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On January 20, 2012, at 11:30 a.m., citizens will gather at Pioneer Courthouse Square for a rally and march calling for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which makes clear that corporations are not people and money is not speech.
This is a national day of action just one day before the second anniversary of the infamous Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which held that corporations (as people entitled to the rights of the U.S. Constitution) can spend unregulated and undisclosed sums of money in order to influence elections. The Portland event is one of over 80 rallies at federal courthouses around the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.
Neither the Declaration of Independence, nor the Constitution mentions corporations, which were rare entities at our nation’s founding. However, thanks to decades of rulings by Justices who molded the law to favor elite interests, corporations today are granted rights that empower them to deny citizens the right to full self-governance. Armed with these rights, corporations wield ever-increasing control over jobs, environmental protections, elected officials, even judges and the law.
Yet, corporations are not persons and possess only the privileges citizens and their elected representatives willfully grant them. Move to Amend, supported by hundreds of thousands of people across the county, proposes a Constitutional Amendment that will overturn the Court-created legal doctrines of corporate personhood and “Money Equals Speech.” Occupy the Courts is a manifestation of the frustration of citizens with the increasing corporate control of our government and the momentum building across the country for an amendment that puts the power back in the hands of “We the People.”
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