- Welcome and thank you for coming this afternoon. I'm Doug Davis, a representative of Move To A Man South
- Central Indiana. And after Jeff's talk today, if you're interested, we have brochures up here and a
- sign-up sheet and also a donation envelope, believe it or not. So if you want to give a little money,
- that'd be great. Our guest visit today is very timely. We have just witnessed
- the results of a gluttony of spending and influence peddling to the tune of almost $4 billion this last
- election. And that's $40 million more than was in 2010. And it does not include money on so-called issue
- ads. So we've seen a lot of money being spent. Jeff Clements is in the forefront of those working to
- overturn the disasters and anti-democratic decision in Citizens United by the Supreme Court.
- He's been an assistant attorney general in Massachusetts and is co-founder and current chair of the
- board of Free Speech for People, a national non-partisan organization working to overcome Citizens United.
- We're pleased Jeff and his wife Nancy have come here today to speak to us and sign this book. So please
- give Jeff a warm welcome. Thanks so much, Doug. And thanks to Move to Amend.
- here in Bloomington, but also all over the country. There's chapters of Move to Amend doing great work
- in cities and towns all over the country. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. But if you haven't
- had a chance to check out, there we go. If you haven't had a chance to check out the debate with David
- Cobb and Jim Bach. David Cobb's one of the co-founders of Move to Amend and Jim Bach.
- is one of the architects of the dismantling of our campaign finance system. The lawyer who represented
- Citizens United and others in challenging McCain-Feingold in the campaign finance laws. It's on YouTube.
- I'm sure you can find it. It's an excellent debate. And I think as elsewhere in the country, except
- on the Supreme Court, the side of the people is very clear.
- better argument in terms of how we preserve democracy in this country. So check it out. But I think
- it was right here, Doug, wasn't it, in Bloomington? Not here in Barnes and Noble, but over at the Law
- School. If I'm pointing the right way. So that way. Thank you. So what I thought I'd do today in just
- chatting a little bit about the new book, because some of my friends say when we started this
- would say, didn't the book just come out? Do we have to buy it again? And someone had the first edition
- back there. There's the first edition. So it's a nicer color. It looks better. But that's not the only
- reason. The answer is yes, you have to buy it again. And the answer isn't because Nancy and I have three
- kids in college, because we're giving all the royalties away to groups like Move to a Man, Free Speech
- for People, and others 100% for the cause.
- No, the real reason you have to buy it again is what has happened these past three to four years since
- the first edition was written. I wrote the book after doing a brief in the Citizens United case, after
- a career at the Attorney General's office and in private practice, where I saw corporations and big
- money, whether corporate money, union money, billionaire money, slowly just shrinking the space for
- democracy, for we the people to have a voice.
- And I wanted at first to understand how did this happen? Like a lot of us, I think, right? How did this
- happen in our country? What do we do about it? Those are some of the questions I wanted to answer. So
- the first edition was really mostly on how did it happen? And some on what we could do about it, but it was
- spending in elections basically dismantling our voices and so to understand how that happened is what
- the book is about but now I can say after after three years and the new edition there's a much more
- hopeful second part of the book which is that Americans know the problem you don't have to convince
- a lot of people if you're having conversations
- schools we lose everything that we've worked hard for across partisan lines it doesn't matter this isn't
- about partisan politics we lose everything and we lose what we promised as a country and I think many
- many Americans know that this that's the state we're in now where you know despite all the advertisements
- last Tuesday and all the you know noise about the
- is what we've seen in America since the beginning of our country. When things get really bad, and we
- realize there's no one to save us, it's up to us, we do it. And that's what's happening now. And that's
- also in the book. And there's a whole new chapter called Do Something that allows you to kind of plug
- in to many different ways you can do something. So I'll get to that. But let me first recap for you,
- even though you probably don't need it, why we need to do something. Why you're maybe in here
- lovely Sunday afternoon when you might rather be doing something else why do we need to do all this
- hard work that people are doing all over the country well I said it's a crisis of democracy and it is
- and I'd like to sort of outline precisely what I mean by that because I think you know I've talked to
- some folks here already about just how hard it is to reach across partisan lines you know Republicans
- Democrats how do we get together on this because when people vote to overturn Citizens United
- city after city, state after state, 75, 25, 70, 30. But to actually work together across Republican
- and Democrat lines is hard. And I think it's helpful if we, and I tried to do this in the book, show
- just how nonpartisan this is. And that doesn't mean kind of in the middle. The crisis is nonpartisan.
- You know, Republican children and Democratic children are going to grow up in America. That's not what we want.
- And so the way I look at it is there's the money problem, unlimited campaign spending is one issue,
- and there's what I call the corporate veto in the courts because the court has created a new thing,
- constitutional rights for corporations that's been used to strike down even the most modest laws. So
- let me say what I mean by that. The money crisis in America for our democracy comes not just from the
- amount Doug mentioned, $4 billion,
- a midterm election that's unheard of that's a record it's about 30 billion now since Citizens United
- was decided 2010 and the campaign finance laws were knocked down and that's a lot of money but that's
- not really what the issue is it is part of the issue but the real issue is where the money comes from
- and I don't mean like an ideological source or a partisan source or even a corporate source versus uni
- source I mean from how few sources
- it comes from. So let's look at some numbers. In 2012, we now have some data. There's always a lot of
- lag time, and this data will never know because there's so much secret money, the so-called dark money
- running into the system. I think it's something like 40% in this election last Tuesday of the money.
- That $4 billion can't be traced to where it came from because it's run through nonprofit so-called front
- groups. But what we do know,
- you know that's when we saw the super PAC phenomenon another reason we needed the new edition of the
- book when I first wrote it the 2012 election hadn't happened we didn't have super PACs we didn't know
- exactly what was happening now we know so of that super PAC money that funded so much of the constant
- 24-hour seven days a week attack ads in 2012 32 donors that's 32 literally 32 donors
- contributed is more than all of the donors to both the Romney campaign and the Obama campaign, who gave
- $200 or less combined. So that added up to hundreds of millions of dollars of so-called small donors,
- normal, regular people, who sent a check for 100 or 200 bucks to Obama's campaign or Romney's campaign.
- And most Americans don't do that.
- less than 5% of Americans give any money at all to campaigns. So we're already talking about a really
- small pool. So all of that was exceeded, wiped out, by just 32 donors to Super PACs. Another way to
- look at it is almost all the Super PAC money, well over 90%, came from 3,300 donors. So if you do the
- math, that's less than
- So it's very few people, very few sources for a huge amount of money. And so what that does is a number
- of things. It, of course, makes the politicians dance to the tune of where the money's coming from or
- just be afraid to dance at all because they don't want to generate, they don't want to, when I say dance,
- afraid to tackle a big problem or introduce a bill or work for something the country
- because of the attack ad and the money that will come against them. So they don't do that. They don't
- want to get those 32 donors mad at them. And of course, it excludes almost everybody. My colleague at
- Free Speech for People, John Boniface, calls this the wealth primary, similar to what was ruled
- unconstitutional long ago, the so-called white primary, where in Texas, back in the Jim Crow days, they
- would have an unofficial
- whites only primary and then they'd have the candidates and then okay then we'll have the election but
- the candidates had already been picked to make sure African-Americans would not be represented and would
- not have a candidate and would not have a vote that was what called the white primary finally struck
- down by the Supreme Court John Boniface says this says this is like the wealth primary where almost
- all Americans are excluded and then we get to go and pull a lever on November 4th but that's
- already been decided in the white primary what issues are going to talk about more importantly what
- are we not going to talk about you know whether it's climate catastrophe or anything else you know what
- candidates are so-called viable right there's viable means the ones who are able to please some of those
- small number of donors into this system so it excludes people and we get this vicious circle of more
- money from fewer sources
- Not only do people say, well, why send my $100 in? If Sheldon Adelson could put $93 million in, what's
- my $100? So people don't participate that way. But more importantly, they don't participate even to
- vote. So voting rates are going down. They don't participate at even citizens' gatherings like this
- or any other. Just basic citizenship being eroded and then more money coming in in this vicious circle.
- I mentioned Sheldon Adelson. I don't want to pick on any one funder because they're on both sides, Democrat,
- Republican. But let me just use Sheldon Adelson as an example. Casino, mogul, global, casinos in Macau,
- all over the world. I said he spent $93 million, right? So that was in 2012. He is back this year with
- his checkbook. And he has been indicating he's going to spend as much or more in 2016, so sure enough,
- candidates who might run for president are going to essentially audition to this billionaire. And so
- Molly Ball in the Atlantic magazine was at one of these auditions, these so-called conferences with
- Sheldon Adelson and some candidates, would-be candidates, potential candidates for president in 2016.
- She described it in the Atlantic as the Sheldon Adelson suck-up fest in which the candidates
- like daughters of King Lear, or the cast of Mean Girls, each sought to outdo the others in his fawning.
- That's what we've come to. And the president of what is the greatest nation in the world, and should
- be, and could be again, is sort of humiliating themselves and us by this kind of performance in front
- of billionaires, because they feel they have to. That's what's happening. Corporations, sometimes you've
- heard after Citizens United,
- And so the new additions needed for this. Well, corporations really aren't spending much money. They
- know that Americans get mad when corporations spend money in elections, and we do. So Target spent money
- in Minnesota and tried to help get a governor elected. People got really mad. There's a boycott of Target
- all over the country. Great response, actually. Target apologized and said, we won't do that anymore.
- So then there was this sort of myth.
- you why it's a myth that corporations aren't spending money in elections because they don't want to
- anger their customers. Well, a couple of weeks ago at the Republican Governors Association, and again,
- I'm not picking on the Republicans because this could have happened at the Democratic Governors Association,
- I guarantee you. It's one of those front groups. And I say that because they spend a lot of money in
- elections. So where do they get their money? Well, the Republican Governors Association staff, somebody
- did a coding error.
- so that documents, which are usually secret, ended up on the public website. So these documents are
- now public. And it read like the Fortune 500 with their shopping list, essentially. Millions and millions
- of dollars from some of the biggest corporations in the world. And you know them all. You know, Pfizer,
- Walmart, Microsoft, you name it. They were on this list. And the millions they had given into the Republican
- Governors Association, the access that got
- where how that money is that used just made probably in Indiana all over the country spent and as I
- said I'm quite certain the Democratic Governors Association has a similar document maybe they have better
- coders but we haven't seen the document yet but it's a similar practice US Chamber of Commerce is another
- one where the corporations are putting millions and millions of dollars into our elections and they
- just don't they we do get mad Americans do get mad when it happens so they're trying to hide it
- Some of them don't try to hide it. The fossil fuel corporations know that they're not very popular,
- so they just do it. Chevron just writes big checks. Chevron spent $3 million in a city council race
- of 100,000 people. A town of 100,000 people, Richmond, California, $3 million. The good news is when
- a town is that small, people know what's up. TV doesn't work because neighbors are talking to each other.
- Every Chevron candidate lost. And yeah, so we can.
- back against this. So that's the problem. It's the money, but it's more importantly the source of the
- money. It's so small, in such huge magnitude, that it ends up being, and I'll use the word, plutocracy,
- government of, for, and by the wealthy or the corporations. And for a while coming, I know Bloomington
- is not the most conservative part of Indiana, but I thought coming into Indiana,
- You know, can you say words like plutocracy? It's kind of a conservative, down to earth kind of place.
- But that's true everywhere in America. My wife Nancy grew up in Maine. We go back all the time.
- Central Maine, North Central Maine, probably a lot like areas of Bangor, lots of other areas of Maine
- are conservative. They vote Republican. They just elected a Republican congressman up there in the second
- district. And Governor LePage, a Republican one again.
- So I was speaking in central Maine a few weeks ago and thinking, like I said, should I use words like
- plutocracy? And I don't want to, and I think it not because I want to say different things in different
- places, just like I want to have a conversation with people in vocabulary matters to have a conversation
- instead of just like, and so I was thinking about that and I opened up the newspaper that morning and
- the talk was at night and I, it was the Kennebec Journal, an old,
- newspaper's been around Maine for a hundred years, probably, out of Augusta and the Kennebec Valley
- area. And I look into the Kennebec Journal just to get the local flavor and, you know, catch up on news
- up there. And I come across their editorial, not an op-ed, their actual editorial of the Kennebec Journal,
- conservative
- this level of campaign spending done by only a few. As income inequality expands, the people who benefit
- the most from current economic policies are also the ones with outsized influence on those policies.
- And then the Kennebec Journal said this, there is a name for government by the rich, plutocracy.
- And they say, and it's not what our founding fathers were trying to create when they guaranteed our
- freedom of speech.
- I think this is something anywhere in the country. Americans get it. Boutocracy means government of
- the rich. It's not a inflammatory insult. It's not something we want. It's not a criticism of Americans.
- It's a criticism of the system, whether it's being able to participate in our election system fairly
- and on an equal basis, or when we're told we're not allowed to make fair election laws to get a handle
- on the system, because supposedly that violates free speech rights of corporations,
- and billionaires, the money is just like now even citizenship and self-government are sort of commodified
- into something you buy. That's plutocracy, the result, not the people, the result. So this appalling
- thing, a few more appalling things, and I'm gonna get to some good names, don't worry, but the problem
- is this is actually being defended now. Look, if we were looking at a country on the other side
- their system was funded by a few families, a few corporations, and a few billionaires. We would say,
- no, you're not a democracy, right? So unfortunately, we now have political scientists confirming this.
- So there's a study out of Northwestern in Princeton just out. It's called the Influence of Affluence,
- Martin, Gillens, and Benjamin Page. Most comprehensive look at the data set for how policy in America
- is actually influenced and created.
- And their conclusion is this, and I'm quoting again, the estimated impact of average citizens' preferences
- is at a non-significant near zero level. Ordinary citizens have little or no independent influence on
- policy at all. Economic elites and organized business interests have substantial independent impact
- on US government policy. So they're not just like claiming this or making a slogan, this is a result
- You know, I said people defend all the plutocracy. In response, the Manhattan Institute, one of these
- big, extremely well-funded kind of groups, says this is no news, no big deal, that rich people vote
- more often, that they are better informed, and they kind of represent the interests of the middle class
- anyway. So it doesn't matter if rich people are running the country and everyone else isn't.
- defense we're asked to live with I think we're we're in real trouble we're basically being told well
- photography kind of works okay so don't worry about it I don't think Americans want to do that so the
- problem in the that's that the new edition is trying to show isn't is again something about the effects
- of the Citizens United decision rather than the legal arguments and all that it's you know just objectively
- what is the result we can see it now
- around us and it's how republics have always failed I mean this is this is a textbook sort of systems
- theory result it's a textbook example of what James Madison called faction of what the founding the
- founders of the country trying to put together all the checks and balances of the Constitution new destroys
- republics destroys democracy when you have organized faction and a system that just keeps rewarding and
- the source of the faction, in this case, money power. You essentially are on a path straight to the
- destruction of a republic. And that's what we're well into, unfortunately. And that's not even all.
- I said about the corporate veto. So free speech for people. We're working on some solutions, which I'm
- going to talk about in a minute. And that's when the clouds are going to lift and the sun is going to
- shine. Because corporations are people. It's not all about money.
- So we are in litigation. We're working on solutions, including a constitutional amendment campaign,
- which I'm about to talk about. But we also fight in the courts, because how we got here was an organized,
- very well-funded effort to use what Lewis Powell, who I talk about in my book, and we can talk more
- about him later, talked about using activist-minded Supreme Court justices and massive amounts of corporate
- money to transform our constitution and our system. That's what we're living with now.
- So we have to push back in the courts, too. That's what we're doing. And I just want to give you a couple
- of examples of what we are seeing in the courts since Citizens United. Employees' rights to be informed
- of the law and to talk about workplace conditions so they could decide whether to organize or not struck
- down violation of corporate constitutional rights not to speak, not to be required to inform employees
- of their rights. All of us have been in workplaces. Those workplace notices you see about
- about our rights as employees. Violation of the Constitution now in this brave new world. Country of
- origin labeling. You want to support American farmers, you want to buy American beef, your hamburger,
- whatever. There's a law used to be that said the meat had to be labeled for where it came from.
- Struck down. Violation of corporate rights. So over and over we're seeing this, and I could give a lot
- of other examples, but I want to just give two more. In St. Louis, we're in a case where Peabody Energy
- is the big local, one of the big local, they're not local, they're global, but they have a big base
- in St. Louis. E-Body Energy gets a lot of tax subsidies from St. Louis taxpayers. Well, 30,000 St. Louis
- taxpayers said, you know, we want to reevaluate this and see if we get a more resilient economy and
- not just keep paying a big global corporation and hope that they'll stay and maybe give us a job or
- two. We want to use that money to improve schools, build roads, things like that.
- So they got on the ballot, 30,000 signed a ballot initiative in St. Louis to vote on their tax money,
- whether it should continue to be going to Peabody Energy and fossil fuel corporations. Well, they weren't
- allowed to vote. The vote was blocked, a violation of so-called equal protection rights of corporations
- and First Amendment rights of corporations. And not only that, the corporate lobbyists went to the Missouri
- legislature and got the law changed
- and it's a such a special law classic illustration of what corruption is if one interest one company
- can get a law that's just for them that's what happened the missouri legislature passed a law saying
- st louis citizens are not allowed to have a ballot initiative that involves tax subsidies to fossil
- fuel corporations that's what it said essentially so they did the one two punch corporate veto in the
- courts plus money corruption of legislators to
- basically disable even the right to vote about their own tax dollars being used. The other example is
- to show how extreme this is getting. In Seattle, Seattle voters voted to lift minimum wage to $15 an
- hour over time. One of the problems of the loss of democracy is wages are going down. We're just like
- everywhere else in the world now, where global corporations can just drive wages down. And so Seattle
- residents,
- you know, finally giving up on politicians doing this, said we're going to do it ourselves. They voted,
- raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour. It was phased in over time to give business, small business
- and others, a chance to work and accommodate this new law. Well, it was challenged in court. We're in
- the court fighting, we're helping to defend the case. But the challenge is that the minimum wage violates
- corporate constitutional rights.
- violates corporate free speech rights and corporate so-called equal protection rights under the 14th
- Amendment. That's the corporate veto. Even if we get a law, even if we come together and we try to get
- a law on the books through our own ballot initiative process, veto in the courts, just like in Citizens
- United. So that's what we have to fix. We have to fix this. We have to, I think, dedicate everything
- we can in our lifetimes, because it's not going to be easy. I didn't come here.
- there's a chapter that says, do something with lots of great solutions. They're all hard. So just so
- you know, in case you think you're going to spend whatever it costs to get the magic solution, there
- is no magic solution. But there are a lot of good ideas. And more importantly, there are examples that
- they inspired me. They're Americans who never did political stuff, who are now doing things. And so
- I tell their stories because it inspires me. I think it'll inspire you. And here's what we need to do.
- And we need to give it everything we got, because this is, as I said, I think one of the biggest crises
- of our country in our lifetimes. We need to overturn Citizens United. That case cannot stand. It's against
- the basic American principle of one person, one vote, of political equality. We may not be equal in
- all kinds of ways, but the promise that we've always made since the North Bridge back in Concord, where
- we're from,
- is we come to this as equals as citizens. As citizens, we are equal. That's why we get to vote equally.
- That's why we have one representative, equal representation. So Citizens United says, no, we're not
- equal, actually. And I'm going to get back to why we need to overturn it. But I'm not exaggerating when
- I say that they say we are not politically equal. This is the winning argument from the brief
- McCutcheon is a case that came right after Citizens United, year two after. That's why we needed a new
- addition, too. It struck down another law, a campaign finance law, that said in the aggregate, you can't
- give more than $123,000 to federal candidates for office in a year. So all of you who have been waiting
- to give $3 million to federal politicians, you are now free to do so, thanks to the Supreme Court. Think
- about that. That's five times almost.
- the median earnings of Americans. We often hear $50,000 median household income. That's usually two
- earners. It's closer to $26,000. So here we have a limit that is five times what people earn in a year,
- and that's ruled unconstitutional. We're not allowed to have that limit. But here's the winning argument.
- Contribution limits may not be upheld as a means of limiting disparities in the extent to which
- different economic backgrounds are able to participate in the political process. Think about that. They
- say out loud, and it wins, that we are not allowed to have laws intended to enable people of different
- economic backgrounds to participate in the political process. I'm not paraphrasing. I'm quoting. That's
- what they say. That won. So we are in a fight for basic American principles. They're wrong.
- I hope you're all with me, but I don't know that. I hope in question time, if you're not, we can have
- a conversation about that. But most Americans are, and I would say we are right. And let me just tell
- you why I say most Americans are. And that'll be my number one what we have to do, which I said overturn
- Citizens United. So we've now tested this. Move to amend, free speech for people, lots of groups around
- the country have tested this theory that Americans will come together
- to overturn Citizens United, to take back our power, to say, yes, actually, political equality is what
- this country is all about, and we're going to keep it that way in our lifetime. We've tested it through
- resolutions all across the country calling for the 28th Amendment, constitutional amendment that will
- reverse Citizens United, that will say, yes, we the people, through our state and federal legislatures,
- have the right to enact campaign finance laws that get a handle on this. And that corporations do not
- have the rights
- human beings in our Constitution. So how is that test going? Well, everywhere people get a chance to
- vote, it passes by huge margins. That's how we know. It's not just the polls that say 79% of Americans
- want a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, though that's true. We know we can't always
- count on polls because we see what they're not always right. But we can count on ballot initiatives.
- actually have a chance to vote. We know the result. So let me give you some examples. 16 states have
- enacted resolutions calling for the 28th Amendment. Two of those states were by ballot initiative. The
- rest were through the legislature. So in Montana, in November 2012, Montana went with Mitt Romney for
- president. So by all the conventional kind of, you know, what passes for political analysis these days,
- that's a red stage, right?
- well, on the ballot that day, that very same day, those very same voters had a chance to vote for a
- Montana ballot initiative that didn't ask for the 28th Amendment, that didn't just say, well, you know,
- we demand the 28th Amendment. It instructed Montana's representatives to get the 28th Amendment out
- of Congress to the states for ratification, and not just any amendment. It spelled out the principles
- of Montana policy were that
- need a level playing field, political equality in elections, and better campaign spending limits and
- campaign contribution limits. And it said corporations are creations of the state. They get the rights
- and duties under state law. They don't have the rights of human beings in the Constitution. So that
- was on the ballot in November 2012. They voted for Mitt Romney. They voted for this ballot initiative
- 75% to 25%, not even close.
- Americans do come together on this over and over again. 200 cities and towns have had ballot initiatives
- now. All have passed, hasn't lost once. And they're almost always by that margin. Just this last Tuesday,
- right? We had several in Massachusetts, several in Wisconsin, other towns, maybe some of you know, some
- of the other states, but it was on ballot initiatives, local ballot initiatives. Once again, 70%, 30%,
- pass, not close, pass. Americans know we can fix this. So a constitutional amendment, as I said, this
- is hard stuff, right? We need two thirds of Congress to get it out. We need three quarters of the states,
- just a constitutional convention strategy, too, that some advocate. But either way, this is hard stuff.
- But we're doing it. This is how we've done it before. So I have other reforms that I'd be happy to talk
- about that are also advancing well.
- But I want to just close with the amendment, because I think a lot of this is, yeah, I get the problem.
- But if we got to do an amendment, we're lost, because we can't do that. Congress can't agree when to
- have lunch, let alone get two-thirds to say, we're going to have an amendment. And I want to address
- that directly, because that was true throughout our history. We've been here before. You think an all-male,
- unelected senate, senators used to be
- They used to be all male. And an all-male, unelected Senate voted not once, but twice, two-thirds, to
- get women the right to vote, the 19th Amendment, and to say, we're going to elect senators now. So all
- our amendments, everything that we've, every advance we've done has been what, at the time, they would
- have said, oh, it's impossible. It can't happen. So how do we do it? Well, we do exactly what we're
- doing now. We do rest of it.
- on a politician somewhere to write in and save us. We don't count on a Supreme Court fixing itself.
- That would all be nice. But we have to do the strategy that the founders gave us, Article 5, the amendment
- process. And so that's why we're seeing it unfolding across the country. In only 36 months, folks, if
- you think you can't do this, do check out the book. Because I tell the story of people who are doing it.
- Now, maybe some of you have done it. I know Bloomington is one of the towns that enacted a resolution.
- It wasn't because the politicians said, oh, let's do this. It's because people like us walked in and
- said the facts to a city council or to a town meeting or to get a ballot initiative on and said, we
- have to do this. And they overcame their doubts, their fears, whatever was holding us back to do it.
- And then they are lifted up by, unlike when you vote and even when you vote for someone
- win, and nothing happens, or it doesn't get better. When you do this, you see your neighbors, you see
- people who don't agree with you on politics agreeing with you on this. And it starts a virtuous circle.
- That vicious circle not only gets stopped, it turns the other way so that you actually feel like, yeah,
- maybe we won't succeed, but I'm going to go down fighting. And I'm going to go down with my neighbors
- and friends and family.
- my crazy uncle, who disagrees with me on everything else, but agrees on this. You start to feel this
- country isn't as divided. You start to come together as citizens rather than consumers. And we start
- turning this virtuous circle. And then the next town thinks, oh, that's a good idea. We can try that.
- But the state says, we can try that. And it works. That's how we got in Congress a vote on the Democracy
- for All Amendment. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good. A 28th Amendment.
- was voted it would have been passed if fifty-five votes would pass but that's not enough but we got
- fifty-five senators to co-sponsor the twenty-eighth amendment had a vote on it something that people
- say would never happen got through the judiciary committee with approval something people would say
- would never happen and in september we had a vote and we won that vote we need sixty-seven votes that's
- only twelve more so this is happening you can help it happen we can do this together
- And it's not just talk, because we know, you know, I don't think we're worse than our parents, grandparents,
- great grandparents, who somehow found in themselves the strength and the hope and the vision that we
- can be better than we are now. And I think I turned to Lincoln, like we all should in dark times, because
- Abraham Lincoln, of course, presided over the darkest times of America when we almost lost it all in 700,000
- other over essentially a principle about whether we meant it, are we all created equal? Do we mean that?
- Are we going to live for that? Are we going to die for that? And yes, we did. But Abraham Lincoln, a
- year before the Emancipation Proclamation, called for the 13th Amendment. And his words when calling
- for it are really interesting. He said, you know, it's not enough to imagine better. We have to do better.
- He said, it's not enough to think anew. We have to
- And he said, we have to dis-enthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. And that was 14
- amendments ago, right? 14 of these amendments, I think, these times, when we get about as bad as we
- can and then somehow come out of it, we get out the other side because we don't know exactly how it's
- going to unfold. We don't know exactly what policy will work. We don't know if we have the strength
- of the smarts to pull it off. And most importantly, we dis-enthrall ourselves. And that's where we are.
- Nobody else is going to save us. The system isn't working. It's not democracy right now. It's more like
- plutocracy. We disinthrall ourselves, and we act anew, and we save our country. So I think that's what
- we're doing, folks. Thank you very much. I'd be happy to talk and take some questions, but I want to
- hear from you too. And check out the book, and let's save our country once again. Thank you. So yes,
- right here.
- Thank you very much. Many of us have read the first book and I know we're going to read the second one
- too. I would like your opinion on the fact that if you look around the room this afternoon, you will
- see basically a certain age group. Youngsters. Because we've lived it, we've experienced it, we know
- what's happening.
- Yeah. But our kids, you know, they do understand, but they're not active. They don't understand that
- they've got to be active like this. It's OK, you're retired, you have time to do this. No, you never,
- you always have to make time to do this. Yeah. Nothing to do with being retired. Yeah. You know,
- it's a good, I've been asked that several times. And I, again, like everything else, I don't have a
- magic answer. But I've got my best shot at it.
- Nancy and I have three of those younger. They don't come to my talks either. So what I think is,
- number one, we can't tell them what to do. We didn't listen to the older generation when we were their
- age either. And I think that's just fine, actually. They will figure it out in their own way, and we'll
- all be better for it.
- It's sort of like my view about, you know, we have a lot of groups doing this, we have different strategies.
- That's always how we win in the end, is people come to it on their own terms, in their own ways, and
- find their own ways to act. So I actually get inspired by some younger people. They're doing incredible
- things in lots of ways, but even if we were to ask them to do it sort of like we did it or, you know,
- more conventional ways
- It's not actually conventional, but it's morally based and determined. It's not a naive hope. It's a
- determination. So I often think of Kai Newkirk. Anybody heard of Kai Newkirk? Well, I hope you will,
- because I first met Kai. He's probably 28 years old. He was out at UCLA. He came to something at the
- UCLA law school there. I next saw Kai on a
- video from within the Supreme Court argument. Now, as you may know, there's no cameras allowed in the
- Supreme Court. Yet, there was a hidden camera. And there is Kai Nuker dressed better than me. He looked
- like a lawyer. He had a tie on. And he stood up in the middle of an argument of the Supreme Court. He
- interrupted the argument. And he stood up and said, I rise on behalf of the American people who believe
- money is not speech. Corporations are not people.
- overturned Citizens United, and then he was security. He drags him off. You can watch this on YouTube.
- He knew he was going to get arrested. This was an act of civil disobedience to tell truth to power and
- to set an example and to spread the word. And he was willing to take the consequences. And it's not
- just him. He leads a group called 99 Rise, which is about young people rising to not
- to stand silent anymore. He led a march 500 miles from Los Angeles to Sacramento, 400 something miles,
- demanding that the legislature, California legislature, vote to put on the ballot a constitutional amendment
- initiative. Exactly what we're trying to do. He said we're gonna walk from LA to Sacramento, the other
- side of the state, and we're not gonna leave until they do it. He not only did the walk,
- led a lot of other young people with them. They didn't leave until the legislature did it,
- and the legislature did it. Now, that's one another case we're involved in. The court blocked that ballot
- initiative. But Kai isn't going anywhere, and his group isn't going anywhere. He went on a hunger strike
- the weeks before the election day for the principle of one person, one vote, calling on other people
- to pledge. You don't have to fast.
- pledge to vote for reform candidates who would support a constitutional amendment and the principle
- of one person, one vote. So there are a lot of young people doing, I think, inspiring things. They don't
- all have to be like that. So my answer is not usually this long-winded, but it's usually, sometimes
- I'm asked by young people who do come to the talks. And I think in the end, I say it's up to them. And
- I think what we can best do is model our own behavior
- not sort of lecture them about what they should do, but try to do it ourselves and then support younger
- people when they step up too. Because I think they are stepping up in lots of different ways. It's just
- not the same way as we might do it. So I'll stop there.
- of demographics were in the voting pool, did we know? Was it a high percentage of voters? Were they
- mostly of one yoke or another that voted on this? Yeah. Well, no. I think it was a presidential year,
- so it's high turnout. It was 2012. And they voted for Mitt Romney. So there were certainly a lot of
- Republicans in the voting pool. But you actually see this everywhere. Scott Walker in Wisconsin.
- his hometown passed a resolution last Tuesday by a huge margin. So I think, you know, even in places
- where, whether it's fracking or anything else, I think people recognize, look, I don't agree about,
- you know, whatever it is, an energy policy or, you know, I may be a Republican, but I know that this
- isn't right that billionaires can run the country and corporations have a constitutional veto in the courts.
- And they will support this. I am confident in almost any demographic. I'm rather amazed by it. Yeah,
- well, check it out. You can look at unitedforthepeople.org, the number four, and go click on some of
- the towns that have done these resolutions. And it sets the margin. It doesn't have the breakdown of
- the demographic. But it's been in red states, blue states, red towns, blue towns. But it's not easy.
- I mean, that's the thing. And if people get a chance
- vote on it, you see it. If you try to persuade Republican lawmakers, that's harder. Because then you're
- into the system instead of giving people the books. Well, I must say, we have a report of Free Speech
- for People called Across the Isle. You can get it on our website, freespeechforpeople.org. It shows
- 100 Republicans, leaders in the country, who've actually voted for constitutional amendment resolutions.
- And we're going to continue to try to be as cross-partisan as
- sort of create a space for Republicans who want to do the right thing. But the money is a big problem
- on both sides. But on that side in particular, I think for the reform, it's difficult for the legislative
- leaders. And they need to hear it from their own constituents, not necessarily Nancy Pelosi isn't going
- to convince Republican congressmen to vote for this. But their constituents.
- So we have to reach their constituents through these local organizing efforts. Yes? One of the things
- I struggled with this September Senate vote was that what they were voting on sort of led to believe
- didn't go far enough. We were afraid that it was a more degraded amendment thrust than we really wanted.
- And it was hard to know, do you go with what you've got
- you hold back for what you wish for? I don't know, do you have any thoughts? Yeah, I do. So I'm glad
- you asked that, because I have a lot of thoughts, but I'll try to keep it short. OK. One of the few
- areas of differences on strategy, or as David Cobb says, David Cobb and I were together in Denver, he
- says tactics, not difference on goals, difference in tactics for free speech for people and move to
- amend, is just that. So we supported, we helped write,
- committee the democracy for all amendment and what it did is it said Congress has the power again to
- regulate campaign spending to ensure political equality and the states have that right and power what
- we've always had in this country until recent years and number three that those laws that we make can
- be different for human beings and corporations in campaign finance spending now move to amends view is
- that's not enough because it doesn't say corporations don't have constitutional rights. It only takes
- out the money, the campaign money. And even though it allows corporate money and elections to be limited
- or barred, it doesn't say corporations don't have any rights under the Constitution. In our view,
- my view, we should push for the democracy for all amendment and get it.
- or the next amendment we need. If they come together and we have a chance to get both amendments out
- of Congress in one, we should take it, push for it. But that won't necessarily happen. And I think if
- we try to control the exact order, we may lose a historic opportunity. And let me say why I think that.
- If you look at history, we do these things, there's sort of two views. I think move to a man's view
- is like, we're going to work so hard
- The amendment's got to be perfect. But the other view, my view, which I'll try to support with some
- evidence, is no, what we're doing is creating an amendment moment in American history. We're creating
- the different alignments, the different alliances, the different, we're kind of disrupting the current
- system by lifting people up to be self-governing citizens, and then the amendment
- You know, the final thing. It's not the first thing. So the Senate passed that amendment I talked about,
- women's right to vote, only because they had to. The people had already changed the country by that
- point. So in my view, if we do the work to create an amendment moment, you don't get just one amendment.
- It's not like one shot and it's over. You create an opportunity for all kinds of reform. So let me show
- the evidence I said I'd give.
- almost never come with just one right instead what happens is the country is in a whole Americans come
- together to lift us out and we get three or four amendments at once because it's not just one problem
- right corporate corporate power is not exactly the same although it's related to the money problem and
- if we had two amendments that may be just fine so let me show you some examples the Constitutional Convention
- came out with the Constitution 17
- 87 out of Philadelphia. And they thought they were done. And the American people said, no,
- not good enough. Where's the Bill of Rights? We did 10 amendments to do the Bill of Rights. Only a few
- years later, 1795, the Supreme Court ruled that bondholders can hold states in the federal court. Americans
- did not like that at all. That was not part of the deal. And we got the 11th Amendment. So there was
- this sort of ferment around the revolution where Americans felt like, no, we make the rules.
- It's a democracy. We make the rules.
- So that has happened over and over and over again. So after the Civil War, of course, it wasn't just
- one amendment. It wasn't like we had one chance. We abolished slavery at the 13th Amendment. 14th Amendment
- guaranteed equality and due process for every citizen. The 15th Amendment guaranteed the right to vote.
- And of course, it wasn't like, oh, you do the amendment and everything's perfect. But it does give you
- the power to start working to get there. But we did three amendments.
- And it wasn't just like in the trauma of the Civil War, the last Gilded Age, much like our own turn
- of the 19th century into the early 20th century. The Supreme Court was striking down minimum wage laws.
- They had given railroad corporations and other corporations rights. They were striking down worker safety
- laws. It was very much like our times today, great concentrations of wealth and power, not much democracy
- effectively. So what do we do?
- amendments in ten years and of course that's not all we did but we created the moment that allowed for
- constitutional that is that one was prohibition so we'll put that aside because that got overturned
- with another amendment but think of the others the Supreme Court struck down the income tax said that
- that violates the the constitutional rights of rich people essentially again it was like confusing money
- with democracy we enacted us an income tax was struck down by the Supreme Court constitutional amendments
- overturned that decision. And that would have been hard to do. They did it. Overturned that decision.
- Supreme Court said women have no right to vote. Struck down, overturned with a constitutional amendment
- in that period. The third one was the election of senators that I mentioned. Because the system was
- so corrupted that literally they were passing out bags of cash. A Montana senator, a guy named Clark,
- even bought his Senate seat. Literally gave ranches and bags of cash to state legislators to get himself
- appointed.
- openly, and it's so disgusted the American people. We did constitutional amendments that say, we're
- going to elect senators from now on. We're going to be in charge of this process. So those three amendments,
- in the space of 10 years, did it again. Between 1961 and 1971, we forget our lifetime, for some of us.
- Our lifetime, we did three amendments, four amendments, actually, in 10 years. The three of them were
- about this very issue, political equality,
- representative government. So one amendment overturned the poll tax. This poll tax was being used to
- prevent African-Americans and poor people from being able to vote. The Supreme Court said, that's just
- fine. Nothing wrong with that. The American people said, yeah, there is something wrong with that. It
- violates political equality. We get a constitutional amendment to overturn that. The Supreme Court said
- young 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds can be drafted and sent to Vietnam and war. It doesn't violate the Constitution.
- constitutional amendment said yes it does and we did a constitutional amendment to give District of
- Columbia residents who had no representation some representation so even in our lifetime we had you
- know the ferment of the 60s it wasn't it had pros and cons but it was a democracy moment where we it
- wasn't just like oh we get one amendment it's like we need a lot of things to be fixed and we fix them
- not everything and now it's our turn I think so I think from my view
- We have to not have this scarcity attitude of, oh, no, we're only going to get one chance. We are going
- to do what we're entitled to do and govern this country as citizens. And we're going to fix what needs
- fixing. And if we have a chance to overturn not only Citizens United and the Buckley versus Vallejo
- that says money is just power and voting, we should seize it, overturn it. Because that's like exercising
- our democracy muscle, right? If we get one amendment, it won't be like, oh, that was nice.
- go home, they'll be like, whoa, we know how to do this. Let's do the next one. So that's my answer to
- that question. How about one more question, if there is one? And then I'll be happy to stay around and
- talk. Yes, Jim. I have a question. Thank you for your talk, by the way. Thank you. And thank you, Nancy,
- and from you for your visit. Great to be here. Thank you. I have a question about the five justices
- on the Supreme Court. Do you feel free to dispense constitutional protections and decorations when the
- issue of court conversion has never been
- argued squarely in the Supreme Court. Forget about 1886. It was a fraud. And this is not just my opinion.
- This is what Bill Rehnquist said. Why is that? Because there's no argument for corporate constitutional
- rights that is not embarrassing. And they don't like to be embarrassed, so they kind of hide the ball.
- I think literally, I'm not kidding. I mean, I did a debate out in Utah, in Salt Lake City, the law school
- at the university there. And I outlined, I don't have time to do it in answer to this, but I essentially
- outlined just how absurd it is to say corporations are people or persons under the Constitution.
- As a lawyer, you cannot honestly get to that answer without just saying, well, we kind of need it to
- be here because it would be inconvenient.
- And that's not good constitutional jurisprudence, right? There's a lot of things we might think, well,
- it would be better if we did it. But you can't twist the Constitution to do that, even if you thought
- that, which I don't think so. So instead, they hide the ball, like they did in Citizens United. And
- they use euphemism. My book, I have sort of a chapter on this technique that they use. And at the top
- of the chapter, there's a Hugo, Victor Hugo quote about how metaphor is a thief
- use of metaphor can do such damage. And that's what they do. They don't say corporations have rights.
- They say all speakers have rights. They don't say corporations literally, they don't actually say the
- words corporations are people in the Citizens United decision. They just act as if they are and then
- apply the law as if they were true. So that's the technique they use. And you're right, Bill Rehnquist,
- a conservative, when you're talking to conservative folks and they say, oh, this is some lefty thing,
- tell them to check out
- Barry Goldwater conservative from Arizona, Bill Rehnquist, who dissented in all the cases I talk about
- in this book about when this new version, not back to Santa Clara, but this new corporate rights era
- we have, he dissented in those cases. He warned that republics fail if we confuse human beings with
- corporate entities. And so you're absolutely right, Jim. There's very, very weak arguments for corporations having
- Don't let lawyers or law professors or anyone sort of intimidate you about this. It's not like there's
- some secret magic to constitutional interpretation that we regular people just don't get somehow. No,
- it's sound constitutional interpretation would not give rights under the Constitution to corporations,
- not just because it's wrong as a matter of law, but because it's dangerous. It's exactly the kind of
- faction that I mentioned with James Madison. It's dangerous to him.
- entities of the state that are now global. I mean, the money moving through global corporations is bigger
- than the gross national product of a lot of countries. And to say that they are political citizens,
- just like us, is very dangerous in a republic. So Bill Rehnquist got it. Other conservatives got it.
- Liberals got it. Americans get it. So I think, you know, I know we're right on that. I think we're going
- to change it.
- So thank you, you have a question here, one last one. How do you spell Rehnquist? Rehnquist,
- R-E-H-N-Q-U-I-S-T. And just for background folks, he was the Chief Justice before Roberts, Chief Justice
- Roberts. And in fact, Citizens United, the only reason it happened is Chief Justice Rehnquist died and
- Sandra Day O'Connor, another Arizona conservative, retired. Sandra Day O'Connor had written
- final decision that came out the exact opposite way at Citizens United only six years before. She retired,
- replaced by Samuel Alito. Chief Justice Rehnquist died, replaced by Chief Justice Roberts, and we got
- where we are. So, R-E-H-N-Q-E-U-I-S-T.
- legislators and tell them this is what we want? Or do we go to the Supreme Court and tell them this
- is what we want? Or do we go to all? We go everywhere. So free speech for people. We have a legal team.
- We're looking for cases that will go to the Supreme Court. And we'll keep going and going and going
- until we win. But we cannot leave it to the lawyers anymore. Lawyers have had their chance.
- We're doing our best, but we will not do this unless we have a national involvement of all the American
- people. And that's what the Constitutional Amendment is about. And for that, go to your local leaders,
- go to your local folks, whether they're in churches and anywhere where people gather and find a way
- to put it before the body for discussion. Go to your local legislators. Go to your state legislators.
- So we have to do all of that.
- So check out Move to Amend and talk to the folks here who are organizing that kind of response. Because
- I think we can't just leave it to a strategy, well, let's get to the Supreme Court and somehow hope
- they'll come back with a better answer. We actually tried that. One of the reasons Montana was so inflamed
- about this is Montana had a law that went back 100 years that's kept corporate money out of elections.
- They defended that law after Citizens United. We helped them defend it.
- went up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had a chance to fix this. And they slapped Montana down,
- struck down all the state laws, too, and said, Citizens United's the law of the land. So this court
- won't fix Citizens United. There's no sign that we're going to get a better court any time soon. We
- have to go to the legislators. We have to go to our local people. And we have to get loud and get organized
- and push back until we win. But you can also write to your Supreme Court
- I'll give you his address. Thank you. Yeah, so seriously, talk, share addresses, share ideas. Talk about
- it here, because the best thing, I promise you, the best thing is organizing locally and working with
- people in your community, because you know who your state reps are. You know what people have done before.
- We're just more powerful that way. And that's happening across the country, as I said. You could count
- on it. I mean, don't feel you're alone. Americans all over the country are doing this. I've seen it.
- I describe it in the book.
- people are doing hard work to get this done. So thank you very much. Check out the book. I'll stick around.