Port Townsend – Tonight a crowd of about 100 listened to the very animated Move to Amend spokesman David Cobb discuss the movement to amend the Constitution to overturn the misguided Supreme Court decisions allowing corporations to be considered people and that money equals free speech. What has this got to do with Olympic Peninsula environmental issues? Well, it’s pretty simple. This ruling has put corporations in the driver seat of all real decisions regarding the environment. Since the ruling,a corporation has just as much rights as a human being, to exploit our limited resources. But far more resources to bring to bear solely for the purpose of making profits for shareholders. And to spend as much money as needed to elect people to do their bidding. Think about that a minute. Corporations do not breath air, but they pollute it. They excrete waste but it isn’t often processed to the same standards as ours is. They exist only as a legal figment of our imagination, because we willed them into existence with laws. Sort of like Frankenstein? And they are severely affecting our ability to continue to survive as a species. Sounds like aliens! They are not recognized in the Constitution, and in fact, were extremely limited by our founding fathers. As Cobb pointed out, the only tea destroyed at the original Tea Party, was corporate tea, of the East Indian Company (a good place to find some of this info is at http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-boston-tea-party.
So the notion is that the people who are supposed to be in charge of not only this democracy, but this environment, need to take back the ability to be considered the only rulers of our government.
Now some of you might argue that it’s “too hard’ and that what the Supreme Court says, goes. But as Cobb pointed out tonight, it’s not that unusual. Once the Supreme Court thought that slavery was ok. And that women were legally chattel of men. Those antiquated notions of past Supreme Courts who were out of touch with the people governing the country were eventually overturned. We can do this, because it’s been done before.
Mr. Cobb is headed around Washington on a speaking tour, including Seattle, Olympia, Bellingham, Spokane and other stops. What I would ask of any of you reading this is to check out the web site and read up on what they are trying to do. The City Council of Port Townsend and the Washington State Democrats have already passed resolutions supporting an amendment, along with many other groups (see the list here https://movetoamend.org/resolutions-map).
Once you have read up on them, go hear him speak if you can. If you can’t the web site has lots of videos and info.
The Move to Amend has gone from 5 people in a living room in 2009 to support from hundreds of organzations and hundreds of thousands of people. This can succeed.
So if you are interested in legally protecting our rights as citizens to run this country, and decide the laws that protect our environment, see about supporting this movement. Or at least learn more. That’s something any of us, regardless of political affiliation, can get behind. It’s all part of the way forward to a sustainable planet. Not a lot of time left to put all the pieces in place to make that happen.
Funny how it didn’t appear that neither the Leader or the Peninsula Daily News was covering this.