From the Village Green to the C-SPAN Screen: 'Legalize Democracy!' Campaigners Attack Corporate Control of Elections

by John Nichols

"The greatest political reform of our time will be to abolish the legal concept of 'corporate personhood' and the inherently anti-democratic equation of money with political speech,” says Bill Moyer, the energetic founder and executive director of the Backbone Campaign, the grassroots movement to embolden Americans to push back against corporate power and political corruption.

Across the country Friday, that debate was opening up.

Pushing back against an activist U.S. Supreme Court that has given corporations carte blanche to warp not just our politics but the republic itself, grassroots reformers and activists have used the one-year anniversary of the court’s lawless decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case to argue that democracy itself is endangered when corporations are allowed spend without limitation or accountability to influence elections.

The Citizens United ruling eliminated century-old restrictions on corporate spending to support favored candidates and to oppose those who might side with consumers, environmentalists, labor unions and communities.

The corporations recognized the opening given them by the hyper-partisan majority on the high court and seized it.

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