Kitsap Aware
A Forum Series on Justice and Citizenship
July 1: How Corporations Usurped Constitutional Rights
and We Lost Ours
2-4 PM, Suquamish United Church of Christ, 18732 Division Ave. NE, Suquamish
Many think that the Citizens United decision was a recent aberration in the Court’s long history of protecting and expanding personal liberty, but such is not the case. The first Supreme Court case conferring the rights of personhood and citizenship on a corporation was decided in 1809, and there have been dozens and dozens of cases that have expanded those rights ever since then. To put this in perspective the first Supreme Court case involving the rights of an African American did not come before the Court until the adjudication of the Dred Scott case in 1857; their first decision involving women’s rights was handed down in Minor v Happersett. In these cases both Scott and Virginia Happersett lost. Corporations, on the other hand, were victorious in Bank of the United States v Deveaux, and since 1809 they have prevailed in the vast majority of their cases before the both lower courts and the Supreme Court. Citizens United is merely one of the landmarks in a long history of the string of victories that continue right up to Epic Systems Corporation v Lewis in May of this year.
Join us to learn this fascinating and somewhat chilling history and explore what you can do to help reverse this trend and restore our Republic to the control of We the People.
This non-partisan educational forum features a panel of members of the Jefferson County chapter of Move to Amend, a national organization founded in 2009 whose purpose of is the restoration of our democratic republic by removing corporate money from the electoral process. After the Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission decision in 2010, it became obvious that the only certain way of ending the ever encroaching power and influence of corporations in our elections and government was through the ratification a 28th Amendment to the Constitution that specifically defined the rights of “natural persons” and the rights of “artificial persons” in the election process.
https://www.facebook.com/jeffcoamend; https://movetoamend.org/wa-port-townsend