Saturday, May 28, 2011

Not a Person In Any Way, Shape Or Form

Back in my days of political activism, the chief question my comrades and I faced was: Which issue do we start with? Some people thought political reform was where we needed to commit our energies. Others pointed to the military-industrial complex and the ending of our current wars. Still others pointed to the environment, peak oil and climate change.

Each of these issues represents a worthy cause. A person couldn't go wrong selecting any of them or many other issues I didn't listed. However, in my estimation, the one issue that undergirds almost every issue one can think of is the bestowal of human rights to corporations. If we could defeat this one bizarre notion, it would make it that much easier to tackle almost anything else.

Of course, the question of how to strip corporations of the rights of humans is no easy task. The US Court system continues to grant them more and more human-based rights everyday. For example, on Thursday,
A judge has ruled that the campaign-finance law banning corporations from making contributions to federal candidates is unconstitutional, citing the Supreme Court's landmark Citizens United decision last year in his analysis...
But we all know that a corporation is an artificial entity created BY humans. Corporations do not exist in nature. They don't have a face, brain, heart, lungs or skin. While I personally doubt that we humans have souls, there can be no doubt -- based on their behavior -- that corporations certainly don't possess them!

It seems that the ONLY place that a corporation is said to be on par with a human being is in our system of laws which are created BY humans too.

For me then, this is the core issue we need to address. As long as corporations enjoy the same rights as each of us, we're sunk. They are bigger than we are. They are richer than we are. And they are far more powerful than we are.

Some days it feels like trying to slay Godzilla with a peashooter!

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