Wisconsin pioneers made a choice for a change. That’s why they came here in 1848.
They did not want to live under the heel of aristocrats any longer – or ever again.
Wisconsin pioneers abandoned Europe for the chance to live in a democracy, instead.
They got the chance and they didn’t waste it.
Freedom loving Wisconsin pioneers abolished the death penalty as soon as they had the chance.
Wisconsin was the first government in the entire so-called civilized world to do it and to stick to it.
Wisconsin has achieved a unique place in history that will be recorded, remembered, and honored for centuries – for as long as human history continues to progress and unfold.

A government that is really of, by, and for the people does not need or want the death penalty.
A democracy, and only a true democracy, is built upon respect for human dignity and human rights.
And only a true democracy could abolish the death penalty for good and not turn back.
In contrast, a government that is not a democracy does need the death penalty.
That kind of government needs the death penalty to control, intimidate, and oppress the people.

Tell me what democracy looks like? THIS is what democracy looks like!
A land without the death penalty!
A land with free speech for the people and the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
A land with due process and equal protection of the laws for all persons.
A land where “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, to consult for the common good, and to petition the government, or any department thereof, shall never be abridged“.

Why do people today, who supposedly honor the values of our pioneering predecessors, not speak out and oppose efforts to compromise and cripple democracy here and now? They are apparently either unaware of, or they disrespect the bitter lessons our ancestors learned.
They also ignore or deny these facts:
(1) It costs U.S taxpayers more money to put a person on Death Row and execute that person than it does to imprison that person for the rest of his or her natural life.
(2) The death penalty is ineffective and even counter-productive in deterring murder – for example, in 2010, the overall murder rate per capita in the USA was actually 65 percent higher than the murder rate in those states in which the death penalty has not been used for ten years or longer. The 10 states in the United States with the highest murder rates all use the death penalty. Six of the ten states with the lowest murder rates in 2010 have already abolished the death penalty. Canada abolished the death penalty in 1975, and 2 decades later, the murder rate in Canada had decreased to less than 70 percent of what it had been before the death penalty was abolished.
(3) In the U.S., the death penalty is outrageously unfair with regards to factors which should have no place, especially race and economic and social status. For example, the death penalty is only imposed on those who are unable to afford costly legal representation – the wealthy never pay with their lives for murder, no matter how heinous.
(4) Many convicted persons have been proven innocent only by the persistent uncompensated volunteer efforts of students, legal professionals, and journalists. A growing number of officially covered-up false convictions of innocent people on Death Row have been discovered.

In the face of the growing mass of incontrovertible evidence, why does the death penalty yet persist, and why does support for capital punishment re-emerge? The question is deeply troubling. Throughout history, the real purpose of government executions has never been to protect the people from horribly dangerous and violent criminals. And it has not done so. The death penalty persists only because it is a potent instrument of terror, intimidation, and subjugation in the hands of autocratic forces when they feel threatened by the needs and the aspirations of the people, and by courageous people of integrity who challenge corruption, abuse of power, and oppression. The death penalty inflames and indulges the most vile, base passions and instincts of fear and hatred. The death penalty promises to solve some problem – to heal some wound – to satisfy some passion – simply by deliberately killing some people. The death penalty sets a terrible example of injustice and deliberate official murder and terror before us. The death penalty has always demeaned and degraded human nature by denying fundamental human dignity and human rights. The death penalty thus needs to be abolished, worldwide, for the four important reasons noted in the preceding paragraph. But the most important reason for abolition is to everywhere remove that instrument of state sponsored terrorism from the hands of those who would use it.

If reactionaries succeed in imposing the death penalty on Wisconsin for a time, they will have thoroughly corroded the honored leadership-by-example role that we have attained in the world. And our unique place in world history will become reduced to nothing but a soon to be forgotten, ironic, backsliding footnote.

References and sources of information:

Death Penalty Information Center www.deathpenaltyinfo.org
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty www.ncadp.org
Amnesty International USA www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/campaigns/abolish-the-death-penalty
Kairos Campaign (faith based opposition to the death penalty) www.kairoscampaign.org
Innocence Project (uncovers false convictions using DNA) www.innocenceproject.org
Tx Death Penalty Abolition Movement abolitionmovement.org
Death Penalty Focus www.deathpenalty.org

Note: It is important that we recognize that while Wisconsin has had a unique pace-setting place in history among so-called civilized governments, other societies and cultures also rejected the death penalty, and did so much earlier than Wisconsin. Civilization often regards these societies as “primitive”, “savage”, or “barbarian”. And all trace or memory of some of them has been obliterated by civilization. Nevertheless, there have been long-standing, successful, sustainable, organized societies, throughout the world, that learned how to thrive without killing their own members as punishment or behavior modification; without ever using corporal punishment on their own growing children; without fearing, hating, and demonizing those among them who were “different”; without abusing, casting off, and forgetting their elders; without trashing and destroying Mother Earth and her life-sustaining features, and killing all her other creatures. We can learn from, and honor good examples rather than reject and ridicule them – even when the good example is not one that we ourselves have set.

“Who are the leaders of this protest demonstration and what are their demands?”

Those are exactly the questions that the corporate media are asking. Those are the very questions being asked by the directors and managers of the continuing and escalating illegitimate corporate takeover of government – [government that should be of, by, and for the people, instead of government that is by and for corporations and the super-rich]. Those are the questions that the police, intelligence agency, and private mercenary force administrators that are charged with protecting the luxurious moneyed interests, are diligently seeking the answers to. And those are also the very questions that those parties want to plant in the minds of those of us among the 99 percent who have not yet awakened and realized that the planet Earth itself, together with the essential components of life, and even life itself – including ourselves – are now claimed in toto, being possessed, processed, and threatened with destruction by inherently sociopathic corporations and the incorrigibly grasping super-rich.

Realize that this is an Occupation – it is not a “protest demonstration”. Only those with no comprehension of history, those who are suffering from a misplaced, distracting nostalgia, and those who lack imagination, think that marginalized, ineffective, and substantively ignored “protest demonstrations” will get done what needs doing these days. One must be severely one-dimensional and mono-chromatic to fail to realize that effectively dismantling the desperate and degenerating reactionary status quo today is not necessarily doable with a “protest demonstration”.

Realize that those now holding power, and their agents, are insistently seeking a list of “demands” from us simply in order to pin down, discredit by trickery, marginalize, undermine, fracture and fragment, and ultimately destroy this determined and aware opposition to their illegitimate rule. Conversely, presenting such a list to those holding power, simply because and quickly when they demand that one be provided to them, only makes sense if the people themselves hold the power in a truly representative democracy, as opposed to corporations and the super-rich holding the power in this unmitigated sham of democracy.

Realize that those holding power today, and their agents, persist in seeking to learn who are “the leaders” of this determined and aware opposition to their illegitimate grasp on power in order to pin down, discredit, marginalize, undermine, fracture and fragment, and ultimately destroy this challenge, by corrupting, co-opting, isolating, and disappearing those they identify as leaders. Conversely, our rejection of the “cult of leadership” and our serious employment of the principles of true democracy, encourages and develops the creativity that is necessary, while wisely protecting emerging inspiration and growth that would otherwise be targeted and attacked. We are learning important lessons at the same time that we are taking necessary concerted action.

In many ways, we the people find ourselves unfortunately back at square one in our struggle for life, for legitimate government, for happiness, and for a viable future and a sustainable planet, where all sentient beings have rights that supercede the rights we recognize for non-living entities such as corporations.

We must face and deal with the reality that corporations now control all three branches of government at the state and the federal levels, as well as the leadership of both of the two permitted political parties in the USA, with the result that corporations are now “Governing People for Profits“.

We must address, confront and change the reality that this is happening in the United States of America under false authority of the unjustified and entirely discredited legal theory that a corporation possesses the rights that were explicitly defined by the Constitution for a Person. We must recognize that life and our very existence on earth is facing at this moment in history a paramount challenge. That challenge is: “Corporations v. Persons – the Struggle that will define the 21st Century“. And in the United States we must now face and reverse the stark fact that our venerable and venerated Constitution has been intentionally and explicitly subverted and corrupted to produce this ominous, pervasive reality.

http://clydewinter.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/governing-people-for-profits/

http://clydewinter.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/corporations-v-persons/

We are not spectators in this contest, engaged only in tailgating, restricted to cheering or moaning in the grandstands. We are all participants – willing or not. If we do not take part, actively and constructively, we, the generations that follow us, and life on earth as we have known it, will be victims in a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions for which the future and our own conscience will justly hold us directly responsible.

We may not be the “Greatest Generation”. But we are here now, when the struggle (even more momentous, and facing even more difficult and entrenched opposition and historical conditions than earlier struggles) has become clear and defined, and this is no time for delay and evasion. We must all shoulder the responsibility together and do our part.

OCCUPY EVERYTHING!

We the People must have government that is of, by, and for the people, not government that is by and for the corporations and the super-rich.

Planet Earth, with its air and water and other finite, precious constituents, belongs, always, to the life which inhabits it, and which will depend on it in the future for survival and well-being. It does not belong to corporations.

A corporation is not a person. Money is not speech. Stealing democracy is not tolerable.

Earth is for life and for the future, and for its own sake. It is not for profit or for a few of the greediest and most ruthless “haves and have-mores” to hoard and destroy.

Well, damned if it wasn’t Republican/Koch Party leaders who started the recall ball rolling themselves this year by announcing they were going to recall the 14 Democratic senators who got a backbone when they saw tens of thousands of Wisconsinites spontaneously and persistently protesting the Koch Party scapegoating and attack on the working class. These Democratic senators prevented a quorum and a railroading and thereby let the people have a chance to hold their own public hearings on the draconian bills and to become aware of the autocratic process being employed by Republican leaders, when the Republican leadership refused to hold public hearings or allow consideration of any amendments on the proposed legislation – legislation which none of them had breathed a word about during the election campaigns the previous year.

Democrats, grassroots people and Independents then responded to the Republican intention to recall Democratic senators by announcing that, in return, they would recall the eight Republican senators who backed Walker’s legislation and who were constitutionally eligible for a recall. So the recall fight was on, and Republicans started it, no question about that.

The Republican and tea party astroturf effort to recall Democrats resulted in only three recall elections of Democratic senators. They didn’t even try (or were unable) to get enough petition signatures in all the other districts with Democratic senators eligible for recall.
Meanwhile the Democratic, labor movement, and Independent grassroots effort to recall Republicans resulted in six recall elections of Republican senators in their own districts. That’s a six to three score against the rubes who started the Senate recall campaign, just for starters.

Now, how did the recall elections themselves turn out?
The Republican and Koch Party leaders were unsuccessful in winning even one single recall election against a Democratic incumbent.
The Democratic and Independent grassroots volunteers succeeded in winning two recall elections against Republican incumbents.

So the Republican leaders started this recall fight, without a doubt, last spring.
But the Republican leaders couldn’t even put up a good fight after they started it.
The Wisconsin people who worked on the campaigns won the state senate recall fight in 2011, hands down – six to three in the regionals, and two – zip in the finals.

And now (would you believe it?) the whining Republican poor loser leaders absurdly (a) claim that Republicans won because Democrats “only” defeated two Republican incumbents (while they defeated zero Democratic incumbents)! and (b) say that the recalls that the Republicans themselves started were a waste of our time and taxpayer money, and that they intend to use their control of the legislature and the executive branch (not to mention their control of the Supreme Court) to tie the people’s hands and take away or restrict our right to recall elected politicians in the future. What a crock of horsepucky!

It’s reason enough to be plenty sore at Republican leaders and funders just for being such bad mannered, autocratic, lying aristocrats, and for implying that we the people are as stupid as they must think.

These senate recall elections did not involve the entire state. Recall elections were only held in nine out of 33 districts, which is less than one-third of the population of the state.

Let’s see what Republican/Koch Party leaders think about the people’s right to recall elected officials when the people pull off a badly needed and sorely deserved statewide recall of the suddenly born-again kumbaya-chanting, bi-partisan Governor Walker who got his previous elective office through the Wisconsin recall process, in a particular recall campaign which Republican leaders once cheered, but are now calling unjustified.

Throw the two-faced, fork-tongued bums out!

I began by locating and highlighting certain words in the text (such as “corporation”, “company”, “person[s]”, “citizen[s]”, and “people”). Then I studied the context in which those words appear. My search was productive, with results that were startling, informative, and actually simple to comprehend and to share with you.

The word “Person[s]” appears exactly 49 times in the Constitution with Amendments. The fact that the words “corporation” (or “company”) do not appear even once, is not, by itself, deciding evidence, pro or con, regarding the constitutional theory of corporate personhood. But the omission of any mention of “Corporation” or “Company” in the Constitution is at least noteworthy and telling. And also noteworthy is the complete absence of any indication, implicit or explicit, that the word “Person[s]” (as used in the Constitution) might mean anything other than simply a living, breathing human being, as the word was commonly and universally understood, both now and then. All 49 times that the word “Person[s]” is used in the Constitution are helpful to understanding how those who framed and ratified it understood and employed that word, and how it has been subsequently understood and applied. However, I will focus this essay on just two places that the word “Person” appears that are of critical and deciding importance to this question. I will quote these sentences and refer you to the location in the Constitution where they appear. Considering the key role of this matter in the clear and present danger to representative democracy and to the idea that government should be of, by, and for the people, which we are presently facing in the United States, I urge you to get your copy of the Constitution in hand, so that you can see for yourself the context in which these few sentences appear, and evaluate the argument I will make.

Large numbers of Americans believe that the Founding Fathers intended to provide Constitutional rights only to real, live human beings – NOT to corporations. I do not quite agree. Evidence exists that the framers DID intend to provide certain Constitutional protection to companies/corporations. Our question thus becomes a two-part question. Precisely, (a) “What rights, if any, were spelled out in the Constitution for corporations?” and (b) “Is a corporation legitimately a ‘person’ in the meaning of the Constitution?” There are just two key citations in the Constitution that are importantly relevant in answering these two questions. Here they are:

Article IV addresses relations between the states, relations between the United States and the individual states, and the privileges and immunities of citizens in the states. The third (and concluding) sentence of Article IV Section 2 is the first key citation bearing directly on whether a corporation holds any rights and/or is a “Person”, under the U.S. Constitution.

“No Person held to Service or Labor in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labor, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labor may be due.”

Article IV Section 2, U.S. Constitution.

The impact of this particular sentence was affected some four score years later with the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States. Nevertheless, this sentence is extremely critical to us today in deciding the question at hand. This sentence, exactly as we see it today, was put in the Constitution by the original framers and ratifiers of the Constitution – the “Founders”. [While the effect of this sentence has been modified by the 13th Amendment, this exact wording - this sentence, in original context - is still there in the Constitution. The words have not been excised from the Constitution. They still have real force and meaning today. And they may have potential important future impact. Be advised - Read the words in that sentence again carefully, with that in mind. But, let's return now to the subject at hand.]

Bear in mind that the basic rules of Constitutional law and of common sense include (a) a word that is not explicitly defined in the Constitution [i.e. - "Person"] means what it means in common usage; (b) a word used several places in the Constitution [i.e. - "Person"] does not have different meanings in different places; and (c) two different words used in the same sentence [i.e. - "Person" and "Party"] are not interchangeable synonyms.

In Article IV, the “Person” who has fled one state and escaped into another is a living, breathing human being. Historically, only living human beings (indeed, very many of them – and NO corporations) have been “delivered up” under Article IV Section 2, while a corporation has never been “delivered up” under section 2. But the word of exceptional importance to us in this sentence is paradoxically not the word “Person”. We must focus our attention on the word “Party”, and on the Constitutional difference between a “Party” and a “Person” as made clear in this Article. This single sentence is the only place in the entire Constitution, including all the Amendments, where the word “Party” is employed. And most importantly, both the word “Party” and the word “Person” are carefully used in this single sentence. That is why this particular sentence is so important to us and to future generations.

[The following brief comment does not directly pertain to the subject of my essay, but I cannot forbear from digressing and pointing out at this point that the right of due process is not provided by Article IV to the "Person" alleged by the "Party" to be an "escaping" person. The Constitution summarily provided that such a "Person ... shall be delivered up" on nothing more than the "Claim of the Party" which asserts that "... service or labor may be due". Hmmmm. All the boss-man has to do is point his finger at you and claim you owe him service or labor, and the Constitution says that your days of freedom are over, and you are to be "delivered up", without even a day in court to determine whether the "Claim" is just or not. And make no mistake. That is exactly what actually happened, to alleged "escaped persons", countless times, for many decades, in the United States, in exactly that way. And that sentence has never been explicitly repealed by Amendment or adjudicated by the Court from the Constitution. It's still in there, and it just might be used in the future in regards to the fine print in a contract of some kind that a "Person" or "Persons" (or even their legal guardian!) might sign with a "Party". But - let's return our focus to the subject of whether a corporation is a "person".]

What is a “Party”? A “Party” in Article IV is a legal entity to whom “such Service or Labor may be due”, and which may make a “Claim” that a “Person…escaping…shall be delivered up …” to it. The Founders did NOT say that the “Person…escaping…shall be delivered up on Claim” of the Person to whom service or labor was due. The Founders said that the “Person…escaping…shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labor may be due.” Why did the Founders not simply use again their repeatedly used word “Person” instead of using, this one and only time, the word “Party”? The answer is simply that a “Party” might not be a “Person”. A slave owner, for example, might be (and indeed often was) a business enterprise! Chartered companies traded, bought and sold, imprisoned, worked, and ‘disposed of’ slaves (as well as plantations, livestock, mills, factories, real estate, and other property) at will, for centuries in North America. And the Founding Great White Fathers, in agreeing to this sentence, sought to prevent an alleged escaped slave from successfully asserting her or his freedom before a court in a free state by using the legal distinction between a company and a person. Virtually every slave brought here from Africa was at some time (and sometimes for their entire lives) owned by a company/corporation. Therefore, here in Article IV, the Framers of the Constitution explicitly declared a Constitutional right that they granted to a person or to some other legal entity such as a chartered slave trading company or other enterprise, which might not be a person. And they designated the possessor of that particular right a “Party” – a simple concept and term that is very different and distinct from the word “Person”, but which (like the word “Person”) was widely and commonly and well understood by everyday people, including lawyers, at that time, as well as by everyday people here and now. A “Party” is simply a legal entity, which might mean an actual live human being, or which might mean an artificiality recognized by the state, such as a corporation. The key point here is that a “Party” is not necessarily a “Person”.

With the single remarkable exception of that one horrendous slavery-protecting sentence in Article IV section 2 which we have been discussing, the Constitution did not define any rights or responsibilities possessed by a legal entity (a “Party”) that was other than a “Person[s]”, “Citizen[s]”, “State[s]”, or branch[es] of the federal government. The Framers and ratifiers of the U.S. Constitution left it to the Congress and to the states, to define, charter, enable, circumscribe, and otherwise regulate and define the rights of legal entities such as corporations.

This single sentence in Article IV Section 2 clearly (a) Delineates the only Constitutional right that the Founders described for a “Party“, and certainly intended to be enjoyed by a legal entity such as a corporation, and (b) Explicitly, incontrovertibly confirms the massive evidence, noted elsewhere and by other sources, that the Founders, and the people themselves, never intended to, or did, invest a corporation with the Constitutional rights ascribed to a “Person”.

So far as I know, neither the Supreme Court in its published opinions, nor any legal arguments presented to the Court pertaining to this strange and ill-founded legal theory that a corporation is a person, have ever cited or considered the unambiguous evidence implicit in the concluding sentence of Article IV section 2.

The other key citation in the Constitution bearing on whether a corporation is a “person” under the Constitution is the 14th Amendment, which contains four (and only four) sentences employing the word “person[s]” (all located in sections 1, 2, and 3, which are very brief and to the point). Note that the 14th Amendment is invariably cited by the Supreme Court when it has asserted that a corporation is a person. So pay some attention to the 14th Amendment.

Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2: Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed…
Section 3: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath… as an officer of the United States … or of any state … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same…

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

When you read the first sentence in section 1, it is clear that a corporation can not be, and never has been properly considered a “citizen” (in order to vote, run for elected office, pull jury duty, serve in the military, or otherwise enjoy the “privileges and immunities” of citizens, for example). Only a “person” can become a citizen, and a “person” is a living breathing human being.

When you read the first sentence in section 2, consider carefully the undeniable fact that corporations are not and never have been counted as “persons” residing within a state, or a congressional district, for purposes of apportioning representation in Congress. Article I section 2 of the Constitution mandates this “Enumeration” every ten years, and corporations have never been counted as “persons”, since day one. Is it possible that the U.S. Constitution has been blatantly violated (from 1790 and every ten years, and every national election since) by the Census and by the entire governmental apparatus which was established by the Constitution, in failing to enumerate corporations and other legal entities (other than actual human beings living in the United States) for purposes of apportioning representation in Congress and presidential electors? That would be a simply ludicrous argument to make, and just stating it illuminates with stark clarity that neither the Founders themselves, nor the framers and ratifiers of the 14th Amendment, nor the people themselves, of any generation over the two-plus centuries since the nation’s founding, harbored any intention whatsoever that a corporation be considered a “person” under the Constitution.

When you read the first sentence of section 3, consider whether a corporation qualifies to be a Senator or Governor or other public official. Of course not. A Senator or other public official must first be a “person” – which is a living, breathing human being. Ask, do the corrupted members of the Supreme Court think that a corporation can legitimately hold office as a U.S. Senator or Congressman or President or Justice? (On second thought – don’t ask them that question. In the first place, they won’t answer it – I suppose, on the specious grounds that this question just might come before the Court some day, so they dasn’t talk about it. And when they do answer that question, with a Court decision, if we have anything at all left of our brains and our spirit, we will not like their answer – unless we the people first gain control of what should be our government before they can drop the gavel on their twisted answer to it.)

Could these three sentences opening sections 1, 2, and 3 in the 14th Amendment that explicitly use the word “person” lead any rational, sane person to believe that those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment, or the people in general, had any intention whatsoever that a corporation was to be construed as a “person”, or possessed the Constitutional rights of a “person”?

Historically, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were motivated and ratified, at the end of the Civil War, to end slavery and to ensure that basic rights of the freed slaves be established and protected. The 14th Amendment ensured that slaves and their descendants, freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment, could become citizens, and would have their basic human and civil rights (as “persons”) protected against wholesale violation by potentially hostile, reactionary, and racist individuals, groups, and local and state governments. Only a complete knucklehead or a fully corrupted Court “Justice” could conclude that the 14th Amendment was written and ratified based on the assumption that a corporation is a “person”. Yet that is exactly what the Supreme Court outrageously did without even allowing any argument, and without even publishing a deciding, concurring, or dissenting opinion on the point less than 2 decades after the 14th Amendment was ratified! And that is exactly what the deluded, incompetent, corrupt 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court explicitly did in 2010!

In 1787 and 1791, the Founders had established (in the Constitution and in the Bill of Rights) the mandate that the federal government not violate certain basic human rights. Bracketed between the two defining sentences that begin sections 1 and 2 of the 14th Amendment, each of which clearly define a “person” as a living, breathing human being, and which have universally been interpreted and applied to do so, is the most important sentence of that Amendment. The second (and concluding) sentence in section 1 of the 14th Amendment (ratified some 80 years after the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were ratified), explicitly required, for the first time, that each of the states was also forbidden to deprive any “person” of these most basic human rights of due process and equal protection of the laws. Even the fanciest of corporate lawyers (and despite wearing the cloak of a Supreme Court Justice) cannot get away with saying that the “person” that is guaranteed the rights of due process and equal protection of the laws by the 14th Amendment is not precisely the same “person” that is meant by the three surrounding sentences of that very same Amendment. Even the slickest, crookedest, forked tongue calling himself a “Justice” or a Constitutional law “expert” cannot get away with saying that (only) the “person” referred to in the second sentence of section 1 – the due process and equal protection clause – (in stark contrast to all of the “persons” referred to in the entire rest of the 14th Amendment) just might be a son-of-a-gun corporation. Even simple, everyday people can figure that out – without a lawyer, thank you. And anyone who can’t figure that out shouldn’t be allowed to be a lawyer or a judge – and certainly shouldn’t continue to be allowed to hold office as a Supreme Court Justice!

The 14th Amendment did NOT just “give” citizenship and basic human rights to people of color or ex-slaves. Actually, sections 1, 2, and 3 of the 14th Amendment did not say a single word about color or national origin or slavery. Read it again. Section 1 defined citizenship in the United States for the very first time. That was a very good thing for all of us. And Section 1 mandated, for the very first time, extremely important human rights for ALL of us “persons”, (regardless of our color, age, nationality, creed, or sex, and no matter which of the states we happened to find ourselves in). The 14th Amendment directly benefited and strengthened the rights of each and every one of us. Don’t forget that.

The historical widespread subsequent ignorance, abuse, disdain, and neglect of the 14th Amendment in America, and the grotesque misuse and distortion of the 14th Amendment by the U.S. Supreme Court, resulted in a cruel and hugely ironic injustice. The refusal to apply 14th Amendment rights to real, live people resulted in the tragic, brutal, oppressive century of American apartheid known as the era of lynching and Jim Crow laws. The essential human rights protections described in the 14th Amendment were blatantly and entirely disregarded and ignored until the landmark Civil Rights and Voting Rights Laws were finally enacted a full century later. Instead, those basic rights of “persons”, enunciated in the second sentence of section 1, were almost immediately seized upon by corporate strategists and employed, without justification, to assert that corporations have all the constitutional rights that in fact should belong fully and only to real, live human beings. Besides a century of lynchings and other Jim Crow era human rights violations, this led directly to the gross inequities of the Gilded Age and the protracted tragedy of the Great Depression. In recent decades, even greater reliance on, and extension of the legal hoax that a corporation has the Constitutional rights of a person has culminated in a continuing series of the largest and escalating financial frauds that have ever occurred in the world, with no imprisonment of the primary looters, no recovery of the massive loot, and no regulations or enforcement to effectively prevent it from happening to us again and again. The aberration and travesty continues to this day, and will continue, and worsen, until we, the people, put a stop to it.

Until the people demand and obtain a return to the intent of the Constitution regarding the rights of a “person”, the people will remain, as we currently are, without protection from unbridled corporate power.

In addition to this analysis, or if you harbor any doubts about whether the Supreme Court has been dead wrong in granting to corporations the constitutional rights of a “Person”, I encourage you to inspect the 21 other places where the word “Person” was employed in the text of the Constitution as it was adopted on September 17, 1787, and the 22 other places where it was employed in the Amendments. See if you can find even one use of the word “Person” in which it is conceivable that the word applied or referred to a corporation, or to anything other than a living, breathing human being.

Summarizing – under the Constitution with Amendments , and in particular, Article IV section 2, and the 14th Amendment, sections 1, 2, and 3, clearly:

• A “person” is a living breathing human being, and as such, exclusively possesses all Constitutional rights explicitly described for a “person” or “persons”.
• A “person” working for a corporation has rights, a “person” who owns stock in corporations has rights, and a “person” who is a corporate director has rights. These Constitutional rights are exactly the same rights that any “person” possesses, regardless of corporate affiliation.
• Corporations are legal entities that possess rights that were spelled out in the Constitution for a “Party”. But a corporation (as well as a planet, a foreign government, a forest, etc.) is not a “person”, and certainly does not legitimately possess Constitutional rights guaranteed to a “person”.

W.E.B. Du Bois presciently defined the over-riding problem of the 20th century, at its outset, as the problem of the color line. We Americans can and must, each and all of us, finally erase the adverse effects of that color line. Our task, to help America live up to its promise, has been to obliterate a line – the color line -that so tragically and unjustly divided and still divides people against ourselves. Our task now is to clearly define a very different line – the legal line that distinguishes we, the living people, from them, the un-dead corporate entities.

The defining struggle of the 21st century at the outset of the 3rd Millennium, and underlying all other political issues, will be to establish and defend the line between a person and a corporation. Prevailing in that struggle will be necessary in order to win government that is of, by, and for the people (instead of government that is by and for the corporations and the super-rich), and to value life and our planet before and above property and profits.

This study is inspired by, and dedicated to the brilliance and the spirit of Tecumseh, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Crazy Horse, Ida B. Wells, Joe Hill, W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr, Cesar Chavez, Rosemary Nigro, Dolores Huerta, Dorothy Height, Diane Nash, Rachel Carson, Harriette Parker, Walt Bresette, Roberta Blackgoat, Skip Porter, John Gilman – and so many, many other American exemplars of courage, compassion, and integrity, past and present, famous and not-so famous, who let their own little light shine, let it shine – for us and for the future.

Essays spotlighting the consequences of Constitutional “corporate personhood”:

“Citizens United Inc. v. Federal Elections Commission – the Supreme Court Strikes Out”

http://clydewinter.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/citizens-united-v-federal-elections-commission/

“Governing People For Profits”

http://clydewinter.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/governing-people-for-profits/

“How Wisconsin Legislators Voted on Ending Legalized Bribery”

http://clydewinter.wordpress.com/2008/06/05/how-wisconsin-legislators-voted-on-ending-legalized-bribery/

“Paying for Elections – Low Cost and Up-Front or High Cost and Under-the-Table”

http://clydewinter.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/pay-for-elections-low-cost-and-up-front-or-high-cost-and-under-the-table/

Join the struggle to win government that is of, by, and for the people – not the corporations:

Legally negating the Supreme Court rulings in the cases noted below which have established the legal fiction of corporate personhood and the resulting destruction of government that is of, by, and for the people, will require either (a) a Supreme Court that will fully reverse the terrible precedent it has established, or it will require (b) a Constitutional Amendment, probably by Constitutional Convention. Lesser statutory reforms may, or they may not, contribute some temporary relief or helpful tactical delay. But the only real solution will be to fully rescind the injustice that is now enshrined in Constitutional law.

Wisconsin Democracy Campaign

http://www.wisdc.org/index.php?module=wisdc.websiteforms&cmd=petition

Move to Amend

http://movetoamend.org/

Public Citizen

http://democracyisforpeople.org/

Bernie Sander’s proposed Amendment

http://democracyforamerica.com/activities/726?akid=1599.355771.z_lawl&rd=1&t=2

References:

The Constitution of the United States of America, and Amendments

[The following noted legal cases that were heard by the Supreme Court include only those cases that most importantly advanced and then consolidated the legal theory that under the Constitution, a corporation is a person and money is speech. Cases that tended in the opposite direction (which have been effectively reversed by rulings in the above cases) are not listed here.]

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific RR Corporation 1886
(A corporation is a “person” under the meaning of the 14th Amendment! This case can be seen as starting the ball rolling, and is considered by legal specialists as establishing the cornerstone of corporate law. The exquisite irony of this case is that the crucial assertion that a corporation is a “person” in the meaning of the 14th Amendment, was (a) never permitted to be examined or challenged in arguments presented to the Court, and (b) the legal reasoning behind the assertion was neither revealed nor examined in the deciding, concurring, or dissenting opinions published by the Court, and (c) the assertion itself was made only in the headnotes to the case. This castle of corporate Constitutional personhood has been erected on a foundation of deception, evasion, and absolutely no substance.)

Buckley v. Valeo 1976
(Distribution of money is equivalent to speech, and thus protected under the First Amendment!)

First Nat’l Bank of Boston v. Bellotti 1978
(Corporate personhood means corporations have First Amendment rights!)

Citizens United Incorporated v. Federal Elections Commission 2010
(Corporations can employ unlimited resources to influence elections, political parties, and legislation!)

Arizona Free Enterprise Inc. v Bennett 2011
(Public financing of elections [to counter corruption and improper influence] is ruled unconstitutional!)

There is no credible evidence (and certainly no proof), and there is also no rational explanation of motivation, for the oft repeated theory that voter fraud has recently compromised our elections in the United States. (See the difference between voter fraud compared to election fraud.) Despite heavy pressure on mass media reporters and editors, elected officials, election officials, and appointed federal prosecutors around the nation, and despite constantly repeated distortions and outright lies throughout the last decade, no evidence has been found that any systematic or substantial individual voter fraud has been occurring. In fact, not a single instance of voter fraud that would have been prevented by a government issued photo ID has been discovered in this century in Wisconsin.

The two parties have taken opposing positions on the Photo ID bill because of their assessment of the electoral advantage or disadvantage it would provide to each. But partisan advantage is in no way justification for a law that will not improve election security, but will make voting more difficult for certain demographic groups, than it would for others, and thus suppress their vote. Partisan advantage is also not justification for a law that will cause the expenditure of substantial tax money for no valid reason.

It is understandable why a Party – either Party – would prefer that people not vote who they expect will vote against their Party. But it is an un-American and criminal conspiracy for a Party to use positions of trust and responsibility in the government to knowingly and fraudulently attempt to legislate a restrictive change in voting rights and qualifications that is proven to be unnecessary for any constitutionally legitimate purpose, but that is known to be effective in suppressing the vote among certain demographic populations, for purely partisan political advantage. It is wrong for a Party and its partisan promoters to consistently and repeatedly, publicly disseminate misleading information and lies (aka propaganda) in order to cynically create and nurture a “public perception” of widespread, uncontrolled voter fraud, and then use that mistaken perception as justification for their proposed legislative “remedy” for a problem that does not actually exist. When it is made clear that no voter fraud is occurring that would be prevented or detected by Photo ID legislation, legislators have defended their support for such legislation on the grounds that a “public perception” of voter fraud exists. But they, and reviewing courts should neither use nor accept this argument since (1) no actual fraud exists, and (2) members of the Party sponsoring the bill were active in creating the false perceptions. It is wrong for a Party to seek to prevent a vividly imagined and depicted, but highly unlikely vote fraud by a deranged individual, with an alleged remedy that it is known will result in tens of thousands of eligible citizens whose voting rights have been inconvenienced, discouraged, or otherwise suppressed. It is wrong for the exercise of voting rights by certain groups or individuals to be made more difficult or suppressed merely to alleviate other voters unwarranted perceptions of uncontrolled voter fraud that does not actually exist. Your right to vote unobstructed is greater than my right to not be worried by unfounded fears – especially when those fears were manufactured by self-interested Party propaganda, and the truth was also available to the mass media, the politicians, and the courts, but not as widely disseminated and not so incessantly repeated..

Most citizens eligible to vote in Wisconsin and in the United States can, with no effort or forethought, instantly produce a state picture ID with their current address, year after year – most commonly a driver’s license. But a significant number of fully eligible citizens and prospective voters can not. These include people who do not or cannot drive automobiles, people with limited mobility (such as the disabled and the elderly), and people who have recently changed or lost their residence (such as due to marriage or divorce, mortgage foreclosure, fire, loss of employment, job relocation, educational or training opportunity, illness, homelessness, injury, rental eviction, or simply exercising the right to move anywhere in the country). These people are not usually the majority of Americans at any one time, but they comprise a substantial minority of Americans during any election – Americans that nevertheless have civil rights and voting rights that deserve and demand full protection of the law.

Ask yourself, “What could hypothetically be your motive (or mine, or anyone’s) to misrepresent your identity in order to cast a fraudulent vote?” The only possible motivation would be (a) to attempt to change the outcome of the election with one or even several fraudulent votes that you might cast, or (b) to gain some personal reward from another person for doing so. Law enforcement officers and judicial system professionals know that if intentional crime is suspected, look for the motive in order to find the likely perpetrator. A suspect without any motive is an unlikely suspect. So let’s look closer at those two possible motives:

Let’s start with some common sense.
First, a large percentage of Americans do not even bother voting at all because they believe that, due to corruption and corporate or other “special interest” control of the parties and the elections, their vote will not make the slightest difference in what the government is going to do. This large group feels that casting a vote (legal or not) has absolutely zero power or relevance.
Second, very many Americans who do vote would not bother to vote (at all, or as often) if it was even a little more inconvenient, time-consuming, or costly than it currently is. With longer lines, greater distance, more cumbersome preliminary procedures, fewer Americans will vote. (Is a felony prosecution and conviction inconvenient and costly? You bet.) This second group votes somewhat out of a sense of guilt and reluctant obligation, hoping nobody notices when they miss a particularly uninspiring election. “Who (or why, or what) should I vote for?”, is their perennial, annoyed question. This large borderline group votes, when they do, with about the same enthusiasm and expectation of a positive outcome, as a small boy accompanying his mother to shop for a smock for her in the ladies department and a first suit and tie for him in the boys department.
Third, most of us who do always vote are fully aware of the irony that probably not once in our lives have we personally cast a vote that actually changed the outcome of an election. Still we vote, carefully and invariably, every time. Why? Because we believe in democracy; we believe that every citizen should have and cast a ballot in every election; we believe that representative democracy should bend not to the will of any one voter (even if that voter is me), but to the will of all the people; and we believe that the universal ballot, with one vote per person, is a sacred right and responsibility. We believe that if every citizen does not have and exercise the right and responsibility to vote, that democracy is compromised, and ultimately, if enough citizens do not have or exercise that right, democracy fails, is destroyed. We vote because we believe that democracy can work – but only if most citizens accept their fair share of the responsibility, and only if the mass media provides the people with accurate information that is important to our future, and only if democracy hinges on one-person, one-vote, rather than on overwhelming corporate spending on elections and on “contributions” to the two major parties. We vote because of our quaint allegiance to the chimera of the rituals of democracy. This also large group acknowledges and accepts that although we continue to vote in every election, we will almost certainly live and die without ever casting a single vote that actually, by itself, decides the outcome of a single election contest.

Admittedly, there are certainly some rabid ideologues who, if they knew, with absolute certainly, that they would not get seen or caught by anyone – in other words, if they had an ironclad guarantee of immunity from prosecution or even humiliation or observation, would attempt to commit voter fraud. But it’s almost certain that they would know, up front, that their one, two, or three fraudulent votes would almost surely not make any difference in the outcome. And more importantly, probably not a one of them, rabid or committed to his cause as he might be, and as contemptuous of the sanctity of the principles of democracy as he might be, that would risk a five year prison sentence to personally cast a couple of illegal votes and arrogantly try to exert undue influence.

Ask yourself, “Why would any individual take the time and accept the very real and serious risk of a felony conviction and years in prison, in order to cast an almost certainly inconsequential fraudulent vote?” As far as bribes or favors to induce individual fraudulent voting that would steal an election, the number of votes needed makes the offered reward insufficient to overcome fear of a felony conviction and prison in those tempted to cast an illegal vote. More importantly, the number of such votes necessary to steal elections would require an organized effort contacting, instructing, and supervising a large number of potentially corruptible persons. With current election regulations and procedures, and with oversight by volunteer non-partisan observers, prosecutors, and the media, and with the likelihood of a whistle blower, keeping an election fraud operation on such a scale undetected, would be pretty unlikely, and those doing the actual planning and implementation would be exposed to substantial risk of apprehension and years of prison and heavy fines. It is irrational to believe that sufficient motivation exists for any individual to personally commit intentional voter fraud, or to seek to organize and convince many others to do so, thus incurring the strong risk of exposure and a felony conviction with big fines and imprisonment.

Professional election and demographic analysts have informed both major parties that the people that do not have an “acceptable” government issued photo ID with their current address on it when an election occurs, are significantly more likely to vote for Democratic Party candidates than to vote for Republican Party candidates. Attention, please. Now, we’re talking about real motivation for action. But it’s not motivation for an individual to commit voter fraud by impersonating someone else (which hardly ever, or never happens). It’s motivation for the Republican Party and its clients to try, in various ways, to suppress the vote cast by that minority of citizens. But that is an illegal and unconstitutional violation of voting rights. It’s understandable that the professional consultants and campaign managers advising or leading any Party, in this drastically dysfunctional bi-polarized political environment, would investigate and urge any means possible that promises to give that Party some leg-up in coming elections. Major political parties are like corporations, and have no morality and no conscience, only self-interest. But elected government officials, and candidates for such office, are real human beings that have their personal integrity at stake. They also have an explicit sworn obligation to uphold and defend the Constitution and the laws. This duty they must not shirk, regardless of orders and severe pressure from their Party. No eligible voter (no matter what his or her suspected Party preference or socio-economic status) should be unnecessarily and unfairly inconvenienced or otherwise discouraged from voting – especially for crass partisan political advantage. There is no necessity or legitimate purpose served by this proposed additional burden on voting. The Republican Party is on the wrong side on this issue, and it appears that all of it’s elected officials and candidates either agree with the strategy or have knuckled under to strict Party discipline.

If either of the two major political parties want increased political advantage in elections, they should do so by better serving those citizens that currently do not favor them, rather than by discouraging and suppressing their participation in elections.

Ref.: “Election Fraud of Voter Fraud – Which Threatens Your Vote?”

http://clydewinter.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/election-fraud-or-voter-fraud-which-threatens-your-vote/

This worldwide economic crisis, with its massive, tragic consequences, was intentionally perpetrated by decision makers in huge, transnational financial and insurance and investment and accounting corporations. Neither the government that is supposed to be of, by, and for the people, nor either major party, has taken the necessary steps to:
(a) prevent such an outrageous fraud from happening again,
(b) prosecute the looters, and
(c) recover the loot.
Instead, we have been expected to collectively dig the very crooks (and only the crooks) out from under the collapsed consequences of the disaster they initiated.
We must defeat efforts to scapegoat any portion of the people and force them/us to pay even more for this continuing economic crisis.

Public employees, and people who now or in the future might need a social safety net, and environmental protection programs, are among those particularly targeted as scapegoats by Walker’s budget “repair” bill. But it is everyday working people in general, and the planet we inhabit, which are now threatened by the ultimate objectives of the class warfare of which Walker’s bill is only one, and only a preliminary initiative. The current scapegoats are not to blame for this crisis, and we must not allow them to be forced to pay for it.

Be advised that Walker’s budget “repair” bill was provoked by Walker’s own precipitous action immediately on taking office that granted well over a hundred million in ill-advised tax breaks to corporations and well-to-do individuals. The budget for the coming year (while admittedly facing challenges in the future, but which are not as bad as those facing most other states) was actually balanced before Walker’s welfare handout to the well-connected this winter.

The attack on collective bargaining rights, and on the already badly shredded safety net, and on the environment itself, is evidence that if we allow Walker to plunder the scapegoats currently on the line, we will all become victims – lined up and picked off, one by one. The attack is widening and spreading even now – to all working people, to the entire middle class as well as the poor, to our very planet and the basis on which we build our lives and the future.

A few teachers (and certainly the mass media) seem to think that this is all about teachers who want to protect their rights and compensation. It’s not. Teachers have been persistently excoriated and slandered by elements in our society for years, and it is high time that all of us stand, speak out, and defend teachers (and their union), as a whole, as a profession, as a calling, as individuals. We owe them our gratitude for their service that is so essential to our nation and our future, and is so often performed above and beyond the call of duty. And we, as a community, owe them more than just cheap lip service.

But while teachers, and other directly impacted public employees, currently happen to be on the front lines in this struggle, they are not the only parties to be directly impacted by this bill. This bill would also remove legislative authority over the Badger Care Medicaid program, allowing the Governor’s office sole control of administration, funding and eligibility. This bill eliminates state revenue sharing to local municipalities and to public schools, thus putting Wisconsin school districts, cities, and towns in financial crisis. This bill authorizes the state to take out an additional 200 million in loans in excess of current authorization. This bill, if it passes, will result in the state losing 46 million in federal grants for public transit, as a consequence of prohibiting collective bargaining with transit employees. This bill will also actually allow the state to raid 28 million dollars from existing deposits in the Employee Trust Fund in order to “pay” the mandated future state contributions to that “Trust” fund from now until 2013. And in 2013, public employees will become required to pay the entire amount of contributions to the Trust Fund, with no employer contributions. This bill would allow the no bid sale (privatization) of state assets, including land and power plants.

This conflict will be lost unless we soon recognize that we are all in this together and act accordingly. The corporate National Association of Manufacturers has long had a slogan or motto that goes, “Alone We Are Weak, Together We Are Strong”. Now, if directors of huge, multi-national competing corporations realize and accept the necessity for themselves to join forces for strength, why on earth would everyday working people give any credibility at all to PR spokespersons for these corporations, their media mouthpieces, or their bought-and-paid-for politicians, when they lecture us with forked tongue to, “Be individuals, be self-reliant, you don’t need unions, only incompetent bums need a union. Trust us.”

Never fall for the strategy employed by our enemy to “divide-and-conquer” us, by pitting public vs. private, union vs. non-union, manual vs. mental, skilled vs. unskilled, professional vs. technical, employed vs. unemployed, blue collar vs. white, black vs. white vs. brown vs. red vs. yellow, rural vs. suburban vs. urban.
We are the working class! 90 percent of the people are certifiably, automatically in the working class. Maybe 95 percent. The other five or ten percent – it’s kinda up to you. Which side are you on?
Solidarity forever shall be our remedy for injustice and oppression and attacks on our rights, our families, our communities, our air and water, our planet and our future.
The people, united, will never be defeated.

The courageous editor of the American Freeman was subsequently arrested and imprisoned by federal authorities on a charge of violating the Fugitive Slave Act, which obliged anyone (even a resident of a state that prohibited slavery) to cause the physical capture, and return to her or his “rightful owner”, any person who had escaped from slavery in another state, and had somehow succeeded in getting to a so-called “free” state. But across Wisconsin there was an uproar of outrage, due to widespread and strong opposition to slavery, and especially to the detested Fugitive Slave Act. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered the release of Booth on a writ of habeas corpus, whereupon the U.S. Supreme Court issued a warrant for Booth’s re-arrest. At this point, the Wisconsin legislature, in defense of Booth and of Wisconsin’s perceived interests, approved 1859 Enrolled Joint Resolution 4, which denounced the action of the U.S. Supreme Court as “an arbitrary act of power” and declared it “void, and of no force”. The Wisconsin legislature affirmed the Wisconsin Supreme Court, ordered Booth’s immediate release, and famously asserted that, “the government formed by the Constitution of the United States was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself”. Booth was not returned to prison, and the federal government abandoned its challenge of that 1859 resolution of the Wisconsin legislature, but –

Every single legislator (of the five senators and assemblymen) representing Ozaukee and Washington counties voted against the majority, and against this legislation, which was widely recognized as an anti-slavery, pro-human rights, and (interestingly) pro-states rights resolution.

For centuries, the legal concept of “states rights” (along with “property rights”) has invariably been cited in the U.S. as justification for opposition to efforts to establish, defend, or extend human rights and civil rights. “States rights” and “property rights” were cited as a smokescreen argument against the abolition of slavery in the 1700s and 1800s, and have been employed as a smokescreen argument against enforcement of the 14th and 15th Amendments with regards to civil rights, including voting rights, for the entire 150 years since slavery was technically abolished. Paradoxically, “states rights” happened to have been on the same side as “human rights” in this particular Glover/Booth case, in Wisconsin . That fact smoked out the true pro-slavery and property-rights-trump-human-rights motivations of those who had been camouflaging themselves as harmless but stalwart defenders of the principle of “states rights”.

……………………………………………………………

Abraham Lincoln was an outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery in the United States, which explains why his nomination and election for President was so violently opposed by slaveholders and other defenders of that “peculiar institution”, notably including ALL of the legislators elected by Ozaukee and Washington county voters during the 1850′s and 1860′s (and beyond). Lincoln won election in 1860 and re-election in 1864 as President of the United States, both in the nation and overwhelmingly in Wisconsin – but

In Ozaukee and Washington counties, vote tallies in both elections ran from 3 to 1 to 8 to 1 against Abraham Lincoln.

……………………………………………………………

In April, 1861, Fort Sumter was attacked and taken by secessionist armed forces of the slave-holding states. This was the infamous “first shot” fired in what became America’s Civil War. The Wisconsin legislature quickly passed an emergency measure to materially support and “protect the federal government” from this blatant military attack, and commencement of all-out war. I have not yet learned how the five members of the Assembly from Ozaukee and Washington counties voted on this emergency wartime measure that was overwhelmingly passed, but –

Both state senators who represented Ozaukee and Washington counties were among the eight (out of 28 total senators voting) who voted against this desperately needed emergency measure.

……………………………………………………………….

The only armed insurrection against the United States government during war that has ever occurred in Wisconsin, occurred in Ozaukee County during the Civil War.

Hundreds of insurrectionists were incarcerated at Camp Randall during the Civil War following this failed armed uprising against the federal government. How’s that for “Stand up for America”?

……………………………………………………………

Following the Civil War, three Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which defined the America we now know, were proposed by the Congress and passed to the states for ratification.
All three amendments were overwhelmingly ratified by the states.
The Wisconsin legislature, of course, ratified these three critically important, historical amendments.

The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery in the United States of America.
(96 out of 117 Wisconsin legislators voted to ratify the 13th Amendment.)

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1867, required all states of the United States to guarantee the rights of all persons to due process and equal protection of the law. Prior to this Amendment, the Constitution only required the federal government (not the states, themselves) to guarantee those important rights. (91 out of 111 WI legislators voted to ratify the 14th Amendment.)

The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1869, prohibited any state from denying the right to vote to anyone on the basis of race, color, or “previous condition of servitude”. (77 of 117 ratified.) However –

The state senators that represented Ozaukee County and Washington County voted without exception against ratifying all three of these basic human rights Amendments. No assemblyman representing Ozaukee County voted to ratify any of these Amendments.

Think about this remarkable legislative history. Ask why that truth has been buried so long and so deep.

……………………………………………………………

More Wisconsin residents died in combat in the Civil War than the combined total that have died in ALL other armed conflicts in which the United States has ever engaged. But – as far as I have been able to ascertain,

No civic memorials to the Civil War or to those who died in combat in it, were raised in Ozaukee or Washington counties during the one hundred years that followed that War

How’s that for “Support the Troops”?

……………………………………………………………

I don’t believe the explanation I have heard for pro-slavery, anti-human rights legislative actions, that newly arrived German and Irish immigrants were afraid that freeing the slaves would threaten their jobs and livelihoods. I don’t believe it because such immigrants filled Wisconsin, not just Ozaukee and Washington counties, and the statewide record in the matters noted above stands in stark contrast to the record in Ozaukee and Washington counties, and a few other pockets of reaction. And I don’t believe it because the new immigrants from Europe had braved a dangerous voyage to an uncertain future in an unfamiliar land. They weren’t fearful people, afraid of other people becoming liberated who were even more severely oppressed than the conditions they had suffered from in Europe. My farming ancestors, who settled right here in the year Wisconsin became a state (and probably your ancestors too) were far more unsettled by the thought of moving to a nation in which large numbers of human beings were brutally enslaved, than by worries that a nation where all people were free, with basic rights, would for some strange reason be harder for them to make a living in than a nation where many of those working were not free, and were not compensated for their labor. The historical record of Wisconsin, taken as a whole, proves that is true without a doubt.

As far as those pockets of resistance to a brighter future, those pockets of resistance to advancing and defending basic human rights, those pockets of resistance to the arc of history moving towards justice – they existed here and there, around the entire country. And they persist to this day. You might even live in one of those pockets.

The question we should ask is “Why?” Why were Ozaukee and Washington county legislators and actions so out of step with Wisconsin as a whole, and so lock-step aligned with slavery adherents? It’s understandable (that doesn’t make it right, but it’s understandable) why wealthy white plantation owners in a slave state – and even perhaps the white citizens, in general, of a slave state – would defend, for a while, the history and the continued existence of the brutal, horrible institution of slavery. Their local and regional economy had grown to depend on slavery, and their “culture” and daily lives had become long accustomed to slavery. But that wasn’t the case in Wisconsin. So the question “WHY?” remains, with regards to these anomalous pockets of resistance, here and there.

We know that if a chronic abuser (whether a substance abuser, or spousal abuser or child abuser, or a bully or human rights abuser) does not face the awful truth about himself, and take conscious, effective steps to correct the behavior, that abuser will continue, and get worse, and the sickness will spread and be passed on from generation to generation. That may be as true of entire communities and regions, as it is true of individuals. If we don’t face and examine the truth, but instead, ignore, deny, and rewrite history, and refuse to provide the truth to succeeding generations, we perpetuate harm to them, to ourselves, and to others.

—————————————-

Newly published historical research on the legacy of slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Milwaukee area

Patrick Jones, Associate Professor of History and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska, is the young author of this important, carefully researched, beautifully well written, “Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee“. The Milwaukee County Historical Society awarded it the “Best Book of 2009″, and the Wisconsin State Historical Society presented its 2010 Merit Award to Dr. Jones research. Especially if you make your home in Wisconsin, you oughta have this volume on your shelf (when it’s not in your hands or on loan to someone.)

From now through February 21 there will be a free exhibit of the national traveling exhibit celebrating the 50th anniversary of the “Freedom Riders”, in the Daniel M. Soref Learning Commons at 2311 E. Hartford Ave. in Milwaukee (UWM Libraries). Also on view in the Learning Commons will be an exhibit drawn from materials that are included in the UWM Libraries “March on Milwaukee: Civil Rights History Project“. Don;t miss seeing the release this May on public TV of the American Experience film “Freedom Riders“. It is extremely well done. I learned a lot I that didn’t know about this very dangerous and courageous direct challenge to Jim Crow laws and about specific official collusion with, and covering for, white supremacist terrorism.

As in the rest of the country, the majority in certain regions and communities of Wisconsin support one candidate, while the majority in other regions and communities support another candidate. But three counties (out of 72 total in Wisconsin) this November (and as has been the case in the past) take “first prize” by providing the most lop-sided votes of all, overwhelmingly favoring one party and that party’s candidates.

A simple survey of the unofficial county election results from the Government Accountability Board shows that the margins given to Feingold’s Republican opponent, Ronald Johnson, in the three notorious contiguous counties of Waukesha, Washington, and Ozaukee (immediately north and west of Milwaukee) provided Johnson with MORE than the total margin that put Johnson over the top in the entire state. In simple terms, if voters in Waukesha, Washington, and Ozaukee counties had split 50-50 in this last election, Russ Feingold would have been re-elected by the rest of Wisconsin.

That is also exactly true of the 2010 election for Governor. If Waukesha, Washington, and Ozaukee counties alone had been hotly contested in the election, rather than lop-sided, one-party-rule counties, Democrat Tom Barrett instead of Republican Scott Walker would have been elected Governor.

On a recent historical note relevant to this analysis, remember when Justice Louis Butler was running for re-election to the Supreme Court against mediocre partisan hack Mike Gableman? (Gableman was publicly endorsed by Republican County Sheriff Maury Straub and Republican Caucus Chair Glenn Grothman, in an ugly campaign that exploited unreasoning fear and racism, funded by massive amounts of anonymous corporate “donations” for attack ads.) Again, if it weren’t for the lop-sided vote against Justice Butler from Waukesha, Washington, and Ozaukee counties, Louis Butler would have been easily re-elected to his seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court by the majority of voters in the rest of the state.

Apparently, only 31 percent of Ozaukee voters, 28 percent of Waukesha voters and a startling 25 percent of Washington County voters chose Feingold. (Hell, I got 20 percent running there 2 years ago as a completely unknown Independent with no funding, no campaign committee, no ads, no straight party-line votes, nothing but a four month solo door-to-door campaign with 30,000 handmade leaflets about four issues, against previously uncontested Republican Party leader Glenn Grothman. And Russ Feingold only got 25 percent?! That’s almost beyond belief.)

The population of those three counties, combined, is now just under 11 percent of the population of Wisconsin.
Yet those three counties, alone, effectively countermanded the majority vote of the people in the entire rest of the state for Governor and for U.S. Senator and for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice.
The number of people who voted statewide in November 2010 was only 38% of the 2009 estimated state population.
But the number of votes cast in Waukesha, Washington, and Ozaukee counties totaled 48% of the estimated 2009 population of those three counties.
If the number of votes cast in the other 69 counties had represented the same percentage of the population there as the percentage of votes cast in the three named counties, there would have been about 567,000 more votes cast in the other 69 counties than were cast in November. That would have provided more than five times as many votes as the 105 thousand vote margin that gave Johnson the election over Feingold – a margin which was, in effect, provided entirely by the remarkably lopsided tallies of just Washington, Waukesha, and Ozaukee counties.

It should be obvious to all in Wisconsin, by now, that the political process and the political consciousness of the people within Waukesha, Washington, and Ozaukee counties has an important relevance to all of the people, and to the political process, in the entire state of Wisconsin.
That relevance can only continue to be ignored to our mutual detriment.

P.S. A Personal Note:

There are an awful lot of American citizens who disdain voting simply because an individual’s vote in a democracy (whether the political process is corrupted to the core or not) is not a magic bullet and because voting does not make the voter feel as though he or she individually actually controls the process or the outcome. People often feel that there is no point in “getting involved” or even voting, that their vote and their opinion doesn’t matter, that government is inherently incapable of doing right, and that voting only encourages “them”.

Why are people not comfortable with the fact that in a true democracy, no one person is supposed to decide what happens? In a municipality of ten thousand people (let alone in a country of 350 million people!) you or I can vote in every election, all our lives, and never personally, appear to directly affect the outcome of a single election. That is absolutely not a valid argument against voting. Voting is a collective, community activity, not an exercise of an individual’s power. (Go to the gym and climb in the ring, or get out the chess set, or deal the cards for that.) People who are frustrated by that simple reality and by the genius represented by the concept of “one person, one vote” – no more and no less – can only find satisfaction for their frustration in a dictatorship in which they are the dictator, or in an infantile philosophy of withdrawal which holds that, “Since I can’t control this game myself, and I don’t think I can win today, I won’t play at all”.

You think that thinking clearly about the political process, and then voting doesn’t matter?
That’s why Russ Feingold lost, and that’s going to directly harm you, our country, and those you care about.

At any time and in any place, every good citizen should always vote (regardless of corruption and injustice and disappointment) – unless he or she is committed to, and engaged in, substantive, active revolution.

(2) None of the many nations (or the families that live in them) focused on by the research presented in “The Spirit Level”, have been improved or strengthened since the end of WWII by increasing the overall per capita income and wealth of the nation. Instead, it is by decreasing the wealth disparity between citizens that all objective measures, as well as personal perceptions of well-being are improved. Very importantly, this is true for ALL segments of society. In other words, people who live in a nation with a more equitable distribution of wealth and income, including those in the top quartile of wealth and income within that country, are better off, for all measured variables, than are people (including those in the upper quartile) who live in a country with a wider disparity of wealth and income – even if the latter country actually has a higher per capita GNP! The important economic characteristic defining a nation with a healthier, better educated, stronger, safer, happier population (even among the upper 25 percent in wealth!) is not the wealth of that nation, or its per-capita GNP. The most important and defining characteristic is how narrow is the income and wealth gap between the classes – between the rich and the middle classes and the poor. A nation with more equality is better for virtually everyone in that nation (except possibly the very few super-rich at the very “top”, who might be able to, or think they can, under any circumstances, escape the general adverse consequences of great disparity of wealth and income in a nation.)

(3) The United States now, and for some time, has the deepest and widest gap of all modern industrialized nations of the world in terms of income and wealth distribution.

(4) The United States is now (and increasingly in recent years) ranked at the bottom of all modern industrialized nations by all available peer-reviewed research, in terms of the many variables measuring quality of life.

The point of numbers (3) and (4) above, is that the United States is not an outlier. The U.S.A. is not the exception to the data that proves the rule. We are just the most extreme example of the rule that is established by this very extensive data.

This summary may not surprise every American, and you may be among those who would not be shocked by the evidence presented by this study of the relevant research. But the documentation, and the arguments and conclusions, can only be ignored by those either hoping for or trying to make a constructive difference in our future at the risk of continuing the American descent into a completely corporate dominated plutocracy, governed for the benefit only of the super-rich and the trans-national corporations, and into an increasingly fragmented, divisive, anxious, hoarding nation that is lacking in mutual trust, basic understanding, and sustainability.

“The Spirit Level” is an essential resource and starting point for building solidarity and purpose around our common values.
It authoritatively dispels several disastrous, pervasive myths which continue to afflict us in the United States.

Ref: Social Engineering for Wealth

But it’s always better to figure out how to make the Constitution work, as it is, rather than amending it for every situation that crops up. That’s the wise and proper, legal course to take. Don’t use a D-9 Cat when a D-6, or a shovel, will do the job nicely. Don’t tear up a whole section of the highway to fix a pothole. Don’t amend the Constitution when the problem can be fixed with law, or simple enforcement, under the existing Constitution. That’s being conservative … without being hidebound. And (if you’ll check the historical record) that is also how important changes in our Constitution actually started – with state laws that fixed the problem and proved to be worthy, and later led to Constitutional Amendments when an overriding national consensus was finally achieved.

For example, the Constitution did not initially establish women’s right to vote. The Women’s Suffrage Movement, in mid 19th century, sought to gain the right of women to vote by challenging the denial of that right in federal court, asserting that the 14th Amendment (ratified in 1868) guaranteed citizenship and “the privileges and immunities of citizens”, and “the equal protection of the laws” to all persons – including women. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to recognize and accept this simple, straightforward argument, and ruled against them. The Women’s Suffrage Movement then focused on winning change in state laws and state constitutions. When more and more states had made the necessary changes to allow women to vote, and sufficient political momentum had built, the Congress finally proposed, and the states ratified the 19th Amendment, in 1920. Had the Supreme Court recognized the 14th Amendment argument when it was made, the subsequent prodigious cost and effort involved in amending the Constitution again would have been unnecessary, and women would have won the right to vote in America a full generation earlier.

The Founders wrote a Constitution* with convoluted, indirect ways to elect our Senators and our President and Vice-President. Article I Section 3 of the Constitution stated, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof…” Most state legislatures soon decided to let the people themselves vote, and eventually, the 17th Amendment was ratified, which established that Senators are to be “elected by the people”. The President (as well as the V.P.) was (and still is) chosen by “Electors”. Article II Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution provides that “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress …”. These “Electors” then meet and vote, and their votes are counted, as directed by Article II Section 1, and by the 12th Amendment (which rendered obsolete the entire third paragraph in Section 1).

The Constitution* was amended immediately, with the crucially important Bill of Rights. The Founders themselves thus demonstrated for all posterity how and why the Constitution can and should be amended. And we all know that the Constitution itself was a product of political compromises driven by the circumstances of those times**. For example, the Constitution itself explicitly countenanced and tacitly approved slavery and racial discrimination – until the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were ratified almost a century later.

Even with its imperfections, proposals to amend the Constitution should be carefully considered, and should be rejected if the problems they are meant to address can be corrected by simple enactment of state or federal law that complies with the Constitution. Such is the case with the two very significant problems resulting from our current method of electing a President. Abolishing the “Electoral College”, and instituting direct election by the citizens would correct those problems. But that would require a constitutional amendment, and there is a brilliant, straightforward solution to those problems that does not require changing our Constitution*.

That solution is the National Popular Vote Compact***.

There are two big problems caused by the current way we elect a president in the U.S. First, and most important, is the grotesque distortion of election campaigns that fail to address the issues that are important to real people, and blatantly ignore the vast majority of citizens. Second is the ever-present possibility of a candidate being named President who did not win the vote of the people on “election day”, which has already happened 4 times, including once 10 years ago.

Modern presidential election campaigns focus virtually all their resources and attention on winning votes from a single digit percentage of “undecided” voters in a literal handful of contested “swing states”. The great majority of citizens in the half a dozen or so swing states, and everyone in the rest of the states, have become irrelevant bystanders in the presidential elections, ignored by the campaign strategists of both major parties, and by the mass media. And unless you are one of those few people from one of those few winner-take-all states that are still “up for grabs” according to the party pollsters, the election campaign isn’t about you and ignores you. The issues being discussed are ones that make you sick, not the ones you care about. The National Popular Vote Compact*** will guarantee that every voter in every state will be politically relevant in every presidential election and that every vote will be equal.

If you are like most Americans and you believe that the President and Vice President should be elected by the people, with every citizen’s vote counting the same, then you don’t want to see a repeat of those previous elections in our history (including the first election in the 21st century!) where the guy selected to be President actually failed to win the vote of the people. Similarly, in the second election of the 21st century, if just a few thousand votes in one state (Ohio) had gone the other way, the person that was selected by the Electoral College would not have won the presidency, despite having gotten some three million more popular votes.

The National Popular Vote Compact takes care of both those problems. It solves these problems while fully complying with the Constitution, and without amending the Constitution. What could be simpler – and better – than that? Amending the Constitution is the hard way, and it opens a can of constitutional law worms. The National Popular Vote Compact is the right way to initiate this long overdue change.

Both nationwide and in Wisconsin, over 70 percent of citizens support the National Popular Vote Compact. At the beginning of 2012, the states that have already enacted NPV represent 49 percent of the electoral votes necessary to activate the Compact and elect the President and Vice President by the majority of the national popular vote. Visit the NPVC web site at http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/, first, to learn more about it, and then to help the grassroots effort to put the Compact into effect by urging your state legislators and Governor to support it.

References:

* Original text of the U.S. Constitution, with Amendments: http://constitutionus.com/

** “… the Constitution which we now present is the result of a spirit of amity, and of that mutual deference and concession, which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable.”
[From the Letter of Transmittal accompanying the proposed Constitution submitted to the United States in Congress assembled, signed by George Washington, September 17, 1787.] ****

*** Explanation of the National Popular Vote Compact It’s all here for you:
Select from a 1-sentence description, 3 sentences, 1 page, an 8-page memo, or a 620-page book.

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/pages/explanation.php

**** Note: One “peculiarity of our political situation” in 1787 was that millions of people in what then became the United States were slaves and people of color, millions more were women, and more millions were men who did not own real estate. Each of these classes had distinctly different status, but none were considered to have the same rights as did white men who owned property. One “deference and concession” to this “peculiarity” was that the Constitution proposed and ratified unanimously in 1787 (while it did not grant the rights of citizenship and of voting to these other classes of persons) actually counted those classes for the purpose of apportioning representation in the federal government in the House of Representatives and in the Electors who selected the President. The result was that the more women, slaves, and others without property there were in a Representative District or a state, the greater was the relative electoral power held by the propertied men who resided there. It was not, by a long shot, “one person, one vote” in those days. That and other principles of democracy could only be established and realized by protracted struggle, by individual, collective, and state initiative, and by Constitutional Amendment. The abolition of slavery, and the civil rights (of women, people of color, and white men who did not own real estate) to vote, hold office, and be citizens was first accomplished in certain states. But as far as our U.S. Constitution was concerned, it was the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery throughout the United States. And, believe it or not, there were no rights specifically and exclusively granted by the U.S. Constitution to a “citizen of the United States” (except the right to hold office as a Representative, Senator, President or Vice-President) until the very important 14th Amendment was ratified. Until then the definition of “citizen of the United States” was up to the individual states, and it was up to the whim of each state whether to guarantee any person the right of due process and equal protection of the law. The 15th, 17th, 19th, 23rd, 24th, and 26th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution explicitly defined certain very important voting rights of citizens that did not exist according to the original Constitution. It was those Amendments that established (among other things) that voting and other civil rights could not depend on whether a person owned property, or was a white male. The U.S. Constitution has never been, is not now, and can never be limited in scope or application to exactly what the Founders intended in 1787. The Founders, after all, were men born and bred into, and profiting from, a “political situation” where women had no legal rights, and human beings were considered property to be disposed of however their legal owners saw fit. As times and the “peculiarities of our political situation” change, the Constitution changes.