Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Corporations Are Not People Lecture: May 3


North Shore Move to Amend will present Jeffrey D. Clements, author of Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It  in a forum on Thursday evening May 3 at Endicott College’s WAX Academic Center Auditorium, 376 Hale Street, Beverly, MA. The forum will commence at 7:00 PM.
 
Clements will discuss the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision and the movement to amend the Constitution to address that decision.

Corporations Are Not People, with a foreword by Bill Moyers, tells the true story of how some of the largest corporations in the world organized to take over our government and Constitution, culminating in 2010 with the 5-4 Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Citizens United marked a culminating victory for the legal doctrine of corporate personhood. Corporations, as legal persons, are now entitled to exercise their alleged free-speech rights in the form of campaign spending, effectively enabling corporate domination of the electoral process.

In his book, Jeffrey Clements uncovers the roots, expansion, and far-reaching effects of the strange and destructive idea, which flies in the face of not only all common sense but, Clements shows, most of American legal history, from 1787 to the 1970s. He details its impact on the American political landscape, economy, job market, environment, and public health—and how it permeates our daily lives, from the quality of air we breathe to the types of jobs we can get to the politicians we elect. Most importantly, he offers a solution: a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United and tools readers can use to mount a grassroots drive to get it passed.

Move to Amend is a coalition of hundreds of organizations and tens of thousands of individuals committed to social and economic justice, ending corporate rule, and building a vibrant democracy that is genuinely accountable to the people, not corporate interests.
Move to Amend is organizing Americans across the country to seek an amendment to the US Constitution to unequivocally state that inalienable rights belong to human beings only, and that money is not a form of protected free speech under the First Amendment and can be regulated in political campaigns.
Overturning Citizens United is not about a triumph of one political ideology over another—it’s about restoring the democratic principles on which America was built. Republican president Theodore Roosevelt and conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist both vocally opposed the idea of corporate personhood.
Recent polls have shown that 62% of Americans are opposed to the Citizens United decision
For more information on North Shore Move to Amend contact Kathy Lique kquinn310@gmail.com

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