And what about Washington, D.C.? Well, last Monday a few thousand people marched and protested against lobbyists on K Street. The same media that can ignore a half million peace advocates and blow 1,500 teabaggers into an historical movement was perfectly capable of ignoring this effort. And the labor unions that organized it have zero interest in investing in progressive media or in opposing Democrats in elections even if they take their orders from the lobbyists being protested.
Congresswoman Donna Edward's amendment proposal has 24 cosponsors, Senator Dodd's has three, and others, including one just introduced by Kurt Schrader, have none.
Advancing in Congress, on the other hand, is the watered down agenda approved by the man elected to execute the will of Congress but serving as director of its activities. The DISCLOSE Act, sponsored by Congressman Chris Van Hollen and Senator Chuck Schumer, would require that corporations funding our indoctrination identify themselves rather than hiding behind front groups. The bill has just passed the House Administration Committee, upon which development President Obama released this misleading statement: "Today, the House Administration Committee took another important step toward putting in place critical protections to control the flood of special interest money into American elections." That depends on your definition of "control," because the flood would still be permitted. Excluded would be some foreign corporations. And the rest of the deluge would be properly labeled so we knew where it was coming from.
Jerry Ortiz y Pino, a candidate for lieutenant governor in New Mexico, has expressed the approach we ought to be taking as well as anyone:
We are too late to prevent the end of democracy in the United States; it's already happened. Now the task is to recover it, a far more formidable challenge. How we allowed our precious democratic enterprise to get hijacked and morphed into what we have today, a plutocracy masquerading as a democracy, can only be explained by our collective carelessness and inattention.
We literally went asleep at the wheel while the enemies of democracy, the super-rich, stole our inheritance right from under us. So slick was that picking of our pockets that many (perhaps most) Americans still aren't aware that we've been fleeced. But make no mistake: we have been taken to the cleaners, and the final confirming evidence of that con job is the recent mind-numbing Supreme Court decision averring that corporations are people.
As for our political leaders, their woeful weakness under enemy fire could be a training manual for 'How not to protect Democracy'. Those who haven't surrendered completely and thrown-in with the plutocrats have been reduced to an ineffectual chorus of compromisers, intent on 'making the best of a bad situation'. Pitifully few heroes have stood against the stealth conquest.
Ortiz y Pino, like John Bonifaz, pushed hard and early for the necessary impeachment of George W. Bush. There are heroes, including the majority of the American public that polls found in support of that impeachment. They aren't nearly as pitiful as our communications system that fails to tell you about them.
One way that you can make a difference is by raising awareness of the crisis we are in and solidifying support for fixing it at the local or state level. Whether Constitutional amendment(s) -- denying personhood to corporations and speechhood to money -- are passed through Congress and then ratified by the states, or created by a convention and then ratified, the movement that makes it happen will have to be driven at the state level.
So it's excellent news that organizations, towns, cities, and states are passing resolutions in support of such an amendment. Here is a model resolution you can ask your local and state representatives to pass.
Here is one that has already been passed by the state legislatures in Hawaii and Oregon. Here are more resolutions from states including California and Washington. State legislators will have a hard time claiming this does not affect them, given the number of state laws that Citizens United puts at risk. Passing a resolution costs legislators nothing. But resolutions from all 50 states in support of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people could create a new birth of freedom.
Want some inspiration? Watch this new video of Jeffrey Clements and John Bonifaz. Then invite them and others from FreeSpeechforPeople to come speak in your state capital.
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