GET CORPORATE MONEY OUT OF OUR DEMOCRACY!

Photo Above: The projection on the side of the wall of Citizens United Bank notes that "Corporations re not people" as part of a labor-community coalition demonstration on Jan. 19, 2012.

"Corporations Are NOT People and Money Is NOT Speech!" and "Get Corporate Money Out of Our Democracy" was the theme of two demonstrations held in Hartford on Jan. 19 and Jan. 20. The demonstration on Jan. 19 was sponsored by a labor-community coalition and the Jan 20 demonstration was titled "Occupy the Courts"sponsored by Occupy Hartford and a group of concerned citizens who are just getting organized. The demonstrators were part of national actions to protest the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, [Jan. 21, 2010] a bitterly divided Supreme Court overturned a century of established precedent by ruling that corporate spending on candidate elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment.

In so doing, Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy effectively declared that corporations are indistinguishable from people with respect to federal law and the U.S. Constitution. As a result of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, corporations and billionaires can spend unlimited sums of money, without disclosure, in political campaigns.

Wall Street, oil and coal corporations, insurance and drug companies and the military-industrial-complex will weigh in with hundreds of millions of dollars to distort the truth and outright lie without disclosure or accountability to their shareholders or the public.

The goal of the top 1 percent is simple. They will spend as much as it takes to elect candidates who support a right-wing corporate agenda, and they will spend as much as it takes to defeat our candidates who are fighting for us, the 99 percent. Will our democracy survive in which ordinary people can control their future? Or will "democracy" simply become another commodity owned and controlled by billionaires and corporations in order to serve their own purposes? The 99% say "NO!" [See additional Photos of the demos below.]

Posted by: Tom Connolly