Talking Points for Meeting with Congresspersons

Talking Points for Meeting with Congresspersons

Hello Representative [ ] / [Mr./Ms. Staff member’s name]. My name is [ ]. I’m a local volunteer for the national Move To Amend campaign and I’m here to speak in support of House Joint Resolution 48, the We the People Amendment.

Most Americans believe Big Money is corrupting our elections and helping large corporations to wield far too much power in our country. Polls consistently show this. Many are disturbed to learn that secretive “dark money” - including money from unknown foreign sources – is now pouring into our elections. Recently, investigative journalists unearthed proof that two mainland Chinese nationals donated $1.6 million dollars to Jeb Bush’s political action committee in March 2015.

These are concerns shared by Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike – an issue on which there is genuine consensus.

This predicament is the result of the legal doctrines of “money equals free speech” and “corporations have inherent inalienable constitutional rights” just like natural persons. These so-called “corporate personhood” doctrines were rendered into law by Supreme Court rulings in Citizens United vs. FEC (in 2010) and Buckley vs. Valeo (in 1978).

The question of how to best protect the integrity of elections and the proper political role of corporations in society are political questions. In a democratic Republic such questions should be addressed by elected representatives at the local, state and federal level. Not un-elected Supreme Court justices.

When the Court unilaterally issued decrees that go right to the heart of our democratic electoral process and our very constitutional rights being overshadowed by constitutional rights for corporations that are far more powerful than individual citizens, they transformed We the People from sovereign citizens participating in their representative democracy into mere judicial spectators.

These anti-democratic Supreme Court rulings have made American politics the romp & stomp playground of plutocrats like the Koch brothers and Donald Trump – and their favorite policy machines – the American Legislative Exchange Council and the pro-plutocracy Federalist Society of jurists.

These corporate billionaires, pro-plutocracy jurists and their policy machines were emboldened by these rulings to stage successful attacks on the 1964 Voting Rights Act; to create record numbers of new voter ID restrictions and other voting hurdles; to continuously attack the wages, working conditions and dwindling benefits of the working-class, and to try to dominate local school boards and city councils in addition to many State legislatures and the US Senate.

But the high-stakes consequences of these rulings are especially harsh in their impact on poorer communities in a nation where the majority are rapidly becoming poorer and more racially diverse.

With respect to many black communities, reversing the damage from slavery, the old Jim Crow and the New Jim Crow—with its school-to-for-profit-prison pipeline, militarized and too often brutally racist police forces, and ALEC-backed “stand your ground” laws—will be exceedingly difficult when, thanks to these rulings, a New Gilded Age good ole’ boy network of unfettered plutocracy has consolidated to bankroll a majority of candidates for office to advance racist and other regressive policies in perpetuity.

In this way, corporate constitutional rights that enable virtually unlimited billionaire spending on our elections are completely demolishing the concept of 1 person, 1 vote.

Whether or not this degeneration of our democracy is allowed to persist is a supremely important decision with profound national and international consequences that We the People must make.

We volunteers for the Move To Amend campaign feel that the severity of this national crisis merits the ratification of our proposed We the People amendment. This is because our amendment squarely remedies both the issue of deregulated election spending and corporate constitutional rights.

It is not legally sufficient to simply overturn the Citizens United ruling. This is because, unless constitutional rights are returned to covering only natural persons, future Supreme Courts can rely on the legal fiction of corporate constitutional rights to erode any limitation on corporate attempts to commandeer our elections and, inevitably, our government.

Ultimately, this issue gets down to whether or not American citizens will retain sovereignty over our own nation--or corporations and dangerously radical jurists will effectively and perhaps permanently usurp that sovereignty in the interest of Oligarchy.

Over 80% of Americans support a constitutional amendment to remedy these issues. Over 650 jurisdictions at the local and county level have passed resolutions to abolish these anti-democratic legal doctrines. Ballot initiatives backing this approach have won in over 350 communities – and not lost once. These referendums have won in conservative, liberal and independent areas in urban, suburban and rural parts of the nation.

So, Representative [ ] / [Mr./Ms. Staff member’s name], we are asking you/[the representative’s name] to join us in a bipartisan effort to return our government to the framework intended by the Founders by co-sponsoring House Joint Resolution 48, the We the People Act, to amend the US Constitution to make it clear that only natural persons possess inherent inalienable constitutional rights, and that the expenditure of money is not protected speech. The American people desire action on this crucial issue. Thank you for your consideration of our request.