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General News    H3'ed 2/26/17

Philadelphia Conference on Voting Justice and Democratizing Elections, Feb. 24-26, Friends Meeting House

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The electrifying, former Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb led the next workshop I attended, on corporate constitutional rights.

"I am a revolutionary and a lawyer!" he began. [He later mentioned that his father was a Baptist preacher!] "I believe in restructuring society: destroying climate denial, racism, sexism, and class-based oppression!" Our vision is for an equal, peaceful, just, and ecologically sustained society, which are building blocks for the Green Party, along with publicly funded elections.

We've been taught that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, with its fundamental principles of liberty, justice, and equality.

We're at a point when we can win all or nothing.

Society is being restructured by labor-less production, Within the next 20 years it won't need many people.

And in truth the Constitution is based not on human rights but property rights.

The government is afraid of the people, and Occupy is the proof, a tremendous success that Obama dismantled. But he couldn't dismantle the conversation that resulted about human rights. The people are engaged; there is a mass movement all over.

We have more power than we dare imagine; we aren't engaged properly. The government doesn't have rights but duties. The revolutionary flag slogan "Don't tread on me" is alive and well.

Cobb described the legal process of starting a corporation, the most dominant institution on earth: for $75, you fill in a form and obtain a charter and thus your "inc." can live in perpetuity. We've been taught the we need corporations. Though "incorporate" means "to give body," it's a legal fiction.

But climate change is real.

The Constitution was ratified in 1789 by a group representing 5 percent of the people, many of whom held slaves. Fully 95 percent of adults didn't have rights. Lawsuits determined that women weren't people and blacks had no rights.

But back then, formation of a corporation required approval by the state assemblies and senates as well as the governors. The life span was a maximum of 20 years, after which a new application was necessary. A public need had to be proved and the public interest had to be served. Large corporations were not allowed. [Cobb later mentioned that the so-called Luddites foresaw that industrialization would destroy society.]

These days they must be treated like individuals with Constitutional rights. Money equals speech. We have lost our right to govern ourselves.

A majority of the people believe that this country is on the wrong track. They believe in human rights. We live in a progressive society.

But we don't control our government; money and oligarchs do.

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Marta Steele is an author/editor/blogger who has been writing for Opednews.com since 2006. She is also author of the 2012 book "Grassroots, Geeks, Pros, and Pols: The Election Integrity Movement's Nonstop Battle to Win Back the People's Vote, (more...)
 

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