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What do you think is the most effective way to turn this idea into real policy? Add your suggestions here for how you think we should run an advocacy campaign to advance the idea – including the overall strategy, messaging, targets, and tactics.

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  1. Ani L. Schwartz

    I would like to suggest that all members of this community who do not do so already take some of the actions up on change.org.
    Here are some of the heaviest ones I can find quickly at the moment.

    Obama, listen to Michael Moore´s plan for GM!

    Speak Out to End Corporate Personhood

    Step One= END SPECIAL INTEREST IN WASHINGTON

    REPEAL the PATRIOT Act

    NO 2 the PASS ID ACT, Repeal the REAL ID Act

    NO NAU, NO SPP, NO SuperHwy

    Stop the "New World Order"- NAU

    WE OPPOSE THE MODEL STATE EMERGENCY HEALTH POWERS ACTS, State

    WE OPPOSE THE MODEL STATE EMERGENCY HEALTH POWERS ACTS, Federal

    NO 2 tax payer subsidies of Nuclear industry.

    Act Now to Restrict Executive Pay

    Ask Congress to Stop Spending $2.7 Billion Per Day on War

    End the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan now!

    President Must Match Actions to Words on Nuclear Weapons

    Ratify the Universal Declaration of Human Rights


    When it comes down to it, almost all petitions going around these days are in protest of corporate crimes of one sort or another.
    Many of the actions I linked above are protests of the taking away of OUR rights.
    These are the most important ones perhaps because they make any REAL progress on any other issues practically impossible.
    There are tons more.

    People signing petitions and letting gov know what we think DOES make a difference ... if nothing else, it stalls legislations and forces them to scrap them and start over.
    So, as much of a waste of time as it may seem, we have to keep hollering at em till they get it right ... one step at a time ... and every petition we sign is EASY to use to point out the connections between the PARTICULAR bad situation and corporate personhood rolls in making it bad. ... and repeat over and over and over ...  PLEASE BEGIN WORK TO REVOKE THE "LEGAL PERSON" STATUS OF CORPORATIONS A.S.A.P.

    Suggested by Ani L. Schwartz on 09/28/2009 @ 03:30AM PT

  2. Marybeth Gardam

    WILPF, Women's International League for Peace & Freedom (www.wilpf.org) has on its website an excellent multi-session course that can be facilitated easily in small groups.  This is a wonderful introduction education tool to inform and get others on board.  The course is free and downloadable from the website.  I can't recommend it highly enough.  
    Also I want to raise the possibility of demanding that states end the charter of corporations for wrong doing.  

    Suggested by Marybeth Gardam on 04/14/2009 @ 07:02PM PT

  3. Jeremiah Podleski

    I went the the Seattle Green Fest a couple of weeks ago. I also recently read the Greg Palast article about Exxon's treatment of the Valdeze case. 

    http://www.gregpalast.com/stick-your-damn-hand-in-it-20th-birthday-of-the-exxon-valdez-lie/

    From one or both of these to sources I learned of the following possibilities for countering corporate abuse of constitutional rights. These ideas are sketches at this point, but I think this community ought to start championing one or more of them.

    1) A person who was a victim of the valdeze spill (sorry I don't have name at this moment - please, someone help out with this info) is working to create, and gain support, for a new amendment to the constitution that would address the problem of corporate person-hood head on. I don't know the details yet, but will post when I learn of them.

    I think this community may be a great group to push this idea.

    2) The head of the organization Global Exchange ((Kevin Donaher http://www.greenfestivals.org/speaker-directory/seattle-2009/Page-2/)) proposed, and I believe is working on, ways for non-profit organizations to become monitoring agents of corporate behavior. In essence, he is suggesting that non-profits be the official watch dogs of corporate behavior. Of course, in some ways this is already happening. However, he is suggesting that non-profit watchdog agencies be given more power either legally, or by cultural consensus to actually be able to constrain corporate behavior.

    This could be accomplished in a number of ways - like a rating system that measures corporate ethics and that consumers will look for when making purchases. Like an E Star rating for corporate social/environmental behavior. Another way would be for government to enact this through new laws that appointed non-profits to do this work and provided a legal feedback mechanism that the non-profits could use to stop corporate abuses. Such laws would have a foundation in John Elkington's idea of the "Triple Bottom Line" - people, planet, prosperity.

    Yet another possibility is to rewrite the required elements of all new and existing business charters to include necessary environmental and social responsibilities. Breaking these rules to many times could then result in much more than fines. Ultimately, it could mean revoking the charter, or wresting ownership and control from the current owners/operators.

    So what does everyone think?

    I know I should read more of the other posts on here to see what others have said. Maybe I'm repeating some ideas.

    At any rate, When? do we get started putting some real actions together??

    BTW, I also think we need to revise our money system, and that doing so could end a great deal of the abuses we see plus create economic equity, plus put control of our money systems back into the hands of the community.

    OK, I'll be looking for some responses.

    Suggested by Jeremiah Podleski on 04/08/2009 @ 07:33PM PT

  4. Megan Wade Antieau

    I am part of another organization, Democracy Unlimited, that works on these issues. You can read about us at http://www.duhc.org.

    Our strategy has been both to work on local-level legislation that protects our community from a specific harm while challenging the concept of corporate personhood, while also engaging in local community organizing initiatives that lessen our dependence on corporations for our basic needs.

    In 2006, we worked with the Humboldt Coalition for Community Rights to pass a law banning non-local corporations from contributing to our local elections and denying corporations constitutional rights. Unfortunately, a lawsuit was brought and the law is no longer in place.

    However, we continue to work on many other projects, including educating our community and others about corporate rights; building and connecting people to sustainable and democratic systems, including CSAs, community currency, and local independent businesses; and strategizing for future laws to challenge corporate rule.

    And I think we need to be doing all these things together: educating ourselves on corporate history; creating systems that strengthen our individual and collective power and reduce our dependence on the corporation as the dominant economic form; and fighting current place the corporation occupies in our legal system.

    Meaning there are lots of ways for all of us to be challenging corporate rule and working to end corporate personhood right nwo.

    Suggested by Megan Wade Antieau on 04/01/2009 @ 03:37PM PT

  5. Ani L. Schwartz

    As long as corporate personhoods "own" the government, they should be paying for it.

    Suggested by Ani L. Schwartz on 03/25/2009 @ 09:57PM PT

  6. Ani L. Schwartz

    Bernie Sanders, Credit Interest Rate Cap

    From: "David Delk" <davidafd@msn.com>
    Date: 22 марта 2009 г. 16:32  

    Bernard Sanders is a U.S. senator from Vermont.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Friday, March 20 Bernie Sanders  

    There is a huge sense of outrage in our country today at what Wall Street has done through greed, recklessness and, likely, illegal behavior. The "Masters of the Universe" have plunged our nation, and much of the world, into a deep recession which has caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs, their homes, their savings and their hope for the future.
     
    In order to fully understand the cause of this fiasco, I have introduced legislation calling for a thorough investigation of the financial meltdown and the prosecution of those CEOs who might be guilty of illegal behavior. The culture of greed, fraud and excessive speculation must come to an end.
     
    As I talk to Vermonters about this crisis, one of the great frustrations that I hear is that while taxpayers are spending hundreds of billions of dollars bailing out major financial institutions, and while these big banks are getting near-zero interest rate loans from the Fed, these very same financial institutions are now charging Americans 20 percent or 30 percent interest rates on their credit cards. In fact, one-third of all credit card holders in this country are now paying interest rates above 20 percent and as high as 41 percent — more than double what they paid in interest in 1990.
     
    Recently, some major institutions, such as Bank of America, have informed responsible cardholders that their interest rates would be doubled to as high as 28 percent, without offering any explanation or excuse why the increase was taking place.
     
    Let's be clear: What Wall Street and credit card companies are doing is really not much different from what gangsters and loan sharks do who make predatory loans. While the bankers wear three-piece suits and don't break the knee caps of those who can't pay back, they still are destroying people's lives.
     
    The Bible has a term for this practice. It's called usury. And in "The Divine Comedy," Dante Alighieri's epic poem, there was a special place reserved in the Seventh Circle of Hell for sinners who charged people usurious interest rates.
     
    Today, we don't need the hellfire and pitch forks, we don't need the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law.
     
    We need a national law because state laws no longer work. States used to protect consumers from predatory lenders, but strong state usury laws were obliterated by a 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision. Justices allowed national banks to charge whatever interest rate they wanted if they moved to a state without an interest rate cap. So major credit card issuers moved to places like South Dakota and Delaware that don't have usury laws.
     
    That is why I have introduced legislation to require any lender in this country to cap all interest rates on consumer loans at 15 percent, including credit cards. Why did I select 15 percent as the appropriate rate to deal with the usury which is going on in this country? The reason is that 15 percent is the maximum that Congress imposed on credit union loans almost 30 years ago when it amended the Federal Credit Union Act. That approach has worked!
    Under current law, credit unions are allowed to charge higher interest rates only if their regulator, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), determines that it is necessary to maintain the safety and soundness of these institutions and when money market interest rates have risen over the preceding six months. Right now, while most credit unions charge lower rates, the NCUA allows credit unions to charge an interest rate as high as 18 percent.
     
    Unlike their counterparts at the big banks, credit unions are not lining up for hundreds of billions in bailouts. In fact, they're doing quite well. They are responding to the credit needs of the small businesses in their communities and to individuals. They have not only survived this regulation, they are functioning exactly the way they are supposed to function. In my view, the rules that have worked well for credit unions for decades can work for all financial institutions.
     
    Former Senator Al D'Amato in 1991 offered an amendment to cap credit card interest rates at 14 percent. The amendment passed the Senate by a vote of 74 to 19, but never became law. Now is the time to return to that debate. Now is the time to protect a struggling middle class and pass legislation to put a cap on interest rates.

    Suggested by Ani L. Schwartz on 03/23/2009 @ 04:26PM PT

  7. Ani L. Schwartz

    I would like to see all relevant orgs posting petitions on the ACTION pages here at change.org. 

    Suggested by Ani L. Schwartz on 03/21/2009 @ 07:50PM PT

  8. Ani L. Schwartz

    I invite all who are interested to check out:  

    http://genocide.change.org/actions/view/speak_out_to_end_corporate_personhood  

    I posted this before I was aware of this community (& I believe before this community existed).  The action opportunity presented there is out of date (will remove it if I can and am seeking more action opportunity updates) but the pledge is still ongoing.  

    I would like to invite those here who have suggestions for us of orgs that are dealing with this to please come on over and share what ever links you have with the participants in this pledge if you have time. I see a few here but would prefer to have those who suggested these to post them. Or you are welcome to send them to me and I will be happy to post them right on the pledge ... so that they can be updated when needed. I do not want to be "stealing" anyone's ideas.

    thanks

    Suggested by Ani L. Schwartz on 03/21/2009 @ 07:49PM PT

  9. John McDonough

    If corporations are "persons" then they should file and pay taxes on the same 1040 form we do, at the same rates we do.  Nuff said!

    John

    Suggested by John McDonough on 03/20/2009 @ 08:08AM PT

  10. Gregory Tseytin

    Abuses by big corporations are at the root of the current economic downturn. They spend more resources on undermining the competitors than on production. They stifle technological progress (except for a few "strategic" directions seelcted by not very competent financial executives), and when progress happens in a small company they acquire it and take away the resources used for new development. My suggestion is to push for a one-year moratorium on acquisitions and mass layoffs; when the big behemots start suing against it the judge could reverse the ancient court ruling.

    Suggested by Gregory Tseytin on 03/19/2009 @ 05:54PM PT

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