Welcome back for the conclusion of my interview* with David Cobb, 2004 Green Party presidential candidate, campaign manager for Jill Stein's Green Party 2016 presidential candidacy and co-founder of Move to Amend.
Joan Brunwasser: Welcome back to OpEdNews, David. Before the break, we were speaking of abolishing corporate personhood. Tell us about Move to Amend, please. What is it and how does it work?
DC: It is "quite a list." And these are actually majoritarian policy proposals. We could actually implement these policies and live in a peaceful, just, democratic and ecologically sustainable world if people joined the Green Party and voted for Green Party candidates.
I am proud of my role as a co-founder of Move To Amend, which began with about a dozen people in a living room in Fall of 2009 talking about the Citizens United vs. FEC decision which was pending in the Supreme Court. We knew the Roberts Court would issue a bad decision, and decided that we should be ready to launch a call to amend the Constitution to abolish in its entirety the illegitimate, court-created doctrines of corporate constitutional rights (aka as "corporate personhood") and money as speech. These two doctrines are lynch pins for how the CEOs of transnational corporations are no longer merely exercising power-- they are ruling over us.
Corporate constitutional rights allow corporate attorneys to march into court to oppose democratically enacted laws. Laws designed to protect the environment, worker safety, public health-- are routinely overturned on the basis of this concept.
Money as speech has gutted the ability to pass meaningful campaign finance laws, turning our elections into auctions.
The point is that these concepts are not merely legal technicalities, they are fundamental to how the ruling elite have stolen our right to self-government. And what pisses me off as a lawyer is that they use the legal system to legitimize the theft. Literally, most of the harm, abuse and oppression in the U.S. today is completely "legal."
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