Town Hall Notes: Move to Amend (Corporations are not People and Money is not Speech)

[Barry]

[These are notes from one of the break out groups at the January 9th, 2012 Occupy Sonoma County Town Hall meeting in Sebastopol. You are welcome to reply publicly or contact a group representative by emailing the contact listing below rather than Reply Privately. Thanks! -Barry]

Topic: Move to Amend

Around 25 people engaged in our discussion about Move to Amend-The Coalition to end Corporate Personhood through a Constitutional Amendment establishing that Corporations are not People and Money is not Speech.

People participated because they recognize that this is a foundational issue that must be resolved in order for a host of other problems to be solved. It is a fundamental way to confront corporate power in the area of politics.

We discussed some of the history but concentrated our attention on what is happening now and going forward.
There is a rally on January 20th in San Francisco on the second anniversary of the Citizens United decision that extended corporate rights even further and gave corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.
The rally will begin at noon with a march from the Civic Center Bart Station to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals at 7th and Mission. There is car-pool information at www.osr.ga.net and Golden Gate Transit has buses to the city as well:
https://goldengatetransit.org/schedu.../route_101.php

The ongoing strategy is to pass ballot resolutions in as many cities, towns and counties as possible, building to an binding initiative in 2014 calling for a state convention to propose this amendment.

Occupy Santa Rosa is working in collaboration with Move to Amend. There are meetings of this group every Thursday at 5:00-6:30pm at the Peace and Justice Center. MTA also has a regular meeting on the first Saturday of each month at the PJC at 10:00am. Em

Submitted by Abraham Entin - [email protected]