Regardless of the seemingly provocative nature of the headline (after all, the Abolitionists and the Suffragists, for instance, were ‘defying’ the Constitution through their work as well), this is certainly one way of approaching the core issue of the complete corporatization of our politics and culture. Simply make the participation of these fictional entities in our politics illegal, just like the original American revolutionaries intended (and which was one of the major purposes of the American Revolution).

More than 100 largely Republican municipalities have passed laws to abolish the constitutional rights of corporations, inventing what some critics are calling a “radical” new kind of environmental activism. Led by the nonprofit Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, they are attempting to jumpstart a national movement, with CELDF chapters in at least 23 states actively promoting an agenda of “disobedient lawmaking.”

It would be more appropriate to refer to the actions of those described here in this article who are resisting corporate colonization of their communities as defying not so much the Constitution as much as the corporate-supported legal interpretations of the Constitution. After all, the word ‘corporation’ is not to be found anywhere in the text at all, yet a long history of the work of highly-paid lawyers serving these fictional entities seems to have been able to arrange for our modern legal system to behave like it was written entirely for their benefit.

A commentary posting to the article by David Lewit does a good job of making some important points along these lines as well….

Thanks, Channing, for writing up environmental defense with local folks taking responsibility to drive out the chief offenders—corporate dumpers. But aren’t you going a bit overboard by saying, in your opening line, that citizens are “declaring the Constitution null and void”? It was not the Constitution that gave corporations the rights of persons, but rather a clerk of the Supreme Court who in 1886 wrote the introduction to the Court’s ruling in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company. He identified the Company as a legal person, and the Justices let that stand as they nullified a law that took corporate property without “due process of law”, as if the corporation were a person protected by the Fifth Amendment. And thereafter corporations used the “personhood” argument and courts thereby often ruled in their favor. The Constitution never defined “person” in that way, and never uses the concept or word “corporation”.

The money shot line from this piece, and from the whole thrust of the work of CELDF and all rights-based organizing, comes from historian Richard Grossman (who has a number of postings you can find here on USTV Media)….

Abolitionists in the early 19th century could “have ended up demanding a slavery protection agency ˜ you know, the equivalent of today’s Environmental Protection Agency ˜ to make slaves’ conditions a little less bad,” Mr. Grossman said in a 2000 speech comparing corporations to slave owners. Instead, “they denounced the Constitution” which permitted slavery at the time “and openly violated federal and state laws by aiding runaway slaves.”

Just as judges and juries slowly changed their minds about the slave trade, Mr. Grossman said, today’s public eventually will come to see corporations in a different light.

Through decades of work, abolitionists “built a political movement, with the clout to get their three constitutional amendments enacted,” he added, referring to the 13th through 15th amendments.

As someone who has participated in a number of the Democracy Schools, I highly recommend them for anyone and everyone interested in expanding one’s understanding of the situation we are confronting in the ongoing struggle for a more just and responsibly democratic world, and for providing a new range of insightful and necessary tactics in that struggle.

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Find out more about the work of CELDF and the Democracy Schools.