We got filibuster reform because you spoke out. Ultimately, just our own system helped to facilitate 30,000 constituent messages on that one. We stopped another vain Middle East war (in Syria) because you spoke out. We stopped fast track for the so-called Trans Pacific Partnership. The Senate intelligence committee just released the torture report, another one of our actions. And these are just a couple of recent examples.

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My guest today is progressive political activist and frequent OpEdNews contributor, The Pen. Welcome back to OpEdNews, PEN.We spoke very recently about your attempts to raise awareness and outrage over Citizens United and to effect a constitutional amendment to reserve it. I understand there are more developments worth talking about.  Can you start the ball rolling, please?

PEN: Sure thing, Joan.  And thank you for following these events so closely.

The wonderful breaking news is that we are seeing movement in the United States Senate as a direct result of our advocacy to amend the Constitution to reverse the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, by declaring the corporations are not the people the Constitution intended to confer inalienable rights upon.  Senator John Walsh of Montana has now answered the call and joined in cosponsoring S.J.Res.18.  This is the first new cosponsor of this proposed constitutional amendment since last year, and can fairly be described as a break-out.

Our participants have already generated more than 13,000 messages to Congress on this , each going to both your senators and your house members as well.  And we are just getting started on this.  Of all issues we have ever taken on, this is the number one concern of our people.  And all we have to do now is rinse and repeat.  Which is to say, if we can change one vote we can change them all.

JB: I love that fighting spirit, PEN! It's so much easier and so very tempting to just toss in the towel and give up.

PEN: Well, Joan, you know the defeatists will try to tell you, and we both know they are out there, that the politicians won't listen to us.  We have so much proof dramatically to the contrary.  We got filibuster reform because you spoke out.  Ultimately, just our own system helped to facilitate 30,000 constituent messages on that one.  We stopped another vain Middle East war (in Syria) because you spoke out.  We stopped fast track for the so-called Trans Pacific Partnership. The Senate intelligence committee just released the torture report, another one of our actions.  And these are just a couple of recent examples.  If and only if we speak out in sufficient numbers, politicians by definition must listen.  They have no other political choice.  The only way the bad guys win is by persuading people that their voices don't matter, when we know the exact opposite is the reality.

JB: So, let's go back and give our readers more of an idea of how this movement is gaining momentum. How was Sen. Walsh of Montana enlisted to the cause? And who else from Congress has already signed on?

PEN: S.J.Res.18 and H.J.Res.21 were both introduced in Congress a year ago.  The first had three sponsors, and the one in the house had 34, and that's where things sat until our people started speaking out, so this is the crack in the door, so to speak.  Because this was the only proposal on the table with the same language in both the senate and the house, and because we felt it did a fine enough job of addressing the corporate personhood crisis in particular, we decided to jump on it.

Our argument is that if the Democrats want to win elections, this is the mother of all campaign issues. If the Democrats were to en masse join in cosponsoring these measures, then they could go to the American people and say, "Elect more Democrats so we can make this happen."  And the significance of a state like Montana, where now BOTH senators are sponsors of S.J.Res.18, is that the Democrats in Montana are giving their constituents the kind of representation that makes people want to vote for them more and more.

JB: If there are now four cosponsors in the senate, Montana's most likely the only state where both senators are cosponsoring this legislation.  Not necessarily what I might have anticipated in terms of a hotbed of activism, but I like it! If we can get this issue to catch fire in Montana, it raises all kinds of possibilities. What can we learn from what happened there (or elsewhere) that could be useful in stirring up more participation nationwide?

PEN: Let's talk about Massachusetts, where as of this moment we have zero cosponsors on the senate on this (though we have most of the house reps on the parallel measure, H.J.Res.21).  What's going on with senator Elizabeth Warren, who is sending out fundraising solicitations right now railing about what a terrible, awful thing the Citizens United decision was?  There's one of our next primary targets.  If you are in Massachusetts, you need to call her office right now and demand to know why she has not yet stepped up to the plate.  That's how it happens, YOU speak out, politicians listen.

JB: That's really surprising and very disturbing. I love Elizabeth Warren and consider her a bright spot in the senate. Do you have any theories about her aberrant behavior? Or is it irrelevant why she hasn't stepped up to the plate?

PEN: Maybe this specific proposal was not yet on her radar.  Like I said, we discovered these things were just lying on the table out there, just waiting for someone to take notice, like we did.  The point is that only the squeaking wheel gets the grease, and if there was ever a screeching wheel, I suppose we're it.  

JB: Thank goodness you're on it!

PEN: And the number one most powerful way you can make your phone call count is to use the new resource we created to make a public record, that anyone else can see, of your phone calls, and what they say in RESPONSE, to ALL your members of Congress, not just to Senator Elizabeth Warren.   It's called The People Lobby interface, and it includes tollfree numbers you can use, looks up all your members of Congress for you, and gives you their direct office phone numbers as well .

If you are a busy person, who does not have time to call during the workday, there is still absolutely no reason why you cannot leave a phone message anytime at your leisure.  They all have answering machines and the congressional operators are on duty around the clock.

JB: Good point, PEN. Is there anything to be learned by examining the geographic distribution of the cosponsors to know where to best apply the pressure or are you simply calling for a full-court press? And what's the time-frame here?

PEN: A full-court press absolutely, and here is why: In the house, the 34 cosponsors are the usual most liberal Democrats.  But their seats are not the ones in danger.  Take a look at Senator Mark Pryor in Arkansas.  Nate Silver (the ultimate election forecasting guru) is predicting a 70% chance he is going down.  What's going to change that dynamic?  It is precisely in the most conservative states that this is the one issue that can turn things around for Democrats, if they will accept the lifeline we are throwing them.  

As far as time frame, we are in this for the long haul.  A constitutional amendment initiative will require not just congressional passage but ratification in three-quarters of the states, over multiple elections.  And here is the incredible bonus: The same thing works at the state level too.  

JB: What are you referring to specifically?

PEN: "Elect more Democrats so we can reverse Citizens United."  It's a strategic opportunity to transform our government at all levels in a fundamental way.  And that is why we are throwing everything we have behind this.  As you know, we are hard at work on a new full length feature dramatic movie precisely about all this, Citizens United, The Movie, and the response so far has been tremendous.  We launched a Kickstarter project just 13 days ago, and already we have pledges for more than 200% of our initial goal.  Last time I checked, we were the number three most popular film/video project there out of 30,000 total such projects on the Kickstarter site.

JB: Third place in a field of 30,000: impressive. And a very good sign.

PEN: People REALLY want this to happen.  And all the politicians have to do is notice this and we WIN.  Do you want to know how much support there is for this?  We posted a video asking for help to put professional narration on a video sequence that was otherwise finished of a faux defense contractor ad, to make a political point of the extent to which special interest corporations have taken over the concept of "the People."  Well . . . we immediately started hearing from top level voiceover artists literally from all over the world, volunteering to record parts in their own studios, and they did, and we already have those parts edited and you can hear the amazing result on the Kickstarter page now .  

JB: Cool! I'm going to go to the site and see for myself. Anything you'd like to add before we close, PEN?

PEN: We are dearly hoping that the Democratic party gets this for their own sake, and for our own, all of us.  Yes, make phone calls, but also be sure that you submit the regular action page on this . It it could not be more easy.  One click and you speak out to all your three members of Congress at once.

JB: Thanks for talking with me again. It's always a pleasure. As you say, this is going to be an ongoing battle so we need to be ratcheted up for the long term. So glad you've made getting involved and being heard so painless.  And, unless our readers are part of the very, very small slice of our society who actually benefit from the Citizens United decision and its aftermath, we can all unite on the importance of overturning this democracy-eating decision through an overwhelming show of people power.

PEN: Thank you again, for your time, Joan.  You are yourself making an amazing difference by what you do.

JB: Back atcha.

***

link to Citizens United, the Movie at Kickstarter

The Pen's OpEdNews author's archives page

The People Lobby website

my prior interviews with Pen:

Constitutional Amendment Or Bust 4/2/14

Speak Out for Net Neutrality If You Ever Hope to Speak Out Again 2/25/2014

The People Lobby Nails Down The Senate Finance Committee On The Trans Pacific Partnership 1/19/14

Use This Innovative Action Page Link and Stop the Trans Pacific Partnership 1/5/2014

The Worst Trade Deal Ever, And What You Can Do To Stop It 12/11/2013

The PEN: Save the Bees Before We All Starve 8/10/2013

Authors Website: http://www.opednews.com/author/author79.html

Authors Bio:

Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of transparency and the ability to accurately check and authenticate the vote cast, these systems can alter election results and therefore are simply antithetical to democratic principles and functioning.



Since the pivotal 2004 Presidential election, Joan has come to see the connection between a broken election system, a dysfunctional, corporate media and a total lack of campaign finance reform. This has led her to enlarge the parameters of her writing to include interviews with whistle-blowers and articulate others who give a view quite different from that presented by the mainstream media. She also turns the spotlight on activists and ordinary folks who are striving to make a difference, to clean up and improve their corner of the world. By focusing on these intrepid individuals, she gives hope and inspiration to those who might otherwise be turned off and alienated. She also interviews people in the arts in all their variations - authors, journalists, filmmakers, actors, playwrights, and artists. Why? The bottom line: without art and inspiration, we lose one of the best parts of ourselves. And we're all in this together. If Joan can keep even one of her fellow citizens going another day, she considers her job well done.


When Joan hit one million page views, OEN Managing Editor, Meryl Ann Butler interviewed her, turning interviewer briefly into interviewee. Read the interview here.

While the news is often quite depressing, Joan nevertheless strives to maintain her mantra: "Grab life now in an exuberant embrace!"


Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at Huffington Post, RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.