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.