David Cobb, a leading voice in Move To Amend who is involved on the national level, will be speaking this Tuesday, October 28th, 6-7:30 pm, at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church. We hope that you’ll be able to attend to learn how this issue – corporate personhood – intersects with so many different issues confronting us today (from environmental degradation to forfeitures of sovereignty in trade policies to domestic surveillance to entrenched inequality in education to inequality in food accessibility, and much more). I’d also like to ask for your assistance in getting the word out for this upcoming event.

Local and national efforts to pursue moratoriums on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) have been woefully unsuccessful. This is because it is impossible to prevent companies from pursuing commercial objectives which the state has declared a LEGAL USE (state regulates and issues permits for its use). Under administrative law, so long as the permits are administrative complete (meaning that all the “i”s are dotted and the “t”s crossed), there are no legal actions which can be taken to prevent actions which are environmentally irresponsible and unsustainable. Further, under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, corporations have the right to sue for states, counties, and municipalities for the (projected) loss in profits caused by any such interruptions in production.

This is a result of the legal fiction of corporate personhood and of the aggregation and perversion of legal rights which are due citizens under that legal fiction – and it is where your interests intersect with Move To Amend. Move To Amend seeks to make the case that corporations aren’t people and that money isn’t speech.

Discussion Topics:

· History of corporate personhood and the aggregation of legal protections from the Bill of Rights (converting property into a rights-bearing “person”)

· History of social movements in converting people (women & minorities) from property into rights-bearing citizens

· Current context of corporate personhood and its influence on our democracy

· What people can do

Video (David Cobb debating James Bopp, head attorney behind the Citizen’s United decision, at Indiana University, Bloomington, September 10th, 2014 – 90 minutes):

Video (Legalize Democracy – 30 minutes):