May 2011
By What Authority
125 Years of Corporate Personhood is Enough!
125 years, 125,000 signatures
by POCLAD signatories
Dear friend,
In May 1886 United States Supreme Court clerk J.C. Bancroft Davis, former president of the Newburgh and New York Railway Company, inserted a headnote to the United States Reports pertaining to the Court's decision in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company.
Thus with out a formal court ruling, this simple act set a precedent and effectively established corporations as legal persons entitled to the same rights as living, breathing persons under the 14th amendment.
What has followed is 125 years of case law giving corporations Constitutional Rights leading to the destruction of our democracy at the hands of greedy corporations. The most recent, of course, is the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission that opened the floodgates of corporate money in elections. From the environment, energy, and healthcare to jobs, education and the economy, the greed of big multi-national corporations is laying waste to the American dream, and our democracy.
The 125th anniversary of the Santa Clara Railroad case is upon us. As an endorser of Move to Amend, POCLAD hopes you'll mark this anniversary by signing the petition at MovetoAmend.org . Our shared goal is to collect 125,000 signatures for the 125th anniversary of corporate personhood.
We must come together to reclaim our democracy for living, breathing, people by eliminating corporate personhood through Constitutional amendment.
Whatever issue arises, at its root you'll find a corporation standing between "we the people" and the solution. If we are to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and posterity," then we must put an end corporate personhood.
Please sign the Motion to Amend!
Democratically yours,
David Cobb
Greg Coleridge
Mary Zepernick
on behalf of POCLAD.
PS - You can help Move to Amend get to 125,000 signatures. Find out more here!
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