Saturday, January 21, is the second anniversary of the Supreme Court decision, Citizens United vs. the Federal Elections Commission, which overturned decades of campaign finance law and allows unlimited corporate funds to flood our election system.  On Saturday, a coalition of local groups is hosting a Festival and Teach-In in Nevada City as part of a National Day of Action, in coordination with other events that will take place nationwide. The purpose of these events is to raise awareness and educate people about how corporations dominate the political process and to build momentum for a Constitutional Amendment to abolish “corporate personhood” and overturn the controversial Citizens United ruling.

A poll taken by ABC News/Washington Post revealed that eighty percent of Americans opposed the ruling.  Seventy-two percent stated that they would support efforts by Congress to reinstate the restrictions that were stripped away by the decision.  California Lawmakers in California have now introduced a resolution calling on Congress to “propose and send to the states for ratification a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.”  Similar resolutions have been passed in many city councils, including Los Angeles, Oakland, Albany, Boulder, and New York.

The Festival will begin at 10:30 am, with people of all ages gathering at the Nevada City United Methodist Church for face painting, shadow puppets, music, games, arts and crafts, stories, food, displays, and informal discussion.  At 11:30 there will be a colorful parade down Broad Street to Robinson Plaza, where there will be a rally with street theater, speakers, music, song, and dance.

After returning to the church for a finger foods lunch, childcare will be provided during a two-hour Teach-In, in which local speakers will explain the Citizens United decision and its implications, the concept of corporate personhood, and the movement to amend the constitution to abolish corporate personhood and overturn Citizens United.  Sharon Delgado will present an interactive workshop on these issues.  Jedediah Biagi, Mia Nash, and Lorraine Reich will present a Corporate Personhood Timeline explaining how corporations were gradually given constitutional rights and protections originally designed for human beings.  Tom Grundy will present an overview of local and state resolutions that support a constitutional amendment. Discussion will focus on action opportunities, including organizing to pass local resolutions.

Occupy Nevada County initiated the organizing for this event.  They were contacted by the national Move to Amend coalition, then formed a Working Group to focus on this issue and called together local groups to form a coalition that includes the Nevada City United Methodist Church and Society Committee, Grass Valley Friends Social Action Committee, Nevada County Democrats, Grandmothers for Peace of Nevada County, Social Action Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Mountains, the Peace Center of Nevada County, and Earth Justice Ministries.   National groups working on this issue include Public Citizen, People for the American Way, and Move to Amend.  More information about this event and Occupy Nevada County can be found if you sign up at http://www.occupywallstreetnc.org or email info@occupynevadacounty.org.

Occupy Nevada County Website:  http://www.occupywallstreetnc.org/

Contact Occupy Nevada County at:  info@occupynevadacounty.org

Facebook:  Occupy Wall Street NC

Background on

The Movement to Amend the Constitution to Abolish Corporate Personhood

By Sharon Delgado

Through a gradual process, corporations have been growing in power.  In 2010, the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United vs. the FEC created a whole new level of imbalance, because it gave corporations the right to spend unlimited funds out of their treasuries on campaigns to elect candidates of their choice.  This money allows corporations to create a megaphone so big that their message drowns out the voices of the people.  This decision has been describes as meaning that “money equals speech.”

Several ideas have been put forth as ways to correct this power imbalance and restore democracy to the people.  One approach is to pass a constitutional amendment stating clearly that corporations are not persons, and that civil rights are for the protection of actual human beings.

Although it would not be easy, a constitutional amendment abolishing corporate personhood would not just level the playing field, it would change the playing field altogether.  It would prevent corporations from drowning out the voices of the people.

To find out more, go to:

Move to Amend, the movement for a constitutional amendment:

www.movetoamend.org

Public Citizen’s Democracy is for People

http://democracyisforpeople.org/

People for the American Way, including background on the Supreme Court Ruling:  Citizens United vs. the FEC

http://site.pfaw.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=14581&em_id=12261.0

http://site.pfaw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=amend&printer_friendly=1

Resolutions–California and others

http://www.truth-out.org/citizens-united-backlash-grows-cali-nyc-urging-congress-overturn-corporate-personhood/1325794067

U.S. Poll on Citizens United

www.huffingtonpost.com/marge-baker/overturning-citizens-unit_b_1194043.html?ref=politics

People for the American Way

www.pfaw.org/GovernmentByThePeople

When the majority of Americans can no longer effectively control the government because they can’t afford enough lobbyists, we no longer have a functioning democracy. The primary intent of this movement is to reform the current structure of the United States of America’s corrupt financial system in order to rescue the American economy from its inevitable total collapse. In order to Accomplish this the nation must:

Eliminate corporate “personhood”. Discontinue allowing the private corporation commmonly known as the “Federal” Reserve to manipulate interest rates and cash flow, consistently destabilizing and undermining the American economy for the benefit of speculators. Dismantle “too big to fail” banks so they can no longer jeopardize the American economy. Overturn the Supreme Court’s outrageous “Citizens United” ruling. No longer tolerate corporate campaign contributions of ANY KIND WHATSOEVER – corporate interests are incompatible with long-term human interests.

What we oppose is: the corporate effort to transform our nation into a system in which the government is of, for, and by the wealthy elite, excluding the interests of the great majority of the American People.

Read the full text of the declaration here.
See Occupy Sacramento website here.
Follow Occupy Sacramento on Facebook here.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say categorically that “corporate interests are incompatible with long-term human interests,” since regulated capitalism has shown itself to be successful in the decades between WWII and the late 1970s, until Reaganomics began to unravel the regulatory structures put in place during the New Deal.

One KCRA report referred to the action at Cesar Chavez Park as a “rally against corporate greed.” That sounds about right.

Other video reports found a spectrum of views, from coherence to near incoherence, not suprising in these early days of protest.

Many demonstrators carried signs begging for bailouts for student loans, reflective of a persistent demographic nationwide.

Here’s one of the more coherent demonstrators, a man who is reaching out to the Tea Party:

Can local laws have a real effect on the power of giant corporations?

by Allen D. Kanner

Mt. Shasta, a small northern California town of 3,500 residents nestled in the foothills of magnificent Mount Shasta, is taking on corporate power through an unusual process—democracy.

The citizens of Mt. Shasta have developed an extraordinary ordinance, set to be voted on in the next special or general election, that would prohibit corporations such as Nestle and Coca-Cola from extracting water from the local aquifer. But this is only the beginning. The ordinance would also ban energy giant PG&E, and any other corporation, from regional cloud seeding, a process that disrupts weather patterns through the use of toxic chemicals such as silver iodide. More generally, it would refuse to recognize corporate personhood, explicitly place the rights of community and local government above the economic interests of multinational corporations, and recognize the rights of nature to exist, flourish, and evolve.

Mt. Shasta is not alone. Rather, it is part of a (so far) quiet municipal movement making its way across the United States in which communities are directly defying corporate rule and affirming the sovereignty of local government.

Since 1998, more than 125 municipalities have passed ordinances that explicitly put their citizens’ rights ahead of corporate interests, despite the existence of state and federal laws to the contrary. These communities have banned corporations from dumping toxic sludge, building factory farms, mining, and extracting water for bottling. Many have explicitly refused to recognize corporate personhood. Over a dozen townships in Pennsylvania, Maine, and New Hampshire have recognized the right of nature to exist and flourish (as Ecuador just did in its new national constitution). Four municipalities, including Halifax in Virginia, and Mahoney, Shrewsbury, and Packer in Pennsylvania, have passed laws imposing penalties on corporations for chemical trespass, the involuntary introduction of toxic chemicals into the human body.

These communities are beginning to band together. When the attorney general of Pennsylvania threatened to sue Packer Township this year for banning sewage sludge within its boundaries, six other Pennsylvania towns adopted similar ordinances and twenty-three others passed resolutions in support of their neighboring community. Many people were outraged when the attorney general proclaimed, “there is no inalienable right to local self-government.”

Bigger cities are joining the fray. In November, Pittsburg’s city council voted to ban corporations in the city from drilling for natural gas as a result of local concern about an environmentally devastating practice known as “fracking.” As city councilman Doug Shields stated in a press release, “Many people think that this is only about gas drilling. It’s not—it’s about our authority as a municipal community to say ‘no’ to corporations that will cause damage to our community. It’s about our right to community, [to] local self-government.”

What has driven these communities to such radical action? The typical story involves a handful of local citizens deciding to oppose a corporate practice, such as toxic sludge dumping, which has taken a huge toll on the health, economy, and natural surroundings of their town. After years of fighting for regulatory change, these citizens discover a bitter truth: the U.S. environmental regulatory system consists of a set of interlocking state and federal laws designed by industry to serve corporate interests. With the deck utterly stacked against them, communities are powerless to prevent corporations from destroying the local environment for the sake of profit.

Enter the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit public interest law firm that champions a different approach. The firm helps communities draft local ordinances that place the rights of municipalities to govern themselves above corporate rights. Through its Democracy School, which offers seminars across the United States, it provides a detailed analysis of the history of corporate law and environmental regulation that shows a need for a complete overhaul of the system. Armed with this knowledge and with their well-crafted ordinances, citizens are able to return to their communities to begin organizing for the passage of laws such as Mt. Shasta’s proposed ordinance.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is collaborating with Global Exchange, an international environmental and workers’ rights organization, to help supporters of the Mt. Shasta ordinance organize. In an interview for this article, I asked Shannon Biggs, who directs Global Exchange’s Community Rights Program, if she expected ordinances of this type to be upheld in court. Biggs was dubious about judges “seeing the error of their ways” and reversing a centuries-oldtrend in which courts grant corporations increased power. Rather, she sees these ordinances as powerful educational and organizing tools that can lead to the major changes necessary to reduce corporate power, put decision-making back in the hands of real people rather than corporate “persons,” and open up whole new areas of rights, such as those of ecosystems and natural communities. Biggs connects the current municipal defiance of existing state and federal law to a long tradition of civil disobedience in the United States, harkening back to Susan B. Anthony illegally casting her ballot, the Underground Railroad flouting slave laws, and civil rights protesters purposely breaking segregation laws.

But the nascent municipal rights movement offers something new in the way of political action. These communities are adopting laws that, taken together, are forming an alternative structure to the global corporate economy. The principles behind these laws can be applied broadly to any area where corporate rights override local self-government or the well-being of the local ecology. The best place to start, I would suggest, is with banning corporations from making campaign contributions to local elections.

The municipal movement could provide one of the most effective routes to building nationwide support for an Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the movement is already expanding. In Pennsylvania, people are now organizing on the state level and similar stirrings have been reported in New Hampshire.

What about your community?

Interested?

• Pittsburgh Bans Natural Gas Drilling
  A historic new ordinance bans natural gas drilling while elevating community decision making and the rights of nature over the “rights” associated with corporate personhood.
• Real People vs. Corporate People: The Fight is On
  The Supreme Court says corporations can spend as much money as they want on political advertising. Millions of Americans say they’ve had it.
• Corporations Ain’t People
  Video: GLEE-inspired activism for a democracy run by human beings, not corporations.

]]> http://sierravoices.com/2011/02/allen-kanner-corporate-control-not-in-these-communities/feed/ 0 http://sierravoices.com/2010/11/fracking-wars-pittsburgh-bans-natural-gas-drilling/ http://sierravoices.com/2010/11/fracking-wars-pittsburgh-bans-natural-gas-drilling/#comments Sun, 21 Nov 2010 00:47:53 +0000 depelton http://sierravoices.com/?p=6445 [Editor's note: If you want to find the still guttering flame of democracy in America, look in the heartland, in small towns such as Barnstead, New Hampshire and Blaine Township, Pennsylvania, and now in Pittsburgh, where town councils are voting to deny corporations the rights of personhood. This is the frontline in a war between the personhood rights of corporations and the rights of natural-born citizens and their communities.]

Published in Yes! November 16, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

A historic new ordinance bans natural gas drilling while elevating community decision making and the rights of nature over the “rights” associated with corporate personhood.

by Mari Margil, Ben Price

In a historic vote, the City of Pittsburgh today adopted a first-in-the-nation ordinance banning corporations from natural gas drilling in the city.

Faced with the potential for drilling—and the controversial new practice known as “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing—within city limits, the Pittsburgh City Council unanimously said “no.” Fracking means injecting water laced with sand and toxic chemicals underground to create deep ground explosions that release the gas. It’s a technique first tried in Texas, and which is now being used in Pennsylvania, where the Marcellus Shale geological formation, a source of natural gas, is buried over a mile down. The Marcellus Shale stretches from New York, through Pennsylvania, into Ohio and West Virginia.

Fracking has been demonstrated to be a threat to surface and groundwater, and has been blamed for fatal explosions, the contamination of drinking water, rivers, and streams. Because it disturbs rock that’s laced not only with methane, but with carcinogens like benzene and radioactive ores like uranium, forcing the mix to the surface adds to the dangers.

Pittsburgh sits atop the Marcellus Shale and corporations have already purchased leases to drill there, including under area parks and cemeteries.

The ordinance sponsor, Pittsburgh Councilman Doug Shields, led the charge to ban drilling, and was later joined by five co-sponsors. During the months leading up to today’s vote, Shields passionately advocated for the ordinance, saying that the city is “not a colony of the state and will not sit quietly by as our city gets drilled.” He sees this fight as about far more than drilling, saying “It’s about our authority as a community to decide, not corporations deciding for us.”

Drafted by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), Pittsburgh’s ordinance elevates the rights of people, the community, and nature over corporate “rights” and challenges the authority of the state to pre-empt community decision-making.

As natural gas drilling expands across Pennsylvania, there’s been a debate among opponents offracking over the best course to take. Some are arguing for “responsible drilling” and severance taxes; others want to “zone out” drilling from residential areas or around schools.

Advocates and communities are finding, however, that calling on corporations to be more accountable, without changing the powers and authorities corporations have been given by state and federal government, means asking them to take voluntary steps. Even communities that adopt zoning restrictions requiring drilling pads to be located away from homes or schools find that because the drilling is horizontal, its impact still reaches into those places they are trying to protect.

Meanwhile, hopes that the state—either the legislature or the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection—will help, have been similarly dashed. The state was recently found to be paying thousands of dollars to a private contractor to investigate citizens advocating against drilling. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of industry dollars went to candidates in the recent elections. Those monies helped elect candidates who will ensure that drilling proceeds without interference from citizens across the region. Further, the state continues to issue permits to corporations to drill despite growing community opposition.

Corporations, empowered with constitutional privileges conferred upon them by the courts, have long worked hand-in-hand with elected officials and government agencies at the state and federal level to pave the way for drilling. They’ve been successful in exempting natural gas drilling andfracking from federal regulations and they’ve put in place state laws pre-empting municipalities from taking any steps to reign in the industry.

Communities like Pittsburgh are coming to the conclusion that it’s up to them to stop practices they disagree with. Their efforts are not just about stopping the drilling, but about who gets to make decisions for the community—corporations empowered by the state, or people and their communities.

As Councilman Shields stated after the vote, “This ordinance recognizes and secures expanded civil rights for the people of Pittsburgh, and it prohibits activities which would violate those rights. It protects the authority of the people of Pittsburgh to pass this ordinance by undoing corporate privileges that place the rights of the people of Pittsburgh at the mercy of gas corporations.”

Provisions in the ordinance eliminate corporate “personhood” rights within the city for corporations seeking to drill, and remove the ability of corporations to wield the Commerce and Contracts Clauses of the U.S. Constitution to override community decision-making.

In addition, with adoption of the ordinance, Pittsburgh became the first city in the U.S. to recognize legally binding rights of nature.

By recognizing the rights of nature, Pittsburgh is effectively protecting ecosystems and natural communities within the city from efforts by corporations to drill there—and by other levels of government to authorize that drilling. Residents of Pittsburgh are empowered by the ordinance to enforce those rights on behalf of threatened ecosystems.

The ordinance now goes to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl for signature. Representatives of drilling companies have indicated they may challenge the ban in court.

The Pittsburgh City Council is now reaching out to other communities facing drilling, encouraging them to take similar steps including adoption of local laws that challenge state and corporate disregard for the consent of the governed, and join in the fight for community rights.

—————————————————————–

Mari Margil and Ben Price wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Mari is the associate director and Ben is projects director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit, public interest law firm providing legal services to communities facing threats to their local environment, agriculture, economy, and quality of life.

Interested?

• Video: Drafting Nature’s Constitution: Simply regulating pollution will never really stop it. Mari Margil of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund discusses why we need a fundamental change in the way we use law to protect nature.
• After the Campaign Cash, the Backlash: The 2010 midterm elections—the first since Citizens United opened the floodgates to corporate campaign cash—were the most expensive in history. So what happens next?
• Citizens Take Power: Communities across the country are declaring citizens’ right and duty to protect their water, land, local economy, and way of life, even if it means taking on the enormous power of corporations. Here are some of the peaceful revolutionaries who have stepped up.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Why controlling your water supply is so important

by Tara Lohan

Click to enlarge

In 2008, weeks after communities all over the United States celebrated the Fourth of July, the tiny town of Felton, Calif., marked its own holiday: Water Independence Day. With barbecue, music, and dancing, residents marked the end of Felton’s six-year battle to gain control of its water system. The fight, like the festivities, was a grassroots effort. For when a large, private corporation bought Felton’s water utility and immediately raised rates, residents organized, leading what was ultimately a successful campaign for public ownership and inspiring other communities nationwide.

Like many other communities with a privately controlled water system, Felton quickly experienced some of the drawbacks: skyrocketing rates, and little public recourse. But officials of some cash-strapped towns seek privatization because they believe a corporation will help lift their burden. Across the country, public water systems require massive repairs to deteriorating infrastructure, at an estimated annual cost of about $17 billion over the next 20 years. Our aging water mains result in some 240,000 breaks a year, and more than a trillion gallons of wastewater spill into our waterways annually. Federal funds typically help communities pay the repair bills, but escalating costs have prompted many cities to look for alternatives.

Some local leaders, eager for financial help, have turned to private companies to buy their utilities or lease them—arrangements known as public-private partnerships. Companies promise system improvements, greater efficiency, and money up front, but increasing evidence suggests that cities are getting the raw end of such deals: Privatization jeopardizes public supply and access to water and drives up costs for citizens.

“Providing clean, accessible, affordable water is not only the most basic of all government services, but throughout history, control of water has defined the power structure of societies,” Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman, filmmakers who documented the effort of Stockton, Calif., to fight privatization, wrote in the book Water Consciousness. “If we lose control of our water, what do we as citizens really control through our votes, and what does democracy mean?”

Communities Fight Back

A former logging town in the redwood hills above Santa Cruz, Calif., Felton had a privately run water system, a holdout since privatization fell out of favor in the late 19th century. It hadn’t been much of an issue until 2002, when Citizen Utilities, the small company that ran the water system, was acquired by American Water Works Co. Its subsidiary, California-American Water (Cal-Am), took over Felton’s water utility. American Water was acquired shortly afterward by London-based Thames Water.

In November 2002, Cal-Am proposed a 74 percent rate increase over three years, subject to approval by the California Public Utilities Commission. Felton residents formed Friends of Locally Owned Water (FLOW), and with legal help from Santa Cruz County, fought the rate increase, which the utilities commission knocked down to 44 percent. But the threat of escalating costs loomed, so FLOW began working on a plan to buy the water system and turn it over to the nearby San Lorenzo Valley Water District (SLVWD), a public utility. By 2005, FLOW had enlisted the help of Food & Water Watch and was working on a ballot initiative to raise the estimated $11 million to buy the system from Cal-Am/RWE.

Jim Graham of FLOW said the group sent volunteers door to door three times throughout the community to educate residents about privatization and the public ownership campaign. That meant urging voters to accept a property-tax increase of up to $600 a year for 30 years.

Their efforts were successful, and the ballot initiative won with nearly 75 percent of the vote. SLVWD then proposed to buy the water system for $7.6 million, but Cal-Am/RWE refused to sell. So SLVWD pursued eminent domain to force a buyout. Just before the case was to go to jury trial, the company settled with SLVWD. Today, with Felton’s water back in the hands of a public utility, the average resident’s bill has dropped by at least 50 percent. FLOW has calculated that even with the tax increase, most residents are already saving as much as $400 per year.

A Private Matter

In recent decades, the government’s role in water service has changed. Three years before Reagan took office, 78 percent of money for new water projects came from the federal government. Nearly 30 years later, the proportion has fallen to 3 percent. Then the Clinton administration made several tax-law changes that made it easier for cities to privatize local water and sewer systems and for foreign companies to enter the market, explained Emily Wurth, water program manager for Food & Water Watch.

Food

Water Watch has studied the effects of water-system privatization and has helped Felton and other communities turn—or return—to public control. In a 2009 report that examined nearly 5,000 water utilities and 1,900 sewer utilities, the organization found that the private entities—which have a fiduciary obligation to shareholders—charge up to 80 percent more for water and 100 percent more for sewer services. Privately owned utilities cost more to operate, too: They typically have to pay income and property taxes, while public utilities are exempt. In all, according to Food & Water Watch, operation and maintenance costs of privatized water systems can spike 20 to 30 percent, when dividends, taxes, and profits are factored in. It follows that corporations make more money if more water is used; conservation and repairs, then, can fall off the priority list. When Stockton, Calif., privatized its wastewater system, higher-than-promised rate hikes, poor maintenance, and sewage overflows followed. When 8 million gallons discharged into the San Joaquin River, the spill went unnoticed for 10 hours and unreported to the public for three days.

According to a 2002 Century Foundation survey of 245 municipalities, 73 percent of them ended private water contracts because of poor service. In Lee County, Fla., officials realized that after five years of control by Severn Trent Services, a British multinational corporation, the county needed $8 million to repair improperly maintained systems, which could have jeopardized environmental and public health. The county lost money on the deal and didn’t renew the five-year contract once it ended. Other cities that privatized sewer systems—including Woonsocket, R.I., and Wilmington, Del.—have discovered chronic pollution problems.

Meanwhile, some cities turn to water-system leases. But under a lease, the city retains control of the infrastructure, so the corporation has even less incentive to perform proper maintenance. If spills or overflows result in environmental damage, it is often the municipality that has to pick up the tab on any fines.

In 2008, the city of Milwaukee was looking for solutions to an impending $100 million shortfall when the city’s comptroller recommended a lease of the Milwaukee Water Works. He hoped a private company would pay the city $500 million for the right to lease the utility for 99 years. “The driving reason wasn’t that our water system was falling apart or in need of maintenance,” said Deputy Comptroller Mike Daun. “We wanted a public-private partnership that would result in a very large transfer of funds to the city up front, which we’d use to create an endowment and address the deficit.”

But not everyone shared that vision. Research by Food & Water Watch revealed that for every dollar the city received from the lease, residents would end up paying $1.60 to $5.40.The organization aided a grassroots effort in Milwaukee that helped defeat the privatization plan, at least for now.

Cities such as Chicago continue to contemplate privatization, while many others are reverting to public control or fighting privatization at the outset.

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, says that her organization advises communities to focus on who is able to stop the privatization threat, usually the city council or water board. That means ­doorbelling, working with the media, releasing reports that challenge the company’s claims, and working closely with labor groups and community groups. If cities need to make improvements to ailing systems, municipal bonds are usually a cheaper option than private financing, and they can seek public-public partnerships (PUPs), an alternative to public-private

partnerships. PUPs, according to the Transnational Institute, are “a collaboration between two or more public authorities or organizations based on solidarity to improve the capacity and effectiveness of one partner in providing public water or sanitation services.” Essentially those communities with well-run systems offer their expertise to managers of utilities in need of some help.

But for many, the issue of water privatization isn’t just about money. Felton FLOW member Barbara Sprenger said she was motivated to act primarily “because it was water.” Private ownership, she said, meant extra costs without the necessary monitoring and transparency.

“The people on our water board manage our water as part of a watershed,” she said. “They care, and they are local—we see them at the grocery store. You really have to have local control over something so vital.”

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Tara Lohan wrote this article for  Water Solutions , the Summer 2010 issue of YES! Magazine. Tara is senior editor at AlterNet and editor of Water Consciousness.

Interested?

• Protecting Our Commons: Keeping the air, the water, the Internet and other commons out of corporate hands and in our own. A YES! Magazine interactive graphic.
• How to Get Local Control: Taught by people who’ve done it.

Simply regulating pollution will never really stop it. Mari Margil of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund discusses why we need a fundamental change in the way we use law to protect nature.

The environmental movement, with its army of professional advocates, lawyers, grassroots campaigners, and dedicated funders, has been around for decades. Yet nearly every biological indicator shows a planet in crisis—and poised to unravel faster as climate change disrupts already-shaky ecosystem functions.

Mari Margil, associate director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) believes it’s time for different tactics. The nonprofit agency used to work within the body of existing environmental law—helping impacted residents file lawsuits or appeal corporate permits—to protect communities from environmental damage. But a series of blocked efforts, often made worse by the very agencies meant to protect the environment, convinced the group that more fundamental changes were necessary.

“Our system of environmental laws and regulations don’t actually protect the environment,” says CELDF’s Mari Margil. “At best, they merely slow the rate of its destruction … We weren’t helping anyone protect anything.”

The organization has since changed its goals, working with citizens from all over North and South America to literally rewrite local laws in ways that allow people to speak up for their communities, watersheds, forests, and air.

According to Margil, anemic environmental laws spring from the fact that nature has no constitutional rights. CELDF has taken a local approach to reversing this structural blind spot, drafting ordinances for townships from New England to Pennsylvania to Washington State that:

• Give communities legal authority to say “No” to unwanted corporate activities;
• Recognize the rights of nature;
• Strip corporations of their constitutional rights.

In one landmark victory, the town of Barnstead, New Hampshire, voted 135 to 1 to ban the privatization of their freshwater by encroaching corporate interests—the first community in the nation to do so. Other towns have followed, stripping corporations of the rights of personhood and recognizing the rights of communities to self-govern. In 2008, with legal advice from CELDF, Ecuador recognized the right of nature to exist and persist in its national constitution.

Mari Margil Addresses Bioneers Conference

This video was produced by Bioneers, a nonprofit organization that provides a forum and hub for social and scientific innovators.

Interested?
Communities Take on Corporate Power
People across the country are taking our founding documents at their word, declaring citizens’ right and duty to protect nature and community.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Before running off trying to counter the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), we ought to sort out what this decision does and does not do.

The Citizens United decision does make our democracy theme park a little worse, the way having an atomic bomb dropped on your own house would be slightly worse than having it dropped on your neighbor’s. But despite dire claims that the decision is the nail in the coffin of our democracy, that it will shake the current election system to its core, and so on, the case changes very little of our current situation.

Just how teensy a change it will bring can be illustrated by looking at one of the cases overruled by Citizens United: the 1990 Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce¹ case, hailed by many as a ray of hope in the morass of campaign finance reform efforts. Austin affirmed an extremely mild Michigan law² that essentially prevented the Michigan Chamber of Commerce (one type of nonprofit corporation) from spending general funds to support or oppose a political candidate. That law specifically defined person to include corporations³.

The Austin case accepts that money equals speech (following the Supreme Court’s 1976 Buckley v. Valeo⁴ ), that corporations can spend treasury funds on initiatives and referendums, and that political action committees (PACs) using segregated funds are legal and constitutional. Austin also affirms that corporations are “persons” with constitutional rights, and that they have both First Amendment speech rights, and Fourteenth Amendment equal protection rights. That such a case is regarded as the Magna Carta of campaign reform efforts must leave corporate counsel hiding their smirks.

The recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United is a gift to the right wing, all right, but not the way many pundits claim. It is a gift to the right wing because of the way that many in the mainstream media have reacted to it, in full frontal denial that it is a red herring.

Let’s review where we were before the Citizens United case was decided. After the 2002 McCain-Feingold Act⁵ (BCRA) went into effect, the public no longer had reason to suspect that corporate lobbying, campaign contributions, or corporate cash affected elected officials’ votes on legislation or positions on issues. The M-F Act transformed elections into paragons of open discussion, free sharing of ideas, thoughtful parrying, and heartfelt non-partisan pro-civic engagement orgies. Right?

Look at any index: the role of money in elections, voting records that mirror campaign contribution patterns, the quality of debate, or the proportion of legislation clearly designed to benefit some corporate interest group. McCain-Feingold recalibrated, rearranged, and redecorated the loopholes used to determine how election money flows and is tallied. It did not eliminate that money, or the influence it reflects. For a current example unrelated to the Citizens United case, look over the Valentine’s Day New York Times front-page article on corporate influence on the Congressional Black Caucus⁶.

The previous major national paroxysm of campaign reform was hardly more effective. The main claim to fame of the Federal Election Campaign Act (passed 1971; amended 1974; shredded in the 1976 Valeo decision; liquefied in the 1978 Bellotti ruling⁷) was legalizing the PAC (Political Action Committee). Doubtless, those of us old enough to have lived through the Nixon years will recall a sudden elevation of the quality of elections and political discussion, and correlative diminution of political corruption in the years after its passage. Nope.

Legislation (the FEC Act in the 1970s, McCain-Feingold in 2002) that makes minor adjustments to a thoroughly corporate-dominated corrupt system should not be expected to resolve major problems. If insanity is defined as expecting different results while doing the same thing over and over, surely we are getting dangerously close with campaign reform efforts.

As the Citizens United case was being heard in the fall of 2009, I noted the Supreme Court’s false framing: “Must we limit speech in order to have free and fair elections? Or, must we accept corporation-dominated political debate in order to preserve free speech?  This false dilemma disappears if we reject corporate personhood–the idea that corporations have constitutional rights. Only if we pretend that corporations are “persons” under the Constitution, is limiting corporate “speech” a constitutional infringement.”⁸.

After the Citizens United ruling, this is still true. Corporations function like retroviruses, taking over the rights and protections that we wrote for humans, and then using them against us, their human hosts. The opinion of the Court is chock full of paeans to the nobility and preciousness of unfettered free speech—of corporations. Rights we the people fought for—at the cost of much life, liberty, and happiness—are now used with great (and seemingly invisible) regularity to shield corporations from government “interference.”

Maryland Congresswoman Donna Edwards’s proposed Constitutional Amendment⁹), inspired by the Citizens United decision, would guarantee that “Congress and the states may regulate the expenditure of funds for political speech by any corporation, limited liability company, or other corporate entity.” Would this amendment end corporate domination of our political process? Clearly not. The “corporation” or “corporate entity” referred to ALREADY has constitutional rights and other constitutional protections, a circumstance Edwards’s proffered amendment does nothing to alter.

Since the 1870s and 1880s, federal judges have worked hand-in-hand with corporate counsel to haul into place the edifice of constitutional protections that exempt corporations from the authority of the very states that created them. These protections are the linchpin of corporate power, and the cornerstones of our democracy theme park. Rather than overstating the significance of the Citizens United decision, offering measures that tiptoe around the fundamental problem, and wallowing in the usual moaning and groaning about corporate influence, let’s address the problem directly, something we should have done generations ago.

Peek outside the democracy theme park, and repeat after me: Only if we pretend that corporations are “persons” under the Constitution, is limiting corporate “speech” a constitutional infringement.

And kick that red herring out of the way.

Corporate anthropologist Jane Anne Morris’s recent book, Gaveling Down the Rabble: How “Free Trade” is Stealing Our Democracy (Apex Press, 2008) is cited in an amicus brief filed in support of the Federal Elections Commission in the Citizens United case. She is working on a book about the Supreme Court.

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1. Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 US 652 (1990).
2. §54(1) of the Michigan Campaign Finance Act, 1976 Mich. Pub. Acts 388.
3. Michigan Campaign Finance Act, 1976 Mich. Pub. Acts 388, 591(g)
4. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976)
5. Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002
6. Eric Lipton and Eric Lichtblau, “In Black Caucus, a Fund-Raising Powerhouse: Corporate Donors Buy Access, and Push Agendas, at Lavish Events,” New York Times, Feb. 14, 2010. [front-page]
7. First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 US 765 (1978
8. Jane Anne Morris, paraphrase, “Corporate personhood’ must be challenged,” The Progressive Populist, Nov. 1, 2009 (vol. 15, number 19
9. John Nichols, “Amend Constitution to save democracy,” (Opinion and Commentary, The Cap Times, Feb. 10-16, 2010