Thanks to Occupy Wall Street - never in recent memory has the call to kick corporations out of our politics been louder.
And yesterday - there were two major developments in how we can heed this call for a democracy that's uncontaminated by corporate cash.
First - a group of Democratic Senators introduced a new constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision - the decision that said that money is speech and therefore corporations and rich people can spend as much money as they want meddling in our elections.
The Senators who signed on to this amendment - Tom Udall - Michael Bennett - Tom Harkin - Dick Durbin - Chuck Schumer - Sheldon Whitehouse - and Jeff Merkely - all saw what happened in last year's elections as a result of Citizens United.
They saw how the amount of secret, outside spending skyrocketed from just 68 million in the 2006 midterms - to over 304 million in the 2010 midterms.
That's a four hundred percent increase in corporate cash influencing elections and buying politicians, just ten months after the Citizens United decision.
And as you'd expect when corporations get to hand pick their Members of Congress - Republicans win big.
Well - with Occupy Wall Street at their back now - these Senators are saying enough is enough - and this constitutional amendment will give power back to Congress and to the states to set their own election laws so that they can keep corporations and extreme wealth in check in the political process.
That means they can start by passing laws like this old Wisconsin law that was on the books through most of the 19th century, and is basically what was the law of the land in every state of the United States for the first hundred and fifty years of this nation's history. It read:
No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute... directly or indirectly, ANY money, property, free services of its officers or employees or thing of value to ANY political party, organization, committee or individual for ANY political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of influencing legislation of ANY kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy of ANY person for nomination, appointment or election to ANY political office.
If guilty - up to five years in prison for the corporate executives, and the death penalty for the corporation - it gets dissolved.
There's no question we need a 28th constitutional amendment right now to bring back laws like this - and kick corporations out of our democracy.
But the truth is - this amendment doesn't go far enough.
It's not just about corporations buying elections - it's about corporations lobbying and buying off Members of Congress.
It's about corporations being able to escape punishment when their negligence kills people on an oil rig or their pollution gives a whole town cancer.
It's about corporations having an unequal right to privacy to hide their abuses.
It's about corporations being able to tear down sovereign governments - and economic protections - to promote so-called Free Trade.
It's about corporations claiming that they are people - it's ultimately about what's called corporate personhood.
And while the amendment that I just shared with you they introduced in the Senate limits corporate activity in our elections - it doesn't say a thing about corporations not being people.
Luckily last night - voters in Boulder, Colorado DID say something about corporate personhood.
By a three-to-one margin - voters approved Question 2H - which calls for an amendment to the constitution to once and for all say that corporations are not people - and that ONLY humans are entitled to protections under the Constitution.
What happened in Boulder, Colorado last night shows the way forward for all of us who are hounding our lawmakers - sleeping in the streets - or writing books, doing TV, radio shows on these issues - to accomplish our common goal - to end corporate personhood.
This won't be done overnight - some constitutional amendments took years to pass - but they finally did pass, once America reached a tipping point in each case - be it the 13th amendment which abolished slavery - or the 19th amendment which gave women the right to vote.
America is at one of those tipping points today.
Just like it was when young people were being hauled off to the Vietnam War without any legal right to have a say in who their politicians were - and in less than four months - the 26th Amendment was passed giving 18-year-olds the right to vote.
That's all it took to pass the 26th Amendment - less than four months.
And it took less than one month for Occupy Wall Street to go national - and then go global.
Change often happens faster than we think.
This nation needs a 28th Amendment that says that corporations are not people and money is not speech - let's put it on ballots everywhere!
That's The Big Picture.
