PREFACE

This book is a series of essays laying out the case that there is a way to end war by ending the domination of the American government by corporations through a process of passing a constitutional amendment through Congress and ratifying it by the states.

I argue that it is the international corporations with the money to pay for the obscenely expensive elections of our members of Congress that ultimately create the conditions in which war appears to be inevitable. The goal I have in writing this is to convince others that together we can and must restore democracy to America and bring about the change in the human collective consciousness such that war comes to be seen not as inevitable but as unthinkable.


Stop the Madness: The Diary of a Soldier For Peace in the War to Take Back America is my effort to explain my thoughts on the real meaning of America through a look at critical moments in its history. I offer an explanation of that history through a lens of basic psychological and scientific principles. I then use this to describe how I believe America fell from its position of a leader in the advancement of mankind to a place where it is now the chief threat to human existence. 

Throughout the book I emphasize that this is part of a natural process of maturation of a democratic society that I fully expect to grow up and take responsibility for its behavior toward each other and other nations. One of the goals in writing this book is to  present ideas that may help the process accelerate, before the problems the people of the United States and the world desperately need to address become intractable.

For foreign readers who have not lived through the nightmare that has transformed the United States government from a  maturing democracy into a plutocracy, please be patient when reading the earliest essays.  They focus on day to day US political events when the essays were originally written. It was necessary to start at this point to clarify the process by which I arrived at my the conclusion that democracy in the United States and therefor the world is at imminent risk. This is after all  a diary of sorts. 

To all readers: Even if reading about the details of politics  makes your head spin, please read the somewhat lengthy introduction. I draw in part on my personal experiences to illustrate some of the general points I make in trying to make a coherent summary of the state of American democracy and politics. It is my hope that this summary will be of interest to  every reader and useful as a compass by which to see the direction sometimes seemingly disconnected essays are leading.


This book of essays is deliberately written in a nonlinear style that is intended to provide an overview of the thinking that went into my deciding that it was possible to end war in our lifetime and how we might do it. It includes concepts from a wide variety of disciplines that may be tough going to some readers despite my attempts to explain them as simply as I can.

I have added clarifying comments after the mostly short essays that I hope will help explain the more obscure concepts and how they fit into the larger themes of this book. If anyone who begins to read this has difficulty understanding some parts, I hope that they will keep reading, because the main themes are repeatedly woven throughout the book in different contexts and hyperlinks present more background reading.






After describing Soldiers For Peace International and its origins, the essays begin by arguing that the health care “reform” debate  of 2009 was a cynical bait-and-switch engineered from the beginning to bail out a failing medical insurance industry while preserving the privileged position of the pharmaceutical  and corporate health care industries. 


The dramatically escalating costs of the medical insurance industry's product are threatening the continued viability of this  inefficient and unnecessary system of profiteering from the suffering of others. This obliged these industries to approach the federal government with a request for "reform." What they really had in mind was a demand for tax money to prop up their teetering system for a few more years before it inevitably falls under its own dead weight. The cost in human suffering and economic burden is unconscionable.


I would argue that the apparent opposition of the insurance and other industries of the medical-industrial complex were more directed at deceiving the public and jockeying for control of the process than a failure to see that government subsidies and mandated insurance through private insurers were necessary to keep their ineffective and inefficient non-system of health care delivery intact.  


Most Americans on both sides of the issue seem to have been fooled until they saw the final product. Many still do not recognize it for what it is, focusing on apparent benefits of the plan or details of its many failings without getting the overall picture. I have appended my analyses of the true costs of the Democratic bill and the economic benefits of a single payer, Medicare-for-All system at the end of the book.


After reading the following introduction, the reader will understand my position that either major Party dominating our politics in what has been called the two-Party duopoly would have initiated this debate if called upon to so by the power elite that makes these decisions in our name. Either would have responded to the wealthy medical insurance corporations looking for a government bailout for its industry.  The marketing of the bailout would have looked entirely different in the hands of the Republicans, but the outcome would have been substantially the same.

Social responsibility has not been a concern of corporations since the Supreme Court declared them citizens with Constitutional rights and thus beyond the regulations that prevented them from collectively seizing power over the US government. Now that the coup has been accomplished, the question becomes one of whether it is possible to Take Back America for the People. I argue that we can. I believe that the opposition of nearly 80% of self-described conservatives and liberals means that it is inevitable if we promote all Americans coming together in common cause to end this obvious threat to democracy.

Each essay in this book advances the argument, though it is not always obvious how it does so. It may be therefore better to think of it as a nonlinear approach to solving a problem that linear thinkers regard as unsolvable. 


This book was originally written as I was fleshing out my thoughts on what problems we would have to face to unify Americans behind a single proposition that is the core of what I call The Battle Plan to Take Back America in the book. The specifics  of this plan have changed with events, but the general outline is the same. The plan depends  on  the validity of the idea that we can abolish  the Supreme Court doctrine of corporate personhood and thereby regain control of the US government. Once a representative democracy is restored (some would say created for the first time), we can assure that it places the interests of the People over corporate profit, power and control.

The steps involved in solving the problem of war involve coming to a common understanding about our personal responsibility as individuals to each other and society as a whole. I believe that this could lead naturally to a  rational public debate that would result in a more coherent and shared concept of the proper role of government, one that has a proper balance between protecting the rights of individuals and meeting other needs of a society.

I make no apology for the series of assumptions implicit in my arguments. Readers are welcome to disagree with the thoughts I have expressed in each of these essays by posting in the comments section following each essay. I only hope that the reader will be open-minded enough to consider my argument as a whole, because only by having  a dialogue about the central issues that divide citizens of the US  from each other and the rest of the world can we take back control of the American government and establish justice both for ourselves and other nations that its actions affect.

In exploring what is tearing apart the fabric of American society, I attempt to address in the following essays the major issues that perpetuate injustice of all kinds. I argue that just as we are dependent on one another, the solutions to our common problems are dependent on prioritizing and working together to get at the root of the problem, which I regard as corporate personhood. 


We must have a rational dialogue about how to solve the problems  threatening the viability of democracy in America. I argue that these problems  stem from the idea that corporations are people, with the Constitutional right to buy our Senate. The Supreme Court justifies this in the name of exercising "free" speech, which they essentially equate to money. If we can put aside the artificial distinctions which divide us, we  might conclude as a People that the key to restoring democracy to America is the abolition of corporate personhood. 

The most important of the problems caused by the wholesale corruption of government by corporate money are international. Global climate change threatens to produce mass famine, pandemic and the deaths of billions without a coordinated effort to find a way to end war and environmental devastation and to assure that health care is a human right of every citizen of the planet.

We have to look beyond the interests of individual nations  and factions within nations to find a solution that benefits all of us. Because of the universal nature of these issues, I hope that they will be of interest to English-speaking readers around the world, who are encouraged to translate any essays that they find interesting into other languages to distribute as they see fit.

We are all in this world together and our fates interdependent.  I hope that this book will enable the reader to challenge his or her assumptions about the reality of human nature, society and the Universe that we share. If enough of us understand our responsibility to consciously act in full knowledge of the interdependence of all humanity and the natural world, I am convinced that we can yet save ourselves from self-destruction.


The following introduction is my attempt to summarize what I see as the most fundamental problems we must solve to restore democracy in America. It is written in a straightforward style, unlike  many of the essays that follow. 


I hope I have written these essays in an entertaining and emotionally engaging way that will be of interest to most readers.  I have  written them in an allegorical style in an effort to appeal to the widest possible audience. This necessarily means that some concepts will seem trivial to some readers and some may be  difficult to understand to readers new to the issues. I hope that all will find something useful in their own efforts to become part of the change we must create to  save the ourselves from the threats facing human civilization.


The introduction is largely political, in contrast to most of the essays, which are focused on my view of the central problems of individuals, groups and nations that we must consider in building a movement to end war. If the introduction seems pedantic, the casual reader may want to skip it and proceed to the essays at the risk of missing the general scheme of the presentation of  concepts in the book. Reading the introduction may help understanding the book more fully.


  

CHAPTER SIXTY EIGHT, RINGING OUT THE NEW YEAR: ON THE EVE OF CONSTRUCTION

Written by: Rick Staggenborg on 12/30/09

This essay is dedicated to Isaac Newton, who stated that “If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” Only by studying the mistakes and successes of the recent and remote past can we Take Back America, heal the wounds of the Uncivil War and complete the Revolution that so many have died for.

It is the ignorance of our history and arrogance of our politicians that are causing our sons and daughter to pay the ultimate price in far-off lands where we not only have no place being, but where we are sowing the seeds of the destruction of the American experiment in democracy and promoting the goals of the self-deluded Masters of the Universe who would blindly destroy the world and society itself.

I am sure that most of us have figured out by now what a lot of us assumed from the beginning: This Congress would not give us real health care reform because of their dependence on the medical insurance, pharmaceutical and corporate medical care industries for maintaining their positions of misused power. The pundits are increasingly picking up on the themes of corporate dominance of Congress, the Senate in particular and are beginning to recognize the pernicious consequences that this is having on America and the world. The glimmerings of understanding of what needs to be done are becoming apparent to them and the hope for ultimate victory is in sight.

The bright side of this is that the stage is now set to continue our work in educating the people about what happened and the consequences if they do not become involved in the debate and the process of “Becoming the Change” that Obama clearly told us he could not be himself.

This entire book of essays has so far been an effort to do this while this historic process is occurring. We are taking a break over the holidays to recharge our batteries, so let’s use that energy to come back more unified, less naïve, more focused on working together and gathering strength to achieve not only our goal of single payer but a new political order in the US and the world. This is the mission of Soldiers For Peace.

As conservatives and ultra-liberals are beginning to come together to seek real solutions to the planet-threatening problems our Congress and the economic Lilliputians have not yet begun to grapple with, I am ever more confident that our brave heroes fighting to secure oil lines in the Mideast will be home for Christmas next year. Awareness of the magnitude of the task before us is beginning to seep into the general consciousness of the American people, many of whom have been deluded by the corporate media into accepting the myth of American exceptionalism and the nightmare of Empire by those in whom they have put their trust.

The ultimate victory of the Army of the Soldiers For Peace International will be realized only when these ideas become part of the general consciousness. It is only a matter of time. My work has convinced me that there is time enough to fight this battle to the finish and that my faith that good is stronger than evil is justified. So let us drink to the health of our nation and the world. We have earned it. We need to rest now so that we can gather the strength to continue this battle to its ultimate and inevitable conclusion. That is reason enough for me to celebrate.

In the words of Barry McGuire:


The eastern world, it is exploding
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill, but not for votiNG.
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’


But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.


Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away
There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
[Take a look around ya boy, it's bound to scare ya boy]


And you tell me;
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.


Yeah, my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’
I’m sitting here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation.
Handful of senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’


And you tell tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.


Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama
You may leave here for 4 days in space
But when you return, it’s the same old place
The poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead, but don’t leave a trace
Hate your next-door neighbor, but don’t forget to say grace


And… tell me over and over and over and over again, my friend
You don’t believe
We’re on the eve
Of destruction
Mm, no no, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.




Rick Staggenborg, MD


Founder, Soldiers For Peace International


Coos Bay, Oregon

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SIX. CONNECTING THE DOTS

Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on Sep 15, 2010 7:38 AM PDT.

This essay is dedicated to my wife Karen, who has more or less patiently endured my absence during most of the time that I have been writing this book, working around the country to promote a single payer health care system and now to run for the office of US senator. I am so sorry that she was hurt because I felt a moral imperative to respond to the clear threat to human civilization that we are facing. I have had to put aside personal concerns to throw my every effort into the cause of providing our children with a world worth inheriting.

I promise her that things will be different come November, when we will take a well-earned vacation together in Hawai’i and reconnect with each other before I travel to meet friends in Turkey who are supporters of the work of Soldiers For Peace International. I hope that by then I will have news that I will be going to Washington in January, but that is a bridge we will cross together if it appears.

If I have at times seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of intellectual giants I have met along the way, both famous and unknown. To them I owe everything that has helped me along the way to create the vision of a world worth passing along to our children who will be responsible to see that it is preserved for future generations.

What follows is a summary of the themes of this book, which are elaborated on at more length in the commentaries that I have made in this text. I invite interested readers to add their comments online and to become listeners and callers of the web-based talk show SPFI Radio, the voice of Soldiers For Peace International on the worldwide web.

I began writing Stop the Madness on the suggestion of Dr. Ken Rossi, a veteran and an open minded conservative who implored me to put my ideas down for posterity. It took me awhile to get started, but once I did I found it a welcome relief from my job stress as a VA psychiatrist and the rigors of my political work. Because my political work was initially focused on single payer health care advocacy, I began by explaining how recognizing the systematic manipulation of the political process of this “reform” effort was a good way to understand the relentless assault on democracy that has taken place over the last several decades. It was my goal to awaken others to what I had belatedly discovered: the United States has been under fascist rule for decades, since its people turned over the reins of government to corporations.

This counter-Revolution has been led by the Puppetmasters of Congress and the White House, the international corporate terrorists who believe themselves to be Masters of the Universe. These elitists have no respect for the average individual and therefore no respect for democracy. Democracy being necessary for a nation to act responsibly, I have always known that the end of civilization would be near if we did not heed the messages of all the prophets who have warned us when we are one human family whose survival depend on the recognition of our interdependence.

The time has come to abandon self-imposed distinctions and petty differences to restore the natural order of things that we used to take for granted. Together, we can control our individual and collective destinies by working together for peace, justice and freedom for all the Peoples of the world. The success of the mission of Soldiers For Peace International will depend on establishing democracy in America, which will begin when we get corporate money out of elections. This is the only way a People can take down the corporatocracy that aims to  enslave the planet by undermining the gains of the American Revolution.

Democracy depends on equality, yet children of privilege have successfully inculcated the idea in the collective American consciousness that it is natural that some will rule over others as if by divine providence. They believe that Ayn Rand was right when she wrote that humans are by nature competitive and that those who prevail in the vicious struggle for supremacy are worthy of exaltation. This process of unnatural selection has perverted the law of the land into the Law of the Jungle. In their blind faith in the power of the Invisible Hand, they accepted the foolish notion that practicing selfishness would magically produce Paradise on Earth instead of the worldwide fascist threat that we now face.

We can no longer accept the idea that greed and selfishness are noble and good. It is perplexing how religious fundamentalists in the United States have been led like lambs to the slaughter by the promise that they will be rewarded for blind obedience to an ideology at direct odds with the teachings of the man they assume will save them from the consequences of their willful ignorance.

Theirs is the faith that no effort on their part, Jesus will save them from the certain destruction they assume the rest of us alone will face. They feel no responsibility to do as he  said and unite as one to ensure that Armageddon does not occur. I do not believe that they can remain blinded by the hope of the Rapture to save them. As they too fall victim to their own willful ignorance, they will come to understand the hubris of believing that they alone understand God’s will. Like many who have faith but reject religion, I believe in the universal presence of God in dwells in each of us and in the world at large. I have  faith that this will impel us to recognize that each of us is an aspect of God and therefore responsible to love and care for one another.

We cannot be saved by faith alone. Only by our works can we hope to restore the Garden and bring Heaven to Earth as men and women have prayed for since before the Lord’s Prayer was first written. Prophets have come in different times and places to reveal to us the nature of God and reality in terms that the People of those times and places could understand. It is our duty as Deists, atheists or doubters to come together to decide collectively what that message is, for it alone can unlock the secrets that science cannot reveal. The universe operates under probabilistic principles and only by considering this can we divine the truth of life’s mysteries unseen. Those things unseen may be revealed in the patterns of the Universe to those who attend to them.

It is the product of the individual probabilities of events occurring throughout space-time that convinces the rational scientist that God exists. History is a series of improbable events, each leading us toward the destiny that is now before us. Those who do not know how to estimate probabilities are going to be blind to the patterns of world history that have enabled futurists to predict events millennia before they occur. The irrational common man tends to skew his estimates of the probabilities of rare events, ascribing seeming miracles to coincidence. If they were to continue to  have such utter faith in either nihilism or salvation by faith alone they would not contribute to the salvation of Mankind by joining others in the effort. To divorce themselves from the rest of humanity when human civilization itself is threatened with self-destruction would be a betrayal not easily forgiven.

It baffles me still that some atheists continue to fight a lonely battle against injustice when they not only deny the existence of a loving God but have no faith in the essential  goodness of Man.  They have the same belief in the essentially evil nature of man as the fundamentalists they so bitterly oppose. Some, having blinded themselves to the possibility that God is all of us, have abandoned the fight altogether. We cannot stop the imposition of worldwide fascism until we have a working relationship with each other that will bring us ever closer to each other and to the God that is within, beyond and between all of us.

In the immortal words of George Harrison:

We were talking-about the space between us all.
And the people-who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse the truth-then it's far too late-when they pass away.

We were talking-about the love we all could share-
When we find it
To try our best to hold it there-with our love
With our love-we could save the world-if they only knew.

Try to realize it's all within yourself
No-one else can make you change
And to see you're really only very small,
And life flows ON within you and without you.

We were talking-about the love that's gone so cold
And the people who gain the world and lose their soul-
They don't know-they can't see-are you one of them?
When you've seen beyond yourself-then you may find,
peace of mind is waiting there.

And the time will come when you see
we're all one, and life flows on within you and without you.

 

 

Rick Staggenborg, MD

Sawyer Rapids, Oregon.

APPENDIX III. HOW TO HELP ABOLISH CORPORATE PERSONHOOD

As of November 2011, Take Back America for the People is focusing on a project to make support for a constitutional amendment a campaign issue in 2012 and every election cycle until it passes. The Pledge to Amend campaign is a joint venture of our organization and Abolish Corporate Personhood Now.

There are honest members of Congress who are willing to support such an amendment, but they are in a distinct minority. The path to victory is to force them to declare whether they are working for We the People or They the Corporations. When they face challengers who have taken a Pledge to Amend, the choice will be clear to voters.

This is a flyer outlining the way the Pledge to Amend campaign works. You can cut and paste it into a document and use it to help with the campaign in your area until we get a downloadable version available:

 

PLEDGE TO AMEND

                           MAKING CORPORATE PERSONHOOD A CAMPAIGN ISSUE

A PROJECT OF TAKE BACK AMERICA FOR THE PEOPLE

AND ABOLISH CORPORATE PERSONHOOD NOW

http://www.soldiersforpeaceinternational.org/

http://www.abolishcorporatepersonhoodnow.org/

To make politicians accountable, we propose the following:

Ask all members of Congress and congressional candidates to pledge their support for constitutional amendment to abolish all corporate “rights” created under the doctrine of corporate personhood.

HERE IS HOW YOU CAN HELP:

1)  Approach your members of Congress in public and private to ask if they will take the pledge.

2)  Circulate paper petitions calling on them to take the pledge. Let them know they will have your support.

3)  Help educate politicians and voters on the difference between an amendment to strip corporations of “rights” that should belong exclusively to We the People and amendments that would only give Congress the power to regulate what should be illegal: Corporate campaign donations.

4)  Work with local groups to help people understand that all progress toward social justice, environmental responsibility and general prosperity depend on their working to end corporate influence over the US government.

5)  Pass resolutions in your political, social, church or other groups calling on your members of Congress to take the pledge.

         

If you receive a written pledge to amend, please notify us at             staggenborg4senate@hotmail.com. As nonprofit organizations, neither TBA nor ACPN endorse or support any candidates.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q: Wouldn’t any amendment be an improvement?

A: NO! Giving Congress the power to regulate will NOT lead them to cut off the source of their campaign funding. Worse, it will implicitly enshrine corporate personhood in the constitution by acknowledging the “right” of corporations to contribute to campaigns.

Q: What other “rights” would be eliminated?
A:  Corporations could not claim the right to avoid inspections by the FDA, EPA or other agencies charged with protecting the public, among other things. They would still have the privilege of limited liability.

      

       Q: Why should we expect this amendment to pass?

A: By making support for a proper amendment a campaign issue, we can force incumbents and candidates to tell us whether they are working for us or corporations. If they don’t support the amendment we can vote for candidates who will.

       

       Q: Isn’t campaign finance reform enough?

A: The Supreme Court gutted Arizona’s model public financing law using the same twisted “free speech” argument that Citizens United was decided upon.

The only way to effectively introduce campaign finance reform is to abolish corporate personhood. The same amendment can establish the basis for public financing by abolishing all forms of bundled money and placing restrictions on individual donors.

UPDATED LIST OF SUGGESTED ACTIONS:


Ideas for individual and group action:

1) Sign the Move to Amend petition and encourage others to sign it at every event and on Facebook, My Space, etc. You can also start your own petition or cause on these and other sites.

2) Letters to newspapers (mainstream, alternative and student) and phone calls to talk radio shows. 

3) If you want to have maximum effect, help with the Pledge to Amend campaign to make support for a strong amendment a campaign issue in 2012 and beyond. 

-Ask your members of Congress how many hard copy signatures on a petition requesting they introduce an amendment it will take to get them to talk to us about it. Whether they give you a number or not, get out and collect signatures. Then insist they take a pledge to amend.  


-Follow up with letters and phone calls to these politicians who are working for We the People and not solely for corporate donors will show continued support. Examples are Jeff Merkley, Peter DeFazio, Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich and others, ideally including Ron Paul.

Tell them that if they introduce an amendment to abolish corporate personhood that they will be supported by We the People even if targeted by corporate money.

- Encourage supporters of abolition to run for office on a platform based on their pledge to amend. This is a critical part of the effort to make support for the amendment a “litmus test” for all Congressional races.  

-Help pass resolutions at every level of government and in organizations calling on YOUR SPECIFIC MEMBERS OF CONGRESS to introduce or support the strongest possible amendment.

-Show up at town halls in force during campaign season and ask candidates in public whether they will make a pledge to support an amendment to abolish corporate personhood.

4) Promote the idea of tying the abolition message to that of existing groups and movements that you are active in.

5) Organize abolition rallies using these contacts and encourage them to come.

6) Use street theater and alternative theater to dramatically get others thinking about the influence of corporations over our government and our lives.

7) Hold house parties showing The Corporation, Sicko or other movies highlighting the costs of corporate control over our government.

 8) Provide opportunities for experts to give interviews with student newspapers, local NPR, alternative newspapers, internet radio shows and anyone else who will listen.

9) Hole open mike events to which both conservative and liberal groups are specifically invited.

10) Speak at meetings to members of whatever political party, union, church or other group you may belong to about the importance of the issue and what they can do to further the cause. 

11) Arrange for outside speakers to come in to talk to these groups. In Oregon, please contact Rick Staggenborg, MD at staggenborg4senate or 541-217-8044 to schedule speakers. If he cannot be available he will try to arrange to have another speaker participate.

WHATEVER YOU CHOOSE TO DO, PLEASE TRY TO REACH OUT TO THE WIDEST POSSIBLE GROUP OF SUPPORTERS, INCLUDING BOTH LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES.

Passing a constitutional amendment will require the support of all Americans. It is a nonpartisan issue that will determine whether ours will be a government of, by and for the People or one of, by and for corporations.

This means crafting a message that is not only meant to appeal to liberals, but also people who believe in the myth that each of us is supposed to make our way alone in the modern world.

Ideas for messages:

1)   “Corporations are shipping our jobs overseas.”

2) “Congress is not working for We the People but for corporations. Corporations are NOT people.”

3) “This is not an issue only for conservatives or liberals. Abolishing corporate personhood is an AMERICAN issue.”

4)   “If we are building a populist movement, it has to represent ALL Americans.”

5)    “The move to amend the Constitution is the modern abolition movement.”

6)   “The individual can only succeed when corporations are not allowed to use the government for their benefit at the cost of We the People.”

7)   “We can cut taxes and reduce government only by taking away the power of corporations to buy Congress.”

B)   Groups to reach out to:

Note that the principle here is to USE EXISTING GROUPS TO FORM A NETWORK THAT IS PROMOTING YOUR MESSAGE ALONG WITH THEIRS. 

Corporate personhood is THE issue that must be addressed for Congress and the President to act in the interests of We the People rather than their corporate sponsors. 

When you contact these groups, ask them to endorse Move to Amend at the website.

 Examples:

1) Unions and fair trade activists.

2) Americans for Prosperity and other groups that identify with the Tea Party movement.

3) Libertarian and other third Parties.

4) Student Public Interest Research Groups at all universities and colleges.

5) Health care advocacy groups.

6) Antiwar groups.

7) Environmental groups.

8) Any student group.

11) Church socialjustice groups.

12) Existing groups working on the issue in other parts of the state and the nation.  To form a new chapter or affiliate of Move to Amend contact them at movetoamend.org for help.

APPENDIX V: PLAN TO END CORPORATE PLUTOCRACY

Most discussions of how to pass a constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood dismiss what is likely to be the only possible solution. Instead of calling for a constitutional convention, we should be focusing our efforts on getting an amendment introduced into Congress. While a number of prominent amendment advocates regard this as impossible, the idea of calling for a constitutional convention is far less plausible and much more complicated. With the rapid expansion of corporate power in the politics of the United States, we simply do not have the time to spend focusing exclusively on the unlikely goal of getting a constitutional convention.

The assumption behind the skepticism of those who reject the idea of getting an amendment introduced into Congress is that it won’t pass because Congress as a body is too corrupt. This is clearly true, but what has not been widely recognized is that with Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul and many other members of Congress publicly challenging the power of corporations over government, the stage is set for interested members of Congress to introduce the amendment itself. As more come out in favor of such an amendment, the amendment can become a prominent campaign issue that will enable the public to easily discern between candidates wishing to be elected to serve corporate interests and those who intend to work for the citizens who actually elect them.

With nearly 80 percent of both self-identified liberals and conservatives opposed to Citizens United, we can make support for such an amendment a litmus test in every subsequent congressional election where we can find candidates willing to take a pledge to amend, as dozens did in 2010. On May 22 at the Green Festival in Seattle, Kucinich publicly pledged to actively work to get cosponsors in Congress. Americans can help get the amendment on the floor by making their members of Congress know that we will support them if they do. This would not be difficult if efforts are focused on gathering petition signatures and passing resolutions at local and state levels calling on members of Congress to introduce and champion the amendment.

In one Arizona House District a hard working supporter of Move to Amend has single-handedly gathered 2,000 signatures for a petition in favor of the introduction of an amendment abolishing corporate personhood. Paul Winger reports that over 95 percent of those he has approached in his door-to-door effort have been eager to sign the petition. As a member of the National Council of Alliance for Democracy, I have proposed a campaign to solicit endorsements to a pledge to amend from 2012 candidates for Congress. The campaign will be very similar to the one carried out by Public Citizen in 2010, though the wording of the pledge will be different. The Public Citizen campaign resulted in dozens of candidates declaring their support for an amendment that would strip corporations of the “right” to pay for the election campaigns of their favored candidates.

Imagine the difficulty a contender for national office would have convincing voters that they will represent their interests if they oppose the one measure that would assure that they cannot win election by soliciting corporate money. Once the amendment is passed, members of Congress would have no choice but to serve the people because they won’t be able to depend on propaganda campaigns financed by the corporate interests who put our current crop of legislators in office. Thus, a strategy designed to get an amendment introduced and passed in Congress is feasible because it should gain wide support of voters across the political spectrum who recognize that this is not a partisan issue, regardless of how the corporate media spins it. 
 

In contrast, the idea of a constitutional convention is widely opposed by both liberals and conservatives. Both are justly concerned about the results of a convention where a fundamental restructuring of the constitution could conceivably take place.  Coming from fundamentally different perspectives, neither camp would be willing to take the risk that the other side would hold the day in an open convention. The process would also run the risk of being subverted by the same corporate interests that we are trying to challenge. It is hard to imagine that we would do any better selecting representatives for the convention than we do when we select our representatives in Congress. It seems unlikely that in the end there would be many who would want to take that chance. 

The idea of calling for a constitutional convention has one merit, however. It is a way to get students, union members and others who understand the threat to democracy posed by corporate personhood involved in the grassroots educational movement needed to convince our legislators that they have no real choice but to support the amendment if they wish to keep their privileged positions. With tens of thousands of students and union activists on the streets, going door to door and speaking to groups and individuals about the idea of a constitutional convention, the level of public understanding of the need for an amendment could grow exponentially.

There are members of Congress who have shown that they are passionately committed to democracy and to addressing the many critical needs of the nation that their less idealistic colleagues seem willing to ignore or to treat with half-solutions that always seem to benefit their corporate patrons. It is our job to convince them that the only path forward is to challenge their colleagues to choose between the people of the United States and the corporate plutocracy on which both major parties have come to depend for campaign cash.   
 

Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley are two senators who clearly understand the problem. If they were to convince a few other senators and House members to work with Congressmen like Kucinich and Paul that they can break the grip of corporate power over Congress, they could get a bipartisan coalition to introduce the amendment. Working as a group to jointly introduce the amendment would not only make them less easily targeted by corporate-funded attack ads but would demonstrate to voters that this is not a partisan issue but the one problem that needs to for Americans to move forward together. All it would take to succeed is for these members of Congress to have the political courage to put into motion a process that would cost the careers of many of their colleagues who are unwilling to stand up for the people in challenging their corporate patrons.

The problem of course is that even these stalwarts of democracy might balk at the idea of making themselves targets of corporate-funded groups that would surely pour millions into targeted campaigns to defeat them when they run for re-election. That is where the growing coalition of Move to Amend and others trying to get corporate cash out of politics come in. It is the job of these organizations to work together to educate voters that not only is corporate personhood the problem, but that there is a realistic way to end it through the electoral process. It is my hope that if the proposal is approved, Alliance for Democracy will take the next step toward getting an amendment on the floor of Congress by presenting the campaign to the Executive Committee of Move to Amend for their support.

If Move to Amend decides to adopt the strategy, the idea of abolition supporters lobbying Congress should gain widespread traction nationally. They are a coalition of groups championing causes ranging from ending war to establishing environmental and health care justice. The common thread is that each recognizes that the only way to advance the people’s agenda is to end corporate control of government by a constitutional amendment that would end all corporate privileges. All privileges aside from limited liability have been granted by activist Supreme Courts that have consistently favored the interests of corporate power over the needs and desires of the American public. The groups in the coalition know that only way to overrule the Supreme Court is by constitutional amendment.

The differences between the coalition of Move to Amend, which wants to abolish corporate “rights” entirely and groups like Public Citizen which are focusing solely on corporate money in elections are insignificant and in the end irrelevant. It is Congress that will decide the form any amendment takes. If we succeed at forcing the issue, at that point these groups can lobby for whichever type of amendment they favor. By working together these groups and coalitions can raise awareness that this is not just another issue but the only issue on which the people have a fighting chance of being heard.

We are reaching a tipping point where our congressional representatives will have to realize that citizens of the United States are going to hold them accountable for their acquiescence to corporate control of our government. Those who fail to heed the warning will suffer the consequences at the polls.  If progressives and conservatives can work together on the common cause of restoring democracy to America, there is a real chance that we can remove the corporate puppets from Congress. It might just be the first step to ending the partisan politics that masks the fact that both major parties have become corrupted by corporate money.

The coup de grace for corporate rule would be to co-opt the Tea Party by convincing these angry voters that they should be focusing their wrath on corporate control of Congress and not on the illusory “socialist” government they have been trained to fear.   When the issue of what has gone wrong in government is phrased as “corporate welfare” it is possible to persuade those who are looking for real solutions that they have simply misidentified the problem. A unified Right and Left speaking as one on this issue could launch the new American Revolution and end the threat of fascism in the United States once and for all.