Over 1,000
Americans laid their bodies down on a San Francisco beach to spell out “DUMP
CITIZENS UNITED!” With election day looming, this protest was just the latest,
and possibly most spectacular yet, in a wave of popular anger at the 2010
Supreme Court ruling that opened the floodgates to secretive and unlimited
corporate political contributions.
“The 2010
Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United trampled on America’s founding
principles, swamped our democracy in corporate cash and needs to be overturned,”
said Brad Newsham, the San Francisco cabdriver who organized the event. “Some
truths are so self-evident that the Founders felt no need to mention them.
Truths like, ‘Corporations are NOT People.’ ‘Money is NOT Speech.’ ‘Elections
are NOT Auctions.’” continued Newsham. “But in the shadow of Citizens United, we
all have to step up and protect America’s sacred principles. That’s why over a
thousand of us came out today to make this beautiful, people-powered statement:
‘DUMP CITIZENS UNITED!’”
Recent
non-partisan polls continue to show that the Citzens United ruling is deeply
unpopular.
The event was a
collaboration between Mr. Newsham and The Other 98%, a netroots community with
over 400,000 members, plus a host of other pro-democracy organizations,
including: Common Cause, CREDO Action, Code Pink, Courage Campaign, Free Speech
For People, Move to Amend, Public Citizen, RootsAction, Ruckus Society,
unPAC.org, Democrats.com and the San Francisco Green Party.
other98.com
Americans oppose
unlimited campaign spending by corporations and unions by a 2-to-1 margin,
according to poll results released in July by the Freedom Forum’s First
Amendment Center. firstamendmentcenter.org Almost $465m of
outside money has been spent on the US presidential election campaign so far,
including $365m that can be attributed to the Supreme Court’s landmark Citizens
United ruling, according to a report released on Monday.
rawstory.com Super Pacs,
which came into effect following the 2010 Citizens United verdict, accounted for
$272m of the expenditure in the study, conducted by the Sunlight Foundation, a
non-profit organization devoted to increasing transparency in government.
guardian.co.uk
AN/KK
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