[GPCA Updates] GP RELEASE Greens: Citizens United ruling will make Dem & Repub parties subsidiaries of top corporations; amendment needed to deny corporate 'personhood'

[Green Party of California Updates]

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.gp.org

For Immediate Release:
Monday, January 25, 2010



Greens: The Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling will make the
Democratic and Republican parties into subsidiaries of top
corporations

• Greens urge a new constitutional amendment affirming that 'We the
People' means humans, not corporations

• Green Party Speakers Bureau: Greens available to speak on democracy,
electoral reforms, and corporate power:
http://www.gp.org/speakers/speakers-democratic.php /
http://www.gp.org/speakers/speakers-corporate.php


WASHINGTON, DC -- The Supreme Court's 5-4 Citizens United v. FEC
ruling will turn national, state, and local elections into a corporate
power game, said Green Party leaders in reaction to the decision
handed down on Thursday.

Greens predict that the decision, which strikes down laws limiting the
use of corporate money for campaign advertising, will have extremely
damaging consequences for democratic elections and for the existence
of the US as a republic.  The Green Party accepts no corporate funding
and advocates clean elections, free of the money and influence of
corporations.

Many Greens are supporting Move To Amend (http://www.movetoamend.org),
which, like the Green Party, asserts that human beings, not
corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights; that
money is not speech; and that the right to vote and have one's vote
counted must be guaranteed.  Move To Amend demands a constitutional
amendment enacting these principles.

Quotes by Green Party leaders:

• Jody Grage, treasurer of the Green Party of the United States: "The
decision will cement the Democratic and Republican parties' status as
subsidiaries of Wall Street, oil companies, defense contractors,
insurance firms, media conglomerates, and other top corporations.  It
cancels the idea that candidates run for public office to serve the
public interest.  The ruling will help block government measures to
curb global warming, regulation of financial firms, health care
reform, consumer rights, and all other protections for 'We the People'
against corporate power."

• Sanda Everette, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States:
"Thanks to the Court's ruling, we'll see a flood of election season
ads promoting corporate-sponsored candidates, overwhelming those who
would serve the interests of the public instead of the demands of
lobbyists.  The ruling also frees unions from campaign advertising
restrictions, but unions don't have the economic resources and clout
of major corporations.  The ruling especially hurts the ability of
parties that don't accept corporate contributions, like the Green
Party, to compete."  (Ms. Everette is working with other democracy
activists to pass the California Fair Elections Act
(http://www.yesfairelections.org); such efforts are threatened by the
Citizens United ruling.)

• Rich Whitney, 2010 Green candidate for Governor of Illinois
(http://www.whitneyforgov.org): "In a transparently political
decision, a majority of the US Supreme Court overturned its own recent
precedent and paid tribute to the giant corporate interests that
already wield tremendous power over our political process and
political speech.  Drawing upon a much older precedent -- the legal
fiction of corporate 'personhood' that it created in 1886 – the Court
determined that these contrived 'rights' trump the public interest in
having genuinely representative government....  In the face of this
devastating threat to what remains of democratic process in our
country, I, along with my fellow Green Party candidates, now present
an even clearer choice to voters.  We remain the Party that stands on
principle, the Party that does not accept, and whose candidates do not
accept, corporate money.  We are the Party that is serious about
establishing government of, by and for the people."  ("How We Can
Trump the Supreme Court and End Corporate Domination of Government,"
http://www.whitneyforgov.org/joomla/index.php)

• Farheen Hakeem, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States:
"This is a civil rights issue.  The legal idea of 'personhood' for
corporations was introduced after the Civil War and passage of the
14th Amendment, which was intended to protect freed slaves.  But
around the same time that Jim Crow laws were enacted, the protections
of the 14th Amendment were in effect transferred from Black Americans
to corporations in a series of landmark Supreme Court decisions
beginning with Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad in
1886.  These decisions helped set off the Robber Baron Era of
unrestrained corporate power, until campaign financing laws and other
restraints on corporate power were passed.  The Citizens United ruling
strikes down those restrictions and puts America in danger of a new
Robber Baron Era.  Restoring democracy and the idea that
constitutional rights should only apply to humans will now require a
citizens' effort as strong as the Civil Rights Movement."

• David Cobb, 2004 Green Party nominee for President and a member of
Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County (http://www.duhc.org):  "We
need publicly financed elections, we need laws requiring a majority of
shareholders to approve corporate political contributions.  But even
if every one of those laws passed, it would not be enough.  The Court
relied on the illegitimate legal doctrine of 'corporate personhood' in
order to justify this profoundly undemocratic decision.  The Court has
literally legalized corporate bribery of our elected officials.  It’s
time to amend the US Constitution to make it clear that only human
beings can claim to be 'persons' with constitutional rights."

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, in his dissent to Citizens
United, wrote "[C]orporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no
feelings, no thoughts, no desires....  [T]hey are not themselves
members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was
established."
(http://www.leagle.com/unsecure/page.htm?shortname=citizens_united_v_fec_stevens)


MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
• Green candidate database and campaign information:
http://www.gp.org/elections.shtml
• Green Party News Center http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml
• Green Party Speakers Bureau http://www.gp.org/speakers
• Green Party ballot access page http://www.gp.org/committees/ballot
• Green Party Livestream Channel http://www.livestream.com/greenpartyus

Green Pages: The official publication of record of the Green Party of
the United States
Fall 2009 issue now online
http://gp.org/greenpages-blog


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