OntheWilderSide

Today – on the one-year anniversary of the Citizens United v. FEC decision that legalized unrestrained corporate spending on federal elections – the Green Party re-affirms its opposition to corporate personhood, corporate speech rights, and corporate control of America’s public spaces, media, and elections.

After the Supreme Court decided in a 5-4 decision to strike down federal laws limiting the use of corporate money for campaign advertising, we predicted “a flood of election season ads promoting corporate-sponsored candidates”.

Sure enough, the nonpartisan group Common Cause noted that “outside groups spent more than $296 million on the 2010 Congressional midterms – a 330 percent increase over 2006”.

The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics found that millions of the dollars spent in the 2010 election were donated anonymously by corporations or nonprofits, and millions more were funneled into Congressional races by “super PACs” created in response to the Citizens United decision.

Greens have responded to this crisis in American democracy in innovate ways. Help support our opposition today.

Move to Amend is a coalition seeking to amend the Constitution to outlaw corporate personhood. The Green Party is a key partner of the Move to Amend coalition and firmly believes that corporations should be stripped of the ability to spend unlimited sums on political campaigns.

Sarah “echo” Steiner, a former co-chair of the Green Party of the United States, made headlines this week with her intention to marry a corporation, which the Supreme Court has endowed with the same rights as individuals. “The court’s ruling has opened the door to the union of corporate and human persons in ways that were never imagined before,” said Steiner.

And most importantly, over 300 Green candidates ran for local, state, and federal office last year. Each of them rejected corporate contributions for their campaigns and urged their opponents to do the same.

The Green Party depends only on individual “human persons” for all its support. On this first anniversary of the Citizens United decision we continue to urge all candidates to reject corporate influence.

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Filed under: 3rd party, Corporations, election, Election 2010, elections, grassroots democracy, Green Party, politics, US Politics Tagged: | Center for Responsive Politics, Citizens United, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, David Cobb, green, Political action committee, Supreme Court of the United States, united states