On today's edition of "Corporations and Democracy" radio, hosts Annie Esposito and Steve Scalmanini explore "Will New Supreme Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett Become the Most Radical Right-Wing Member of the Supreme Court" with guest Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and former president of the National Lawyers Guild.

In the second half of the program, Annie and Steve welcome Harvey Wasserman, a long-time writer and radio host, for a take on "The Integrity of the Presidential Election."

"Corporations and Democracy" airs from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. [Pacific Time] on Mendocino and Ukiah public radio stations KZYX & Z, 90.7, 91.5, and 88.3 FM, or you can listen live at the station website, www.kzyx.org. 

Hopefully by now you have a plan to vote. Maybe you've already cast a mail-in or drop-off ballot, or taken advantage of early voting, along with more than 60 million Americans so far.

Now do you have a plan for the day after election day?

President Trump has repeatedly dodged questions about whether or not he'll leave office if he loses the election, all the while making false claims about the security of voting by mail. Contentious elections over issues that shape the soul of the nation are not a new thing, but what's new is a president positioning himself to resist the peaceful transfer of power by alleging that votes have been miscounted or have been fraudulently cast. 

In response, Protect the Results have called for demonstrations the day after the election, to "honor the valid results of the 2020 election, ensure that every vote is counted, and...demand that the losing candidate put their ego aside and concede for the good of our country." 

As of this past weekend, more than 245 events have already been organized around the country, timed to begin as early as November 4. If you would like to participate, we encourage you to sign up for a local event online. Being on the list ensures that the organizers can reach you with information, and helps them with planning.  

Twenty years ago we saw the Supreme Court put a premature halt to ballot counting in order to hand the election to George W. Bush. Four years later, Alliance activists had enough concerns about the conduct of the Ohio Secretary of State to start the Ohio Honest Election Campaign, and challenge the results based on allegations of planned voter suppression in mostly Black, heavily Democratic precincts. Our concerns about voter suppression and the accuracy of electronic voting machines go back a long way. But to campaign on "If I lose it's rigged" is something new. 

We hope that regardless of party you'll take a stand. Make plans to come out for the promise of democracy on November 4th and be prepared to stay out for as long as it takes to know for sure who won the 2020 presidential election. 

​Alliance co-chair David Delk has written a great letter to the editor in support of public banking, looking to the success of the public Bank of North Dakota in making Paycheck Protection Program loans to struggling businesses in that state.

Economic forecasts predict long-term unemployment and business closures as the result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Until there's a widely available and safe vaccine, there will be no hoped-for "V-shaped" recovery. In fact, what we have seen so far is the largest corporations getting bigger and the rich getting richer, as they take over market and services from smaller and locally-owned retailers, restaurants, and service providers.

As financial institutions committed to putting the public good first, public banks would be a key component of a broad economic recovery, if there were more of them! Fortunately there are active campaigns to establish public banks in cities and states across the US. The Massachusetts and Oregon campaigns are Alliance-sponsored projects.

by David Delk
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Portland Public Banking Alliance is moving forward with a dual focused plan to advance creation of a Portland (OR) municipal public bank while at the same time beginning the process for a state-wide initiative campaign to amend the state constitution to allow formation of a state public bank.
 
Language in the Oregon state constitution has been interpreted to prohibit such a bank. We are working on the initiative language now with a view to getting this on the ballot in November 2022.
 
In the city of Portland we have identified several candidates running for Mayor and City Council positions who support a municipal bank formation. Happily those candidates are in a strong position to join the council next year to give us a majority of council members, and a likely strong partner voice in the Oregon legislature.
 
Organizing at the state level continues as we need to change state law to facilitate municipal bank formation. While the state constitution is said to prohibit a state public bank, no such language exists regarding municipal bank formation. But a couple of changes need to be made to state law to ease the path to achieving that goal. We continue our outreach to current members of the Oregon legislature as well as candidates running for those positions. And we will reintroduce the Municipal Banks Bill in the new legislative session.

by Barbara Clancy

The Massachusetts Public Banking campaign, a sponsored project of Alliance for Democracy, is organizing for a 2021 refiling of our bill to create a public bank to fund municipal infrastructure projects. We are also assessing potential changes to the bill to help the state build a more just and resilient economy following the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
Our steering committee is looking at how to broadly define infrastructure in order to win more municipal and public support, as well as considering whether the bank should be empowered to lend directly to small businesses as well as cities and towns. Steering committee members are also very aware that the economic crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic could easily be a precursor for more long-lasting disruption caused by climate collapse. That realization makes our work all the more urgent.

David Delk has given this talk on Citizens United v. FEC to several groups in Oregon. In it, he explains the need for an amendment to the Constitution saying that its rights belong to people, not corporations, and that governments must regulate campaign finance, and gives a call to action to support a Senate version of HJR48, the We the People Amendment.

My topic today is Deepening Democracy.
 
You might expect that I will talk about how to get out the vote, how to get rid of the Electoral College, how we need to reinstate the Voting Rights Act of 1964 which the Supreme Court punched a big hole in recently.  Or maybe about, here in Oregon especially, how to control the flow of unlimited money into the political process, specifically by supporting the legislative referral to the Nov 2020 ballot amending the OR constitution to allow limits on political campaign contributions in Oregon.   We all need to support this referral in our communities.
 
But instead I want to talk about Citizen United, because Jan 21st is the 10 anniversary of that awful decision.  It struck yet another blow against democracy by allowing even more special interest corporate money into the politics system, swamping the voices of ordinary people like you and I.
I want to talk about corporate personhood and the court system’s granting of human rights to corporations. Court-created corporate personhood has given the rights and privileges of human beings to corporations while removing them from the duties and obligation of being our servants.   

In 2013, Dave Lewit, active with the Massachusetts Public Banking working group and a former Alliance chapter coordinator, looked at the aftermath of the "Great Recession" and what organizations and theorists were proposing to address systemic problems with our global and national financial systems. 

He wrote this article, which was first published in Empirical magazine. It looks at the link between money and rebellion, and some of the groundbreaking changes advocated by those working to democratize finance and money, including public banks, unemployed worker co-op formation, government-created credit bypassing private banks, and a trillion-dollar coin to jump start the economy and shrink public debt. Just as in 2013, it's time for popular education to lay out these issues and solutions. 

​Public banking activists in California and across the country are celebrating the passage of AB 857, authorizing California cities, counties, and the state to create their own public banks. The bill was signed into law in October by Governor Gavin Newsom after being filed at the start of the session by Assembly members David Chiu and Miguel Santiago.  But the bill’s filing was preceded by years of city-level advocacy, with local public bank groups in Los Angeles, Oakland, Humboldt County, and San Francisco, among others. These groups worked with city councils and county government and built connections across issues to bring a diverse coalition together in support of the bill once it was filed.
 
With San Francisco and Los Angeles both working on filing bank plans under the new bill, look for these cities to join North Dakota and American Samoa, as well as dozens of other countries where public banks are established, in being able to provide non-profit, transparent, accountable and affordable finances for public purposes—putting public money to work for the common good, rather than Wall Street profits.
 
Alliance Co-chair Nancy Price was one of dozens of CA Public Banking Alliance campaigners who met with Assembly and Senate committee members in the spring and early summer to help shepherd the bill through several committee hearings and votes, and to help fend off unfriendly amendments. “The combined efforts of Coalition members and endorsers of this bill, as well as calls to the legislature and committee members and in-district visits led to success,” she said. “And this California win will give a huge push to Alliance sponsored campaigns” for public banks, currently underway in Massachusetts and Portland OR.

At a time when, across the country, communities are told to cut back on water usage to protect the environment while bottled water corporations pump water for their own profit, the people of a small town in southwest Maine have taken a large step toward local control and long term protection of water.
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At their August 20 town meeting, Brownfield residents voted 136-17 to enact a new “Town of Brownfield ME Water Extraction Ordinance.” The ordinance puts limits on how much groundwater can be pumped from local wells. It also ensures the town can stop water extraction if testing demonstrates that groundwater levels are falling. In addition, the ordinance also bars large-scale extraction for bottling and sale, and puts controls on water-related truck traffic.

Voters in Edison NJ have overwhelmingly rejected their mayor's plan to turn over the township's wastewater system, and part of its water system, to a joint venture between two corporations.

SUEZ North America, a private water utility company, and KKR, an equity firm, would have operated the facilities under the name Edison Environmental Partners, and leased the equipment from the town. Instead, following a landslide "no" on the proposal in a special election, the township will create a water department and beef up its existing sewer department to do maintenance and repair.

The election was the result of a grassroots petition drive and local organizing over most of the past year. While SUEZ and KKR modified their proposals in response to opposition by the community, cutting the length of the contract from 40 to 25 years and offering money to install air conditioning in township schools, Edison residents held their ground. In June, nearly 5,000 petitions were received by the township council asking that an ordinance be introduced to require Edison to permanently own and operate the sewer and water systems that were to be turned over to SUEZ and KKR. In response, SUEZ and KKR sent out investigators who posed as representatives of the "Edison Utility Improvement Program," showing up at the homes of petition signers, reportedly inquiring about whether they signed the petition and why. 

Water privatization, whether of resources or infrastructure, is not the answer. Edison needed only to look to Hoboken to see a pattern of indifference from water profiteers to real concerns about service and safety of the public water supply.

The Alliance for Democracy worked with residents in Lawrence MA, many years ago to prevent the private takeover of their municipally-managed sanitation system, and from our support of local rights-of-nature ordinances to local control of producer to consumer food sales, we are big fans of keeping vital systems under the public's oversight. We hope that Edison residents remain involved in setting up the new water department and that this example of democratically-determined municipal control of water is an inspiration to other communities looking to take back control of their water and sanitation systems.