Saturday, January 21 2012 is the second anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This is a real opportunity to rachet our activities up a notch. Occupy groups across the country, as well as the Move To Amend organization, are planning to demonstrate in front of Federal courthouses on Friday the 20th.
On our Facebook group page, Margaret suggested a petition urging revocation of Citizens United. What a great idea! Part of the Move To Amend’s strategy is
…using the municipal resolution strategy to build a movement to abolish corporate personhood. “Local resolution campaigns are an opportunity for citizens to speak up and let it be known that we won’t accept the corporate takeover of our government,” said David Cobb, a national spokesperson for Move to Amend. “We urge communities across the country to join the Move to Amend campaign and raise your voices.”
So far the resolution has been passed in many towns and cities, including Los Angeles, Madison Wisconsin, and New York City.
Rather than giving the courthouse people a week’s worth of signatures–if the courthouse is even open on Friday–let’s collect signatures with an eye to presenting them to the Town Council when we propose they pass the resolution. It will also help if we have a good number of supporters there then, so we should plan on doing that several weeks from now.
Here is the Move To Amend press release, the model resolution language, and the text of the proposed amendment.
How about this for our petition:
We, the undersigned, reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, instead believing that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights. Further, we urge the Jackson Town Council to pass the following resolution:
RESOLVED, the People of Jackson, Wyoming, stand with the Move to Amend campaign and communities across the country to defend democracy from the corrupting effects of undue corporate power by amending the United States Constitution to establish that:
1. Only human beings, not corporations, are endowed with constitutional rights, and
2. Money is not speech, and therefore regulating political contributions and spending is not equivalent to limiting political speech.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the People of Jackson, Wyoming hereby instruct our state and federal representatives to enact resolutions and legislation to advance this effort.
To sum up: We ask for volunteers to carry the petition and collect signatures and hand out the one-page press release. On Friday 1/20/2012 we demonstrate in front of the federal courthouse, doing more of the same. Until we’re organized with a contingent to attend a Town Council meeting to present our petition and resolution, we keep collecting signatures. Letters to the Editor would be a plus. As would perhaps manning a table one or two days in front of Whole Foods (if they’re amenable) or other sympathetic businesses. Anyone who wants to help or comment on the petition language, please comment, or email occupant at occupy jackson hole dot com.
I see from the Move To Amend site that Wyoming also has a referendum process. Let’s look at that too.
–Colleen
Update on the Colbert/Cain primary rally in South Carolina today, 1/20/2012:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71735.html
At one point Herman Cain said
““Stephen Colbert asked you to vote for Herman Cain. I’m going to ask you to not vote for Herman Cain and here’s why. I don’t want you to waste your vote. Every vote counts and yours still matters and you still matter. That’s my message.”
He doesn’t seem to understand that a vote for Herman Cain tomorrow is a vote for Stephen Colbert, which is ***a vote for Occupy***.
Why? Stephen Colbert has been waging a brilliant campaign to show how corrupt the campaign finance system is. That’s why he formed a PAC, then a superPAC, then gave the superPAC to Jon Stewart so he could run for President of the United States of South Carolina.
But before his exploratory entry into the SC primary, he tried to *sponsor* the SC primary (the state of SC said it didn’t have the money), and one of his requirements of sponsorship was to include on the primary ballot a nonbinding referendum that would ask voters whether “corporations are people” or “only people are people.”
As a consolation prize when the sponsorship fell through, Public Policy Polling put Colbert in one of its polls about GOP primary contenders (where he outpolled Jon Huntsman), and they also asked the referendum question.
Result: “Only a third of likely voters said they think “corporations are people” compared to two thirds who think that “only people are people.” Further, a majority of supporters of every GOP candidate — including Mitt Romney — say that they believe that “only people are people.”"
http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2012/01/10/public_policy_polling_stephen_colbert_s_c_poll_comedy_central_star_would_beat_jon_huntsman.html?wpisrc=obinsite
Very fitting that the primary should be on the actual Citizens United anniversary.
This is a great idea. I’ll definitely help gathering signatures, manning a table. I like the suggestion of having talking points at each table, maybe also for each person who’s going around with petitions.
I’m fine with the wording of the petition. Unfortunately, can’t make the meeting tonight at Colleen’s but want to be involved.
There is discussion about this in the forum at http://www.occupyjacksonhole.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3
Please participate!
Nothing to add yet, but just wanted to express my support for these wonderful ideas, and my willingness to collect signatures and man tables. Excited to be a part of OJH and the movement as a whole! Proud to know you all. We ARE going to make a difference.
Keep up good work.
This column appeared in the Rawlins Daily Times: Go Montana! Let’s go Wyoming!! http://rawlinstimes.com/articles/2012/01/15/opinion/columns/doc4f07dde75abfb596267291.txt
This ought to be a statewide effort. I’ve been in contact with folks at Occupy Wyoming and Occupy Cheyenne. So even if you don’t live in Jackson, you can participate.
Margaret, we don’t have to wait for the 20th to start collecting signatures. I can post the petition and press release (after they’re approved by a reasonable number of Occupiers) and anyone, including you there in Wamsutter, can talk to people as you go about your daily business, and get sigs.
I don’t know exactly how these things work, but I’m thinking that we should try to separate signatures from different towns, so that all the Jackson/Teton County names will be together for us to present to our Town Council, and all the Wamsutter names would be in a group for you to present to yours (for instance); but then we could send copies of ALL sigs to our state reps when we get to the point of pushing for a state referendum. So there would be a little bit of paper-shuffling for those who are collecting sigs.
It would be great to compile talking points to give to every table, including information from the ABC poll, links to the Bill Moyers program on money in politics: http://billmoyers.com/episode/on-winner-take-all-politics/
Lawrence Lessig’s ideas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eByGFCXHfx4
information about Montana’s recent Supreme Court ruling…(etc.)
I’m sure the Move To Amend website has ideas in their toolkit as well.
Wyoming is the “Equality State,” and our schools observe “Equality Day” instead of “Martin Luther King Day” this week.
Aside from my frowning feelings about that, this being “equality week,” we could talk about the inequality between the 1% and the 99% and how corporations tip the scales in politics. I believe Wyoming people inherently believe in fairness, and this could pass in Jackson Hole town council…putting Wyoming in the national news.
The Wyoming Teacher’s Union faced a Koch brothers ad campaign last January that affected our Wyoming legislature. Bills were on the table that were so awful, I was truly scared about what was going to happen to education in Wyoming. (Met a Wisconsin teacher this summer who told me what happened there, and I told her about our triumph…made her day!) The Wyoming union exposed the ad campaign last January, and I was soooo proud of our legislature for voting these negative proposals down. (Though it was close.) It speaks to Wyoming’s independent cowboy spirit and the power of letter-writing to legislators at the state level.
I could get in touch with some teachers in the Teton County school district to see if they will help man tables. I can’t make promises, but this kind of activism just makes horse sense!!!
I also believe that the diverse concerns in our Jackson Hole Facebook group fall under this umbrella and each can be aided by addressing the concept that “corporations are people” — at least for starters. Let’s come together!
Thanks for offering to help! Hey, folks, Margaret is willing to come all the way from Wamsutter. Can somebody else pitch in to help, especially in finding one or more sites for tables? It will really help raise visibility of our Occupy group, too.
I agree that hardy independent Wyoming folks might be likely to embrace this position. Here’s a good story:
It’s from Overturning Citizens United: A Movement Moment
–Colleen
Thank you so much, Colleen, for your hard work!!
Since the 20th will mark the beginning of the petition signing (more or less), may I propose that we have a gathering of some sort on Friday evening? I could arrive by 7:30 PM and man a table outside of Whole Foods or other locales. What if we had a blitz…tables at more than one location…maybe at Teton Village…at the town square…at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar… Friday night, party atmosphere, sounds like an opportunity to energize ourselves as well as capitalize on what should be a popular idea…Corporations are not people!! I think a lot of Wyoming folks could get behind that idea!