Presented by the American Friends Service Committee, East Central Iowa Move To Amend, and Iowa City Climate Advocates This presentation features Greg Coleridge, a principal of the national Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD), recipient of the national Common Cause Public Service Achievement Award, member of the American Monetary Institute, coordinator of the Move to Amend Ohio Network, and Director of the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Description from the event website: During our nation’s history, movements have achieved amendments to the U.S. Constitution to gain recognition of groups of people as citizens and voters. Abolition of slavery was the 13th Amendment; then the equal treatment amendments for newly freed black men (14th & 15th), and the 19th amendment that grants women the right to vote. During the time of rapid industrial growth, progressive and populist groups worked to achieve legislation limiting child labor and prohibiting waste products being incorporated in food On the dark side of our history are the actions taken to turn corporations from servants chartered by states for a limited purpose -- which had to benefit the residents of the state -- into the powerful behemoths that they are today. They have achieved this massive increase in power through rulings of the Supreme Court which first declared the corporation a partner in a business contract, which states had no right to regulate. Then corporations were allowed to claim the rights of natural, human beings as acknowledged in the Bill of Rights. Because corporations now have more rights than we humans, it is very difficult for us to protect ourselves from them. One situation not widely recognized in the progressive community is the loss of the U.S. Government’s right to create money which Congress bestowed on the Federal Reserve. The difference in the two situations is that with the Federal Reserve, interest is owned on the money the Federal Reserve creates. It is more widely recognized that when corporations use the water, land, and air as a dump for their toxic waste products, they are removing the possibility of a healthy life for us and our children’s children. When governments sell off highways, parking ramps, public buildings and lands (like the Post Offices throughout the country), they are appropriating the value of those assets. When governments privatize social services (public schools, the military, Medicaid, Social Security, prisons) they are hollowing out the nation’s resources. Possibly the most direct examples of hijacking are our government’s permitting gambling on derivatives and legislating that the gamblers will be able to shift their losses to bank patrons and taxpayers Today we are exploring some of these cases and sharing ways some groups are wo
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