[NV Greens] FW: LTNews ~ Major Victory for Local Democracy!

[charleslaws at att.net]

-------------- Forwarded Message: --------------
From: Liberty Tree <Office at LibertyTreeFDR.org>
To: <info at nevadagreenparty.org>
Subject: LTNews ~ Major Victory for Local Democracy!
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 07:15:16 +0000
> LIBERTY TREE
> Foundation for the Democratic Revolution
> 
> http://www.LibertyTreeFDR.org
> 
> ~ Liberty Tree News 2.7 ~
>        June 6, 2006
> 
> * Spread the word: MEASURE T ADOPTED! *
>   ~  A Major Victory for Local Democracy! ~
> 
> Today was election day in northern California, and today 55% of Humboldt County 
> voters spoke clearly in adopting the language of Measure T:
> 
>     "Only natural persons possess civil and political rights. Corporations are 
> creations of state law and possess no legitimate civil or political rights . . . 
> . The people of Humboldt County make the affirmative legislative finding that 
> corporate contributions in elections are imminently undermining our democratic 
> processes, and are denigrating rather than protecting First Amendment interests 
> . . . . "
> 
> A California county has banned outside corporations from investing in local 
> politics, and in the process, the people of that county have made their own 
> constitutional ruling: Human beings, not corporations, possess constitutional 
> rights.
> 
> What you can do? Support the campaign in Humboldt County (http://www.DUHC.org). 
> Invest in Liberty Tree's efforts to build a local democracy movement nationwide 
> (http://www.LibertyTreeFDR.org). And read John Nichols' account of the victory . 
> . .
> 
> * * * Citizens 1, Corporations 0 * * * 
> By John Nichols, The Nation, June 6, 2006
> 
> In states across the country Tuesday, primary elections named candidates for 
> Congress, governorships and other important offices. But the most interesting, 
> and perhaps significant, election did not involve an individual. Rather, it was 
> about an idea.
> 
> In Northern California's Humboldt County, voters decided by a 55-45 margin that 
> corporations do not have the same rights -- based on the supposed "personhood" 
> of the combines -- as citizens when it comes to participating in local political 
> campaigns.
> 
> Until Tuesday in Humboldt County, corporations were able to claim citizenship 
> rights, as they do elsewhere in the United States. In the context of electoral 
> politics, corporations that were not headquartered in the county took advantage 
> of the same rules that allowed individuals who are not residents to make 
> campaign contributions in order to influence local campaigns.
>    
> But, with the passage of Measure T, an initiative referendum that was placed on 
> the ballot by Humboldt County residents, voters have signaled that they want 
> out-of-town corporations barred from meddling in local elections.
> 
> Measure T was backed by the county's Green and Democratic parties, as well as 
> labor unions and many elected officials in a region where politics are so 
> progressive that the Greens -- whose 2004 presidential candidate, David Cobb, is 
> a resident of the county and a active promotor of the challenges to corporate 
> power mounted by Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County and the national Liberty 
> Tree Foundation -- are a major force in local politics.
> 
> The "Yes on T" campaign was rooted in regard for the American experiment, from 
> its slogan "Vote Yes for Local Control of Our Democracy," to the references to 
> Tuesday's election as a modern-day "Boston Tea Party," to the quote from Thomas 
> Jefferson that was highlighted in election materials: "I hope we shall crush in 
> its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to 
> challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of 
> our country."
> 
> Just as Jefferson and his contemporaries were angered by dominance of the 
> affairs of the American colonies by King George III and the British business 
> combines that exploited the natural and human resources of what would become the 
> United States, so Humboldt County residents were angered by the attempts of 
> outside corporate interests to dominate local politics.
> 
> Wal-Mart spent $250,000 on a 1999 attempt to change the city of Eureka's zoning 
> laws in order to clear the way for one of the retail giant's big-box stores. 
> Five years later, MAXXAM Inc., a forest products company, got upset with the 
> efforts of local District Attorney Paul Gallegos to enforce regulations on its 
> operations in the county and spent $300,000 on a faked-up campaign to recall him 
> from office. The same year saw outside corporations that were interested in 
> exploiting the county's abundant natural resources meddling in its local 
> election campaigns.
> 
> That was the last straw for a lot of Humboldt County residents. They organized 
> to put Measure T on the ballot, declaring, "Our Founding Fathers never intended 
> corporations to have this kind of power."
> 
> "Every person has the right to sign petition recalls and to contribute money to 
> political campaigns. Measure T will not affect these individual rights," 
> explained Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, a resident of Eureka who was one of the 
> leaders of the Yes on T campaign. "But individuals hold these political rights 
> by virtue of their status as humans in a democracy and, simply put, a 
> corporation is not a person."
> 
> Despite the logic of that assessment, the electoral battle in Humboldt County 
> was a heated one, and Measure T's passage will not end it. Now, the corporate 
> campaign will move to the courts. So this is only a start. But what a monumental 
> start it is!
> 
> Sopoci-Belknap was absolutely right when she portrayed Tuesday's vote as nothing 
> less than the beginning of "the process of reclaiming our county" from the 
> "tyranny" of concentrated economic and political power.
> 
> Surely Tom Paine would have agreed. It was Paine who suggested to the 
> revolutionaries of 1776, as they dared challenge the most powerful empire on the 
> planet, that: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A 
> situation similar to the present hath not happened since the days of Noah until 
> now. The birthday of the new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as 
> numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from 
> the events of a few months."
> 
> It is time to renew the American experiment, to rebuild its battered 
> institutions on the solid foundation of empowered citizens and regulated 
> corporations. Let us hope that the spirit of '76 prevailed Tuesday in Humboldt 
> County will spread until that day when American democracy is guided by the will 
> of the people rather than the campaign contribution checks of the corporations 
> that are the rampaging "empires" of our age.
> 
>   ~ John Nichols is the Washington Correspondent for The Nation.
> 
> * Find out more about Measure T and support Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt 
> County's ongoing work - http://www.DUHC.org
> 
> * Find out more about Liberty Tree's Local Democracy Program, and our upcoming 
> Local Democracy Convention ~ http://www.LibertyTreeFDR.org
> 
> 
>   * * * Join Liberty Tree today!  Sign up online at
> http://www.LibertyTreeFDR.org
> 
> 
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