Ron: Really?
Thom: Yeah.
Ron: There was only one Democrat serving for 50 years?
Thom: Yeah, yeah. It was Grover Cleveland. He got elected twice and in between him, there was a Republican and then he ran again and got re-elected. But keep in mind, I mean, the Democrat Party has been fluid over the years. The Republican Party had become basically by 1870, the Party corporations, but the Democratic Party was still very powerful in the South, and although no longer the party of slavery, it was the party of Jim Crow and of apartheid. But then the Republican Party jumped on that band wagon in the 1870's and both parties were in favor of segregation until the 1950's. So the politics of it all are a little more complex, complex than people tend to think.
Ron: Well, I'm not going to go there.
Thom: Okay.
Ron: But let's talk about the Occupy Movement.
Thom: Sure.
Ron: Occupy is very interested in Corporate Personhood. What advice would you give to people in the Occupy Movement about Corporate Personhood?
Thom: Go the movetoamend.org website and get informed and get the stuff that you can print off that website to hand out to other people, and whatever city you happen to be occupying, try to occupy City Hall, and get City Hall to vote on an amendment and then try to occupy your state legislature and then get them to vote on an amendment but if an amendment passes Congress, that state will ratify it. They have to get two-thirds of the House and Senate and then they have to get three-quarters of the state legislatures. Start the organizing; that's the way we end Corporate Personhood.
Rob: It's a big deal. It's a little"
Thom: It is a big deal.
Rob: The last time there was an amendment, the constitutional amendment?
Thom: I don't know if it's the last one, it might be the next to the last one. I think the last one had to do with congressional pay raises but the next to the last one was only six months, from the time it was proposed until it was ratified by the three-quarter state. What would that be? The 41 st state or 38 th state or whatever it is. That is six months and that was the one to lower the voting age from 21 down to 18 and it was because of the Vietnam war. It was really because of that song. Remember Eve of Destruction, Barry what's his name?
Rob: Yeah.
Thom: And that song, it says, "You're old enough or you're old enough to kill but not for voting. And they tell me over and over," the Eve of Destruction. And that song fuel that movement and created a national consensus that if somebody was 18 years old, if somebody was old enough to kill they should be old enough for voting and within six months you had a constitutional amendment proposed, passed through the House and Senate by two-thirds majority, submitted to the states and passed and ratified by three-quarters of the state legislatures, sent to the president and signed into law as an amendment of the constitution in less than, I think it was less than seven months.
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