Liberty Tree is hosting an event this Thursday, March 11, starting at 7 p.m. Eastern, on Zoom and Facebook live featuring various activists weighing in on "Movements at the Millenium." 

Event organizers note, "We often are called to look back to the 1960s for lessons. But what of the 1990s and the movements at the turn of the millennium?" 

It's been 20 years since the Battle of Seattle, and robust campaigns against global corporate rule continue to make impacts and inroads. If we are hoping that 2020 is the start of a period of major change for the better across borders and issues, what can we draw from this history to help make that happen? 

Participants in the conversation will be Bill Fletcher, Jr., Shannon Gleeson, Hillary Lazar, Ben Manski, Suren Moodliar, Jackie Smith, Norman Stockwell, and Lesley Wood in conversation. You can register in advance here.

The speakers will be referencing a recent special issue of the journal Socialism and Democracy focusing on "Movements at the Millenium: Seattle +20".

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. 

Alliance members in Oregon and Massachusetts have been working on ballot questions that take on campaign finance reform and Citizens United, and on Election Day, those efforts paid off.
In Portland, the Alliance for Democracy chapter worked to pass a city charter amendment establishing limits on campaign contributions/expenditures. The Honest Elections charter amendment will add donation limits to the city charter, including a $500 limit on donations from individuals, and a limit of $5,000 on loans from candidates to their own campaigns. It also mandates disclosure by name of funders for campaign ads and other communications, along with the industry they represent.

The measure passed 87% to 12%, with about three-quarters of the votes counted as of Wednesday.

This Portland ballot measure is based on an earlier county-wide ballot question, which passed in 2016 with almost 90% support. Unfortunately, implementation of this measure is currently tied up in the court system, where a judge has ruled that the measure's limit on individual donations is a violation of state protection of free speech.

Oregon is a campaign finance cellar-dweller, second only to Mississippi in terms of regulation, and scoring nearly straight Fs in a 2015 study of state anti-corruption initiatives. (The Koch-funded "Institute for Free Speech," on the other hand, gives Oregon an A for having the "best" system of campaign finance regulation, that is to say none).

As a result, it takes a lot of money to run for office in Oregon, with donations coming mostly from developers, timber companies, and finance. Oregon state legislature candidates raise and spend more money, per capita, than candidates in any other state, except for New Jersey.

In Massachusetts, several Alliance members worked on the “Yes on 2” campaign. Proposed by American Promise, Question 2 supports a federal amendment to overturn Citizens United, and creates a "citizen's commission" to "investigate and report on the effects Citizens United and similar court cases have had on our political discourse."

Massachusetts democracy activists remember how their legislature blocked a Clean Elections initiative, and how the state's public banking study commission was quickly dominated by big banks who decided a public bank was unnecessary. Having already passed more than 200 local resolutions for an amendment, they weren't surprised that Question 2 passed—with with 72% of the vote—but they expect the real campaign will be to get a commission appointed quickly, and have it include activists from grassroots groups. Stay tuned!

In July 4, 1998, Al Krebs, a tireless activist for family farms and sustainable agriculture, and Ronnie Dugger, founder of the Alliance, each read separate but similar documents, titled "A Declaration of Independence from Corporate Rule" at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Al Kreb's version is below.

We should never celebrate our country's history without remembering how much of it is written in innocent blood and lives lost through genocide, slavery, brutal repression here and illegal interventions in other countries. The old lie, that some lives don't matter, constantly crops up in new forms.

But there are events and ideas worth celebrating, too. We share this address with you as part of history that needs to be preserved and shared: a long history of resistance to money power, crony capitalism, and corporate rule. Let's keep making history! 

A 21st Century Populist Declaration of Independence

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for We the People to dissolve the political bonds which have connected us with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitled us, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that the People should declare the causes which impel us to that separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men/women are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights Governments—of the people, by the people and for the people—are instituted by the people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Whenever that Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power in such form as the people shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Whenever a long train of abuses and usurpations are designed to reduce us to an absolute Oligarchy, it is Our right, it is Our duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for our future security.

Our nation is in a crisis. Our Constitution is being trashed, our infrastructure is crumbling, the education of our young neglected, the environment trashed, the lives of young men/women are being wasted in an illegal war, and the welfare of our veterans jettisoned. We are creating enemies all over the world while Our government is using fear to stay in power, enriching itself at the expense of present and future generations.

The Portland OR Alliance for Democracy chapter recently welcomed Ellen Brown, founder and chair of the Public Banking Institute. Ellen participated in a Strike Debt Debtors' Assembly as well as a public talk on how Portland and Oregon would benefit from formation of public banks. In addition, chapter members arranged for her to visit with the Portland City Attorney's office, and to meet with candidates running for city council.  

The Portland chapter has not just been working on public banking. They're organizing to enact a city charter change to end political bribery in city elections.  Using their local initiative process, they are trying to enact limits on political contributions/expenditures and to require that political ads disclose the top five entities paying to run the ad.

In working for these reforms, the chapter is going up against a state Supreme Court that has declared all such limits to be an unconstitutional infringement on individual free speech rights.  Individual is understood to include corporations.  But the proposed charter change would ban all corporate contributions, directly challenging the OR Supreme Court rulings.  

Chapter activists have also begun the process for a state-wide initiative to amend the state constitution to allow limits.  When they are successful, we will have this initiative on the ballot in Nov. 2020. 

Call your state and federal legislators and demand funding for an accurate, comprehensive 2020 census and the removal of the citizenship question.

Last December, the Department of Justice requested addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 Census. They claimed this data was needed to make sure all voting-age citizens are counted under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Yet this question hasn’t been asked since 1950—five years before the Voting Rights Act was passed.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s announcement that the citizenship question would be included lead to a storm of protests and lawsuits by states, cities, and citizen groups. Despite reassurances that people who don't answer the citizenship question will still be counted, the question's inclusion, plus the threat of fines for returning false or incomplete forms, will doubtlessly discourage migrants from responding. In turn this undermines the government’s constitutional responsibility to count every person every 10 years.

In a recent two-hour hearing, legislators emphasized migrants' legitimate fears of deportation could lead to a serious undercount. Other problems with the census include lack of permanent leadership at the Census Bureau and of funding shortfalls, which could also impact a reliable census.

Why do we need an accurate count? Redistricting, based on total resident population, occurs after every census, so it’s important to have accurate numbers of citizens and non-citizens alike. Combine an inaccurate count with gerrymandering and you can deliver a district to one or another major party. Plus, the census determines state government share of federal dollars for vital programs including healthcare, housing, and emergency planning and relief.

Please call your Representatives and Senators to ask that the 2020 Census be fully funded and that the citizenship question be dropped. You can find contact information for the House here and the Senate here.

Tuesday's edition of "Corporations and Democracy" radio was a great, heartening talk with Gar Alperovitz, author, activist, historian and political economist, and co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative. Take an hour to hear about how a new economic system, neither centrally-planned state socialism nor investor-oriented capitalism, is quietly emerging across the US and the world. Coops, worker-owned businesses, public banks, B corporations, and new applications of renewable energy technology are all steps forward to reorienting economic activity toward the good of people and planet. 

You can listen to or download the show from the "Recent Shows" page on this site, or hear previous shows on the Archives page. For more information about the Democracy Collaborative's Next System Project, click here. 

​If July 4th left you hankering after some real democracy, come make the connections, hear the ideas, and share the skills that will invigorate your movement-building at the Democracy Convention III, August 2 – 6, at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis. 

The Alliance for Democracy will be there, organizing the Earth Rights and Global Democracy Conference linking global work to defend Mother Earth and the rights of communities and ecosystems to thrive and survive to the issues important to us in the US, such as: fair trade, water, food and agriculture, climate.

Read the Earth Rights and Global Democracy statement here. AfD’s Co-chair, Nancy Price is organizing a series of panels. Here’s a partial list of Convention presenters; the full program will be posted soon. 

Here’s just a taste of the Earth Rights & Global Democracy panels: the Renegotiating NAFTA panel will add a gender and racial justice analysis; and panels on the false solutions to global warming of cap and trade and carbon tax, stopping GE Eucalyptus forests slated for our southeastern states responsible for the terrible fires in Chile and Portugal, on bottled water,  frac-sand mining and more. 

Ronnie Cummins, International Director of the Organic Consumers Association, will speak on “Connecting the Dots: Bringing the Food, Climate, Natural Health and Democracy Movements Together in a Powerful Force for Revolution.” The great line-up of Convention Plenary speakers will be posted soon. 

Earth Rights and Global Democracy is one of eight distinct, yet interrelated conferences at this third Democracy Convention. You can also connect with Representative Democracy, Racial Justice for Democracy, Peace and Democracy, Media Democracy, Education United for Democracy, Democracy and the Constitution, and Community and Economic Democracy. In addition, two tracks, on Overcoming Oppression, Building an Inclusive Movement, and Skills and Arts provide a toolkit for activists seeking to broaden their allies and impact. 

Register Now: The Democracy Convention website has all the information you need on registration, lodging and meals (including affordable options on campus), and getting to and from Minneapolis. You can also donate or sponsor the convention. 

As conference organizers at the 2013 and 2015 conventions, we are excited to be working again with so many sharp and committed people. Previous conventions were a tremendous coming-together of activists across the issues and the miles. 

We look forward to seeing you again – this time in Minneapolis, August 2 – 6. Look for our table!