Move to Amend Tampa Bay

MOVE TO AMEND TAMPA BAY'S PETITION to City Council Members

2012-02-17T16:37:00.003-05:00

Greetings,

I just signed the following petition addressed to: TAMPA CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS

----------------
Call on Congress to abolish CORPORATE PERSONHOOD

We are petitioning the Tampa City Council Members for a local resolution that calls on Congress to amend the Constitution to clearly establish that only living persons -- not corporations -- are endowed with constitutional rights and that money is not the same as free speech. If this resolution is passed, Tampa will be one of the first major cities in the U.S. to call for an end to all corporate constitutional rights.

Please join me in signing this and spread the word!

http://www.change.org/petitions/move-to-amend-tampa-bays-local-resolution
----------------

Sincerely,

--
Anita Stewart
Hillsborough County Soil and Water Conservation Board, Seat 5
http://www.hillsboroughcounty.org/soilwater/
http://www.anitastewartsoilandwater.com
http://naturepictures.ning.com
http://floridanaturephotos.tumblr.com
http://www.facebook.com/AnitaSoilandWater
http://www.facebook.com/anitastewart
http://www.facebook.com/anitamstewart
http://www.linkedin.com/in/anitastewart
http://www.twitter.com/anitastewart
***
End Corporate Rule. Legalize Democracy. Move to Amend.
http://www.movetoamend.org

MOVE TO AMEND TAMPA BAY'S LOCAL RESOLUTION-SIGN THIS AND PASS IT ON!

2012-02-17T14:35:00.001-05:00

Change.org|Start an Online Petition »

Occupy The Courts DC, 1-20-12 - The "Supremes" Song & Dance

2012-02-01T09:15:00.000-05:00

Business and government

2012-01-27T07:22:00.000-05:00

Bill Moyers on CORPORATE PERSONHOOD!

2012-01-25T14:42:00.001-05:00

Ask Bill: How can ordinary people help to overturn or nullify the Citizen United Decision? from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Move to Amend - Supreme Court

2012-01-25T01:55:00.000-05:00

Mark Adams with Move to Amend calls on ballot count transparency: WMNF News

2012-01-22T10:12:00.000-05:00

OCCUPY THE COURTS in TAMPA on JAN 20TH, 2012 FROM THE SOUTH TAMPA PATCH (W/ VIDEO)

2012-01-21T12:09:00.000-05:00

http://southtampa.patch.com/articles/video-occupy-the-courts#video-8939861.

FROM SOUTH TAMPA PATCH from yesterday's (1/20/12) OCCUPY THE COURTS action in downtown Tampa.

David Cobb-MOVE TO AMEND in Tampa!

2011-12-10T14:42:00.007-05:00

DAVID COBB, NATIONAL SPOKESPERSON FOR MOVE TO AMEND SPEAKS ON CORPORATE PERSONHOOD!

http://www.wmnf.org/news_stories/david-cobb-tells-tampa-residents-to-move-to-amend-constitution-to-outlaw-corporate-personhood

This event took place at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tampa on December 9th, 2011.

HALLELUJAH CORPORATIONS

2011-12-08T15:17:00.002-05:00

OCCUPY THE COURTS in TAMPA on JAN 20TH, 2012!

2011-12-06T09:33:00.002-05:00

Call to Action

http://movetoamend.org/OccupyTheCourts

Inspired by our friends at Occupy Wall Street, and Dr. Cornel West, Move To Amend is planning bold action to mark the second anniversary of the infamous Citizens United v. FEC decision!

Occupy the Courts will be a one day occupation of Federal courthouses across the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Friday January 20, 2012.

Move to Amend volunteers across the USA will lead the charge on the judiciary which created — and continues to expand — corporate personhood rights.

Americans across the country are on the march, and they are marching OUR way. They carry signs that say, “Corporations are NOT people! Money is NOT Speech!” And they are chanting those truths at the top of their lungs! The time has come to make these truths evident to the courts.

➤➤ Join us Friday, January 20, 2012 at a Federal Court building near you!

TAMPA'S EVENT ON FACEBOOK:

http://www.facebook.com/events/283957691647268/

FLYERS FOR FLORIDA MOVE TO AMEND TOUR WITH DAVID COBB

2011-11-06T13:50:00.017-05:00

The TRAINING EVENT for Dec 10th HAS BEEN CANCELLED--the event for the 9th noted below on the flyer is still happening!

____________________________________________________________

RSVP AT THE FACEBOOK EVENT--CLICK HERE!

SEE THE MEETUP--CLICK HERE!

____________________________________________________________

SEE THIS FLYER FOR OTHER LOCATIONS THROUGHOUT

LINK TO CALENDAR: CLICK HERE!

DAVID COBB SPEAKS TO CENK UYGUR @ Occupy Oakland: Weighing another proposed amendment limiting corporate donations

2011-11-06T12:34:00.000-05:00

WATCH THIS VIDEO, THEN SHARE IT!
http://current.com/shows/the-young-turks/videos/occupy-oakland-weighing-another-proposed-amendment-limiting-corporate-donations

Cenk interviews David Cobb, Move To Amend spokesperson and former Green Party presidential candidate in 2004, during Occupy Oakland. Cobb reveals Move to Amend’s plan to end corporate personhood with their own constitutional amendment proposal.

MOVE TO AMEND TAMPA BAY (SECOND MEETING) Oct 20, 2011

2011-10-18T22:09:00.004-04:00

MEETUP LINK: http://www.meetup.com/MOVETOAMENDTAMPABAY/events/34216942

FACEBOOK LINK: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=111830802257365

Event is at 7PM at Sacred Grounds, 4819 E. Busch Blvd in Tampa.

**(We have the Sacred Grounds space for the whole night so we can speak freely-per Karen the owner)

***Our homework from the first meeting is to look over the site and educate ourselves on the difference between non binding resolutions and ballot initiatives. Please come to the next meeting with ideas about why you would rather work on one than the other.

CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE AND $$$ IS NOT FREE SPEECH!

MORE:
On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. Human beings are people; corporations are legal fictions. The Supreme Court is misguided in principle, and wrong on the law. In a democracy, the people rule.

MISSION:
We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:
* Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
* Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.
* Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate "preemption" actions by global, national, and state governments.

OTHER SITES:

http://www.movetoamend.org/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/MovetoAmendTampaBay
http://www.facebook.com/MovetoAmendFlorida

***************************

Event is @ Sacred Grounds in Tampa @ 7PM.
http://www.sacredgroundstampa.com/

THIS EVENT IS FREE. However, we will happily accept donations and pass the hat to cover the cost of copies and the Meetup monthly charge.

***Members of ALL political parties and persuasions are encouraged to attend. This is NOT a party issue and it definitely affects us ALL!

This will be the 2ND meeting and we are shooting for regular meetings on the 3rd Thursday of every month. We will discuss CORPORATE PERSONHOOD, the MOVE TO AMEND website, paperwork, resources and tools on that site, flyers, the petition and ideas for tabling and community outreach. Also, we will knock around some ideas on how we can begin a community initiative to get a local resolution made into law!

***Those that attended last time were asked to do homework. Researching the site and becoming knowledgeable on the differences between a non binding resolution or a ballot initiative. We can discuss this and decide what we are going to do and what we would support as a group.

If you need more info or if you would like to facilitate one of our future meetings, email anitamstewart@yahoo.com (Please put MOVE TO AMEND in caps on the subject line!)

“Today the business once transacted by individuals in every community is in the control of corporations, and many of the men who once conducted an independent business are gathered into the organization, and all personal identity, and all individualities lost. Each man has become a mere cog in one of the wheels of a complicated mechanism. It is the business of the corporations to get money. It exacts but one thing of its employees: Obedience to orders. It cares not about their relations to the community, the church, society, or the family. It wants full hours and faithful service, and when they die, wear out or are discharged, it quickly replaces them with new material.

The corporation is a machine for making money, but it reduces men to the insignificance of mere numerical figures, as certainly as the private ranks of the regular army."

~ Fighting Bob La Follette, speech on the Dangers Threatening Representative Government, Mineral Point, Wisconsin, July 4, 1897

LATEST NEWS!

2011-09-29T20:47:00.005-04:00

The national campaign to Abolish Corporate Personhood and Defend Democracy.
Sign the Petition: http://MoveToAmend.org/motion-to-amend
* * *
Protecting and Defending our Democracy...
Dear friend,
Our elected officials appear to be more interested in making political points
than they are in making good policy. The policy they do create clearly benefits
corporate America more than it benefits the American people, if it benefits us at all.
With this kind of dynamic at work, some may think that we can’t mount a successful
strategy against the powerful forces at play, but they would be very wrong.
After the economic collapse of 2008 and the ensuing “great recession,” Americans
are beginning to understand the deleterious effects on our democracy of corporate
coziness with our lawmakers.
Ordinary Americans are rising up and doing what our elected representatives refuse
to do--they are protecting and defending our democracy:

In Montana in August, the Missoula City Council voted to place a referendum
on the 2011 ballot that urges federal and state lawmakers to amend the U.S.
Constitution "to clearly state that corporations are not human beings and do
not have the same rights as citizens."

In September in Colorado, the Jamestown Board of Trustees unanimously
passed a resolution condemning the concept of "corporate personhood,"
joining Boulder in a similar effort.

Tucson, Arizona citizens are on the move with a petition garnering support
for their own resolution to amend the state Constitution. (If you know folks
in Tucson, please ask them to sign it.)

Town by town, city by city, state by state, people are organizing against corporate
personhood, and Move to Amend is here to help you learn how you can follow their lead:

Learn how to pass resolutions opposing corporate personhood. Our webinars
cover everything from basic organizing tips and community involvement to
passing a resolution. Check out the Webinar Archive here.

If you own a business, know a like-minded business owner, or if you belong to
another organization, endorse Move to Amend’s effort.

Attend the Deep Democracy Workshop next month! (Or we can bring this
workshop to your town—contact kaitlin@duhc.org for more info.)

It’s time to take the fight to every corner of the nation; our democracy depends on it!
Yours in the democracy movement,
Ben Manski, Nancy Price, George Friday, Laura Lonham, Lisa Graves, David Cobb
and Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap
The Move to Amend Exec Team

Move to Amend

P.O. Box 260217
Madison, WI 53726-0217
United States

End Corporate Rule. Legalize Democracy. Move to Amend.
We're on Facebook & Twitter!

Citizens Rise Up to Overturn Citizens United - The Progressive Magazine (VIDEO)

2011-09-25T23:40:00.007-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piwoWpmJPLE
Overturning Citizens United 2010 Sumpreme Court ruling.
(This video would not embed. Just click the link above to watch it on YOUTUBE.)

Local Resistance to Corporate Personhood Wages Crucial, if Symbolic, Battle | Truthout

2011-09-25T23:36:00.000-04:00

This was on http://www.truthout.org today! GREAT ARTICLE!

Local Resistance to Corporate Personhood Wages Crucial, if Symbolic, Battle | Truthout

Michael Moore on support of Occupy Wall Street protest

2011-09-23T23:33:00.003-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrFQs5X-I1Y

Michael Moore, filmmaker, activist and author of "Here Comes Trouble," calls on people all over the country to bring the Occupy Wall Street movement to their communities. Later, Moore denounces the state of Georgia for executing Troy Davis.

Tune in Weeknights at 8:00/7:00c on Current TV

Go to Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Current TV for more:
http://current.com/shows/countdown/

MOVE TO AMEND on WMNF-FM 88.5 9/15/11

2011-09-15T15:41:00.003-04:00

http://sound.wmnf.org/sound/wmnf_110915_100617_radioactivityR1_191.m3u
Not sure if that will get U to the show I did today.
That SHOULD be the archived show!

If the link does not work go to:
http://www.wmnf.org
Click on Schedule-Daily-10AM Rob Lorei's Radioactivity Show-
Another page will pull up, put your cursor in the blank area for date, calendar will pull up, plug in 09/15/11.
Audio should pull up!

This is exciting, our first meeting is tonight for Tampa Bay!

We can DO THIS! Other communities HAVE!

2011-08-17T11:10:00.002-04:00

Boulder, CO City Council will vote today to put MTA Resolution on the ballot for Nov...we can do the same thing here...check out the map: http://movetoamend.org/areas-focus/move-amend/resolutions.

PEOPLE WHO NEED PEOPLE...

2011-08-16T14:53:00.000-04:00

DNC Web Ad: "Mitt Romney and the Luckiest People in the World"

Corporate Personhood (Corporation as a "person")

2011-08-16T11:07:00.003-04:00

The concept of "corporate personhood" and the effects it has on laws in the United States.

This video goes through the history of this idea, from:
The Fourteenth Amendment (1868)
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886)
Gulf, etc. v. Ellis (1897)
The Tillman Act of 1907
The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947
Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971
Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990)
Buckley v. Valeo (1976)
McCain-Feingold Act of 2002
McConnell v. FEC (2003)
Citizens United v. FEC (2010)

Also covers:
Corporate Spending
Unions
Wagner Act of 1935
James Buckley
Chief Justice Morrison Waite
PACs (Political Action Committees)
General Treasuries
John McCain
Barack Obama
Antonin Scalia
Mitch McConnell

CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE!

2011-08-14T11:41:00.003-04:00

"Corporations Are People Too" -- a message about corporate personhood from Nero Fiddled. More: http://www.nerofiddled.net.

HOW TO DRAFT A LOCAL ORDINANCE!

2011-08-14T11:34:00.001-04:00

http://www.ultimatecivics.org/ordinance.php

Banning Corporate Personhood--How Communities are Taking the Law Back from Big Companies

2011-08-14T09:55:00.002-04:00

Ben Price of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund explains how communities can fight corporate power with a new legal weapon.
July 14, 2011 |

The following is from Sabrina Artel's Trailer Talk: The Frack Talk Marcellus Shale Water Project. You can listen to the complete program here.

These last few days for gas drilling news in New York as been critical and a new level of urgency has been reached as the country watches how New York defines and decides its fate, the future of its famous unfiltered water supply, and communities in the directly impacted regions, whether for or against drilling are forging ahead to determine their immediate future and that for future generations.

It's coming down to Home Rule and self-determination as a way to protect municipalities from fracking. As the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) releases New Recommendations for Drilling in New York explained in the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) released a few days ago, environmental groups, like Catskill Mountainkeeper are calling for a statewide ban and municipalities organize to decide the fate of their towns.

Read more at the link:
http://www.alternet.org/water/151646/banning_corporate_personhood_how_communities_are_taking_the_law_back_from_big_companies

Romney and “Corporate Personhood” on HOT AIR

2011-08-14T09:22:00.001-04:00

Justin Elliott at Salon has a rather interesting history of the concept of corporate personhood in America’s court system, which Mitt Romney brought back into the spotlight with some recent comments at Ames. He’s exploring it in an interview with 2004 Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb, who hates the idea but still reveals some of the pertinent details of why Romney is right. Of course, the first quote from Cobb sets the tone for his argument.

Mitt Romney said “corporations are people.” Is he right?

Well, he’s correct in the sense that the U.S. Supreme Court has said that corporations are persons with inherent constitutional rights. Of course, he’s wrong just as the court is wrong.

I see. So he’s wrong except for the fact that the highest court in the land examined the question and said he was right? Got it.

See more at the link:
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/08/13/romney-and-corporate-personhood/

Breaking corporate control of politics

2011-08-13T20:41:00.000-04:00

Breaking corporate control of politics
Thursday, August 4, 2011 | Posted by Jim Hightower

Imagine if a couple of national leaders dared to stand up to the corporate powers that have taken control of government. Imagine if one of them came right out and said, "I [am] fed up of living in a country ruled by lies, cynicism, and greed." And imagine if these leaders arranged for the people of the country to be able to throw out all political parties that "represent oligarch interests or vote in the interests of oligarchs."

Impossible, you say? Not so – in fact, it just happened. Not here, unfortunately, but in Latvia. Located on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, the people of Latvia broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991, but a handful of powerful insiders formed corporations that grabbed oligarchic control of public assets, making them billionaires. Using their corrupt fortunes, they literally "privatized democracy," buying political parties and control of parliament. The oligarchs then pushed through laws that further enriched themselves, while knocking down the incomes of regular people and ruining the Latvian economy.

Sound familiar?

See more at the link:
http://www.jimhightower.com/node/7513

David Cobb speaks to Thom Hartmann about MOVE TO AMEND!

2011-08-12T18:12:00.000-04:00

Progressive radio talk show host Thom Hartmann speaks to David Cobb, Attorney / Green Party candidate for President in 2004 / spokesperson for MoveToAmend.org. They examine how legislation has given corporations people's rights.