Porter
Township has fired the first shot in the New American
Revolution with this first binding law denying
corporate personhood. It's a revolution that will be
fought not with guns but in the courts, in the voting
booths, and on the battlefield of public opinion. |
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Americans Revolt in Pennsylvania
- New Battle Lines Are Drawn
Posted December 21, 2002
thepeoplesvoice.org
By THOM HARTMANN
www.unequalprotection.com
& www.thomhartmann.com
Contact: Louise@thomhartmann.com
The good citizens of Pennsylvania have done
it again.
Back in 1776, they hosted at Liberty Hall in
Philadelphia a gathering of people radicalized by the predations of the East
India Company. The world's first multinational corporation then held a
virtual stranglehold on commerce and politics in North America, and brazenly
used British troops as its enforcers. On the first week of December, 1600,
when she created the East India Company, Queen Elizabeth I became the first
CEO monarch, and by 1776 King George II was following in her footsteps with
his sizeable holdings in and open advocacy of corporate rule.
The American colonists were offended by the
idea they should be vassals of a corporation and a kingdom that supported
and profited from it. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of
Independence, which explicitly stated that humans were born into this world
endowed by their Creator with certain rights, that governments were created
by humans to insure only humans held those rights, and "That whenever
any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of
the people to alter or abolish it…"
Stating flatly that "it is their right,
it is their duty," to alter their government and thus claim their
unique human rights, 56 men defied the East India Company and the government
whose army supported it by placing their signatures on the Declaration of
Independence, saying, "with a firm reliance on the protection of divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our
sacred Honor."
Thus began America's first experiment with
democracy.
The first week of December of that same year,
Thomas Paine wrote in a pamphlet he published a few weeks later that,
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered… What we obtain too
cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its
value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would
be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly
rated."
Exactly 226 years later, another small group
in Pennsylvania also met in early December to sign a document that claimed
the same right - their duty - to alter their government in a way that would
restore the democracy the original Founders were willing to fight and die
for. The democratically elected municipal officials of Porter Township put
their signatures to an ordinance passed unanimously on December 9, 2002. It
reads, in part:
"A corporation is a legal fiction
created by the express permission of the people…;
"Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution
by the Supreme Court justices to include corporations in the term 'persons'
has long wrought havoc with our democratic processes by endowing
corporations with constitutional privileges intended solely to protect the
citizens of the United States or natural persons within its borders;
"This judicial bestowal of civil and
political rights upon corporations interferers with the administration of
laws within Porter Township and usurps basic human and constitutional rights
exercised by the people of Porter Township; …
"Buttressed by these constitutional
rights, corporate wealth allows corporations to enjoy constitutional
privileges to an extent beyond the reach of most citizens;
"Democracy means government by the
people. Only citizens of Porter Township should be able to participate in
the democratic process in Porter Township and enjoy a republican form of
government therein;…"
And then, with an audacity and willingness to
take on overwhelming multinational corporate power similar to that displayed
by the Founders, the elders of Porter Township said that "Corporations
shall not be considered to be 'persons' protected by the Constitution of the
United States or the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania within
the Second Class Township of Porter, Clarion County, Pennsylvania."
It became the law of that land five days
later.
In 1773, the East India Company had claimed
the "right" to participate in the political processes of England
and, with wealth and power greater than the average citizen, got passed for
themselves a huge tax reduction on tea and an overall tax rebate so large
they could undersell and wipe out their small Colonial competitors. The
response of the entrepreneurial colonists to the Tea Act of 1773 was the
Boston Tea Party revolt against that transnational corporation, setting the
stage for the Declaration of Independence and the beginnings of what Lincoln
called "government of the people, by the people, for the people."
Similarly, in 2000, one of the largest sludge
hauling corporations in the United States sued Porter Township, claiming
that as a "person" the corporation had rights equal to the
citizens of the township, and therefore they couldn't
"discriminate" against the corporation under the due process and
equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, which was passed after the
Civil War to free the slaves.
Porter Township, supported by a coalition
including the Pennsylvania Farmers Union, the Pennsylvania Association for
Sustainable Agriculture, The Sierra Club, the AFL-CIO, the United Mine
Workers of America, Common Cause, the Program on Corporations, Law, and
Democracy (POCLAD), the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF),
and other pro-democracy groups, fought back. They bluntly asserted that - as
it was from the founding of this nation until the bizarre Santa Clara County
v. Southern Pacific Railroad Supreme Court case in 1886 - only humans are
entitled to human rights in their community.
In the law they passed on December 9, 2002,
they explicitly said, "The judicial designation of corporations as
'persons' grants corporations the power to sue municipal governments for
adopting laws that violate the purported constitutional rights of
corporations. For example, in September 2000, Synagro Inc. filed a federal
lawsuit against Rush Township (Centre County) Supervisors, forcing the
Township to spend tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to defend its
health-related sewage sludge testing ordinance against claims that the
ordinance violated the corporation's constitutional rights."
The implications of this are staggering. For
example:
Before 1886, it was a felony in most states
for corporations to give money to politicians or otherwise try (through
lobbying or advertising) to influence elections. Such activity was called
"bribery and influencing," and the reason it was banned was
simple: corporations can't vote, so what are they doing in politics? Their
concern is making money, and they don't need clean air to breathe or fresh
water to drink; leave them to making money and leave the administration of
the commons to We, The People.
Before 1886, it was a crime in most states
for corporations to own others of their own kind. The need to keep
corporations from becoming so large that they could usurp democracy was so
clear to the Founders that Jefferson and Madison proposed an 11th Amendment
to the Constitution that would have banned "monopolies in
commerce," restricting each company to performing a single purpose,
making it responsible to its local community, and barring it from owning
other corporations. The amendment didn't pass because everybody at the time
knew that the states already had such laws in place.
Before 1886, only humans had full First
Amendment rights of free speech, including the right to influence
legislation and the right to lie when not under oath. Now corporations have
claimed that they have the free speech right to influence public opinion and
legislation through deceit, and a case based on a multinational corporation
asserting this right is poised to go before the Supreme Court as you read
these words. That corporation reserves the right to fire and even prosecute
human employees who lie to it, however.
Before 1886, only humans had Fourth Amendment
rights of privacy. Since then, however, corporations have claimed that EPA
and OSHA surprise inspections are violations of their human right of
privacy, while at the same time asserting their right to perform surprise
inspections of their own employees' bodily fluids, phone conversations, and
keystrokes.
Before 1886, only humans had Fifth Amendment
rights against double jeopardy and the right to refuse to speak if they'd
committed a crime. Since 1886, corporations have asserted these human rights
for themselves: the results range from today's corporate scandals to 60
years of silence about the deadliness of tobacco and asbestos.
Before 1886, and following the Civil War,
only humans had Fourteenth Amendment rights to protection from
discrimination. Since then, corporations have claimed this human right and
used it to stop local communities from passing laws to protect their small,
local businesses and keep out predatory retailers or large corporations
convicted of crimes elsewhere.
Porter Township has fired the first shot in
the New American Revolution with this first binding law denying corporate
personhood. It's a revolution that will be fought not with guns but in the
courts, in the voting booths, and on the battlefield of public opinion. (Far
from harming corporations, returning human rights solely to humans will lead
to an entrepreneurial boom in America - only a small handful of very large
corporations abuse these rights to deceive people, hide crimes, or make
politicians violate the will of their own voters. The millions of ethical
corporations will thus be freed from the tyranny of the few while democratic
government will be returned to its citizens.)
As Thomas Paine - another Pennsylvania
resident - wrote on that 1776 December night and published 2 days before
Christmas, "Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of
winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and
the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and repulse
it."
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© Copyright 2002 All rights reserved by Thom Hartmann
Credit: (Thom Hartmann
is the author of "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate
Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," a book containing a
version of the above ordinance customized for each of the 50 states. www.unequalprotection.com.
Permission is granted to reproduce this article in print, web media, and
email, only when this credit is attached.) Contact:
Louise@thomhartmann.com
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