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Colbert on Billionaire-Funded Super PACs

And, of course, the trend will forever and ever and ever get worse until we collectively say "Enough" and demand an end to money being treated as "free speech" in our elections via a Constitutional Amendment.

After Cuyahoga council kills campaign finance reform, what’s next?

I provide several reflections in this piece...


After Cuyahoga council kills campaign finance reform, what’s next?

http://clevelandmagazinepolitics.blogspot.com/2013/07/after-cuyahoga-council-kills-campaign.html

Small Business Owners and Corporate "Free Speech"

A whopping 66% of small business owners think Citizens United is bad for small business by giving large corporations  too much freedom to spend money to influence elections. Only 9% felt the reverse.

Small business owners get it: giving mammoth corpses greater "free speech rights" amplifies their voices while drowning out the voice of small business owners -- not to mention the rest of us.

http://mainstreetalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/CitizensUnitedpollreport-Jan-2012.pdf

Reversing Citizens United, and ending never-intended constitutional rights for corporations and the doctrine that money equals speech is one way to expand self governance.

NE Ohioans join movement against idea that the Bill of Rights applies to corporations

Plain Dealer (Cleveland) / July 9, 2013

Letter to the Editor

http://blog.cleveland.com/letters/2013/07/ne_ohioans_join_movement_again.html

While many Northeast Ohioans celebrated the Fourth of July holiday week with picnics and parades, citizens in Mentor, Lakewood and Cleveland Heights celebrated by launching or completing citizen initiative petition campaigns declaring their independence from corporate rule and big money in politics.

The three citizen initiatives are part of the Move to Amend campaign (movetoamend.org), a national coalition that's coordinated the passage of 400 resolutions and citizen initiatives asserting that only human beings, not corporations, possess constitutional rights and that money is not speech. Brecksville and Newburgh Heights voters passed similar ballot measures last November, while city councils in Athens, Oberlin, Fremont and Barberton have enacted similar resolutions.

Ohioans are doing our part to support this growing movement to end the bizarre legal doctrines that the Bill of Rights apply to corporations and that political money is equivalent to political speech. Many of the political and economic problems we face are at their root problems of corporations and/or the wealthy few having greater power and rights than the vast majority of We the People.

While parades and picnics are fine ways to celebrate our independence, (re)claiming the authority to govern ourselves free from the wealthy few and corporations is even better.

Greg Coleridge, Cleveland Heights

Coleridge is director of the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee and coordinator for Ohio Move to Amend.

Seeking open discussion

From the Akron Beacon Journal
July 4, 2013
http://www.ohio.com/news/seeking-open-discussion-1.410657


Social change
a group effort

Name: Greg Coleridge.
Age: 53.
Hometown: Cleveland Heights.

Role: Director of the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Cuyahoga Falls, which often arranges public hearings, protests and educational events on political issues such as the federal budget and campaign finance reform.

“I have been inspired by a lot of people who have come before me. ... They are committed to bringing about change from the bottom up. Significant social change in this country has always occurred via social movements.”

“With the Fourth of July, independence wasn’t gathered from the top. It was struggling for improvements for liberty, for sovereignty, the wider notion of ‘We the people’ to be sovereign. If it really means something, we have to make sure that our people in office, our Constitution, allow it to happen. The only way that is assured is people at the grass roots making sure demo­cracy is a verb and not a noun.”

The System Isn't Broken, It's Fixed

by Greg Coleridge
University of Toledo Law Review, Spring 2013

A description of the problems connected to the existence of corporate rights and large political contributions from a wealthy few and why an amendment to the U.S. Constitution declaring that only human beings, not corporations, possess constitutional rights and that money is not speech would expand democracy.

http://www.afsc.org/document/system-isnt-broken-its-fixed