Boston.com: Needham Town Meeting Calls for Constitutional Amendment

Boston.com: Needham Town Meeting calls for constitutional amendment on campaign spending

Lois Sockol, who spoke at Town Meeting in favor of Article 23

Many argued that though the article ostensibly deals with a national issue, the issue of possible political corruption could have local effects.

“None of us, none of us, unless we hide under a rock, can not be influenced by the electoral process and the people in power,” said Lois Sockol.

Citizens United, she said, tore the fabric of American democracy.

“Big money has a powerful fist, more powerful than any individual.

Nowhere in the equation of big money and the individual is there basic equality.

By this very inequality, unlimited contributions undermine the basic American creed,” she said.

“We are a government of the people. By the people. And for the people.”

Corporate Free Speech Trumps Local Self-Determination

Earlier this month, a federal court declared a Worcester regulation limiting tobacco ads (enacted for community health reasons) unconstitutional, on the grounds that corporate free speech has been expanded to include advertising. 

“Tobacco companies have a constitutional right to communicate with adult consumers through retail advertising and this court appropriately recognized that,” said Murray Garnick, a senior vice president at Altria Client Services, a subsidiary of Philip Morris’ parent company. “We will continue to vigorously defend this right when it is challenged.”

—Boston Globe, May 2012

‘We the People’ can Overturn ‘Citizens United’

There are only two ways a Supreme Court ruling can be overturned.  The court can do so in a new case, or the people can do so by ratifying a Constitutional amendment, as we have done at least six times before.

Given the corporate-friendly approach of the current Roberts court, we cannot wait for the Supreme Court to correct Citizens United.

–Jeff Clements and Rep. Jim McGovern, in the Boston Globe, January, 2012