulated, dominate not only our economy but the very heart of our democracy, the electoral process... The State need not allow its own creation to consume it.
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