LETTER: Move to Amend

Campbell Patch received this email on behalf of the Santa Clara County Move to Amend. 

On August 7, 2012 the Campbell City Council will consider adopting a resolution in support of a 28th amendment to the US Constitution and declare that corporations are not people and money is not speech. You should email, write or call your local councilor and urge them to support this movement.

You will not be alone, other cities and people across America, faced by the local impact of the judicial doctrine that corporation are people, have already taken action. Los Angeles, West Allis Wisconsin, Kansas City, Berkeley, New York, Salt Lake City, Portland Oregon, and our neighbors in Los Altos Hills and Mountain View have passed the resolution, Also up for consideration are Campbell and Palo Alto calling for a 28th amendment. Most significantly on June 14, the US Conference of Mayors unanimously adopted a resolution of support and calls upon local bodies to do the same.

Is there any surprise that there is a groundswell of support to amend our constitution?

The catalyst was the 2010 Citizens United case which is having a horrifying impact on our election process. The Supreme Court declared that money is speech and corporations have a constitutional right to spend as much as they want to buy the political process. So much corporate cash is being fed into the political arena that it is warping and crushing our political system at every level.

Politicians, pundits and regular Americans across the political spectrum immediately recognized the corrosive and corruptive impact of this decision, but many are still unaware of the repercussions being felt around the country. Court decisions granting corporations the same rights as human beings have meant that laws that required food labeling are overturned because of corporation’s 1st amendment “constitutional right” not to speak. (International Dairy case). Corporations use the 4th amendment to avoid search and seizure and evade enforcement of our health and safety laws. (Marshall case). Corporations obtain personal medical histories by appealing to the 1st amendment. (Sorrell case).

This court decreed grant of constitutional rights to corporations is seriously impacting the ability of cities and communities to self-govern. Local land use laws can be overturned. Local campaign finance laws can be thrown out. On June 25, 2012 the US Supreme Court, in the Montana case, made it crystal clear that Citizens United applied not only federally, but also extends to the state and local level. The court discounted the expert testimony to the effect that when a local economy depends on distant markets, distant corporate interests trump local interests. The floodgates are now wide open for unlimited corporate money to drown local political priorities.

Since the only way to overturn a Supreme Court decision is by an Amendment to the Constitution, the Campbell City council has the opportunity to join hundreds of local communities across the nation and assert that political rights accrue to people, not corporation, and in America, it is people, not corporations that determine the choices we make for our community.