Guy on the left introduced a resolution against guy on right.
Douglas Hausladen breathes, walks, talks, and eats. He wants to stop a newly powerful foe who does none of that.
In a new proposal, Hausladen, a downtown alderman, has teamed up with the Green Party and Occupy New Haven to go after the U.S. Supreme Court’s notion that corporations are people.
The proposal, officially submitted at Tuesday evening’s meeting of New Haven’s Board of Aldermen, is a resolution calling on the state and federal governments to hold a convention and amend the U.S. Constitution “for the purpose of ending corporate personhood.”
Hausladen said he’d like to see the effects of two U.S. Supreme Court decisions erased by a constitutional amendment. One is in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, which struck down limitations on political spending by unions and companies. The other is McComish v. Bennett, which struck down a program that allowed publicly financed campaigns to receive multiple payments of public matching dollars to compete with privately financed campaigns, including those funded by corporations. The current Republican presidential primary season has seen a new level of corporate domination of campaigns through the rise of “super PACs” enabled by the Supreme Court.
Underlying each Supreme Court decision is the notion of corporate personhood, which holds that corporations are people, and thus entitled to spend their money freely. Money being speech in the eyes of the law, it’s against the First Amendment to limit it.
“This is a direct attack on democracy,” Hausladen said.
“The Court’s decisions in Citizens United & McComish severely hamper the ability of federal, state and local governments to enact reasonable campaign finance reforms and regulations including any practical public financing,” his submission reads. “Corporations should not be afforded the entirety of protections or ‘rights’ of natural persons, such that the expenditure of corporate money to influence the electoral process is a form of constitutionally protected speech.”
Click here to read the entire proposal, with extensive supporting material.
Hausladen said he was initially looking to submit his proposed resolution on the one-year anniversary of the Ciitizens United decision, on Jan. 21. As it happened, Occupy New Haven’s working group on “Issues and Proposals” was working on a similar proposal at the time, said Allan Brison, a former Green party East Rock alderman and member of the working group. Brison showed up at the Board of Aldermen Tuesday night wearing Green Part and Occupy New Haven pins on his sweater, as well as one that said simply “Vegan.”
The proposal is Occupy New Haven’s first foray into local legislative action. The matter is headed next to the Board of Aldermen’s Human Services Committee for a public hearing.
On Jan. 30, Hausladen met at the Elm City Market with Brison and other members of the Green Party and Occupy New Haven, along with current East Rock Alderman Justin Elicker. They worked on merging the two proposals.
Also present at the co-op meeting were members of Wolf-PAC, a political action committee dedicated to overturning the Citizens United decision with a constitutional amendment. The group’s director, Chris Campbell, appeared on an online news show (click on the play arrow to watch) to talk about Hausladen’s proposal and also name-checked New Haven’s State Rep. Roland Lemar, who he said is working on a similar measure at the state level.
Meanwhile, at the co-op, no corporations were spotted inspecting avocados in the produce aisle.
Brison.