i'm seven saxon for tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight the big picture the many city that was occupy wall street in zuccotti park is now a shell of what it used to be but the ninety nine percent movement seems determined to prove that maybe location isn't everything and protesters all across the country to municipal elections and now lawmakers on capitol hill americans are taking a stand against corporate personhood so are the days of treatment for the nation's most powerful corporations coming to an end.

you need to know this zuccotti park remains occupied at this hour but who knows how long it can go on that's because after yesterday's of fiction in court ruling forbidding occupy wall street demonstrators from bringing any tents tarps or camping gear into the park there are serious doubts as to whether or not the occupation can continue especially as the weather gets colder without tarps and tents then setting up medical centers setting up kitchens setting up libraries setting up communications centers finding warm places to sleep all that stuff that made occupy wall street a self-sustaining community is gone. but even though the future of the zuccotti park occupation is in limbo it's clear the entire ninety nine percent movement has gone well beyond lower manhattan yesterday occupy d.c.

marched in the offices of brookfield properties and the owners of zuccotti park to protest their involvement in tuesday morning sedition and then occupy baltimore got in the game to mike checking a speech last night by bush's brain karl rove that year six should or should. i say to said it. was. i was. it was i was. lying i was your i was. was that was karl rove asking demonstrators who gave them the right to occupy america so will someone please forward a copy of the first amendment to mr rove stat also expect

a lot more of those my checks to hound one percent of colleges like karl rove in the future. elsewhere eight patriots with occupy charlotte were arrested outside of a bank of america protesting the bank's ties to the dirty coal industry in tennessee occupy nashville demonstrated outside the corrections corporation of america the largest private prison company in the world to protest how c.c.a. profits off throwing more and more and more people in prison and a judge in boston today gave occupiers a temporary restraining order against the city to prevent any police crackdowns in the near future the point is the movement continues with or without zuccotti park as for what direction it goes now i want to turn it over to my guests joining me now from new york is kristen gwynne freelance writer and editorial system with alternate and here in the studio digital money reporter and blogger with think progress the person welcome. kristen i want to i want to start with you.

what's the what's the mood in zuccotti park right now how are people adjusting to these new rules against camp you're going to the occupation still go on indefinitely without them well the occupation is everywhere and more than occupying the party park or liberty plaza the movement is occupy our minds and our hearts and our narrative right now so i think that the movement can i absolutely go on without you cut a park what makes it sad is that to have a space and a physical space where people can need to discuss radical ideas and form their own democracy getting rid of that is that it would be a challenge to the movement but i don't necessarily know that they can stay there or they can't find another space or figure something more creative about how to get around it right if you've been around to zuccotti park today at all. i haven't been there today i talked to people who were there earlier today and i went there

yesterday but plants continue to keep occupying the area i guess regardless of the fact that it's not for any any camping gear tents and. there have been for a long time ideas to occupy other spaces so i think that right now those might might get some more weight but for now i gather they want to stay and there are a lot of people who are absolutely dedicated to remaining there that i want to turn it over to you. we just showed we had mike checking. the. speaking about. is this going to become a regular thing i mean we saw the same thing happen at a chamber of commerce that last week we sold something out like that happened at a bachmann speech we saw something like that up on eric cantor speech is this is this a new plane of action here to make one percenters afraid to have public speaking engagements yeah i mean it's really fascinating i think the first one percent i

really remember this happening to scott walker it was actually some people a chicago who sort of rated a scott walker but stood outside their piece of the protests and left and i really you know that video exploded on you tube because what we were seeing was the one percenters actually being shown to their face you know the sort of the voice of the ninety eight percent of people who were taught by the economy were being hurt by their policies and i think this is actually a really strong evolutionary path for the ninety nine percent to actually go and confront these people i mean if they particularly when people like mayor one percent michael bloomberg going to kick them out of the space they would occupy me so what's with karl rove asking them you know who gave you the right to occupy america just how out of touch it would also i guess karl rove just momentarily just forgot about the bill of rights when he was arguing or something when it's interesting he he sort of cut his teeth manipulating college republican elections back when he was a college student so i'm sure he likes this sort of banter back and forth and he said a lot of honestly really silly thing they say we are the ninety nine percent he said it back you are now it i guess somebody else and he says so in sort of income table

but no he responded in sort of the worst way that came up being very childish honestly. made no sense at all kristen there were big plans for tomorrow for the two month anniversary to march down wall street and shut down the new york stock exchange what do you know about those plans i mean are they still going forward after the eviction and you think it's going to be even bigger we saw what happened in oakland after they cracked on their plan to crack down the occupation there there was a lot on rest in the streets where you think is going to happen tomorrow. cars going to be huge. during the eviction and we had gathered at foley square one of the things that people were talking about a lot of enthusiasm was let's take this and make thursday here and that's what's going to happen it was already going to be huge there unions coming out in support there's this student walkout and there's events planned for the whole day and they're getting really creative and they're letting people share their stories and

trying to be a very symbolic aso because they're going to be all over the city occupying all different neighborhoods so it's going to huge and it's going to be everywhere and we'll be watching so from the action to see an action you wrote about yesterday in cleveland occupy cleveland helped a woman who was facing foreclosure save her home is that right yeah it's fascinating this woman actually she had three kids and her husband had left her and he was really providing meaningful support that she was going to be evicted so what she did is he she reached out to cleveland she actually used twitter to contact them and before you know it they popped up on her on her front yard with their tents and signs in the side to stay there and. actually respond to that and gave her an additional thirty days thanks to the pressure that occupy cleveland right and you know there's been similar cases out in california is what is in atlanta and you know what we're seeing is that the sort of the protesters are going to be younger people or students are actually reaching out to a lot of people in middle america who are really hurting and showing that you know

they are their allies there are just you know radical fringe but they're people who actually mean care about the meaningful parts of americans' lives and i think this tactic is only going to spread with a success that's been having it seems to be another successful offshoot action from occupy wall street which is promising especially considering the election and zuccotti park yesterday so kristen from the my checking were supposed to be occupying homes so we have people marching to d.c. from new york. gawker today had a story about how some of the people who got kicked out of zuccotti park last night are now occupying an office and are kind of working in an office right now so in the thirty seconds or so that we have left what's what's the next piece here in occupy wall street do you think. expansion i think that occupying foreclosed homes is a great opportunity here as well as starting squats throughout the city there's plenty of unused space that's just sitting there being wasted that they could take advantage of if they figure out a way to be creative and get around the car you know good point and we'll be watching christine thanks a lot of keep up the great reporting said thanks

a lot. as a result of yesterday's crackdown more than two hundred demonstrators were sent away in handcuffs that brings the total number of occupying patriots arrested around the nation in the last two months to four thousand and forty nine at the same time zero banks toure's have been arrested for their high crimes on wall street that caused the financial meltdown not only bats prosecution for financial fraud in general is it a twenty year low in america and i doubt that's because banks are suddenly better. bloomberg made a mistake last night he raided the wrong place instead of zuccotti park he should have sent his riot cops to evict goldman sachs. coming up on the big picture the occupy wall street movement has made corporate personhood a household term so now that we have the people's attention where do we go from

here our jess will answer that question in just a moment. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it so that you can may who can you trust no one who is in view with the overall mission would see where we had a state controlled capitalism school sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

occupations across america share for the most part one coming to male strip corporations of their personhood even though no president no congress has ever passed a law saying corporations are people in the us have the same rights and legal protections as people corporations somehow became people just ask mitt romney. corporations are people my friend we can raise taxes that of course they are everything corporations are also they go to the people so why do you think it goes so how did this happen my friend the answer is the supreme court tom wrote the book

on the whole story it's called on equal protection and it turns out that corporations claiming personhood rights goes all the way back to the hundreds but it was last year's citizens united supreme court decision but to corporate personhood to the extreme i really meant yes corporations are people and that money is speech the supreme court gave corporations unlimited power to spend as much money in our elections as they wanted to as in open up the corporate coffers politicians artificially alter sales and guess what happens. so here we have a graph showing total outside spending by election cycle and these are all midterm election cycles starting with nine hundred ninety ninety four ninety eight two thousand to two thousand and six and here we have how much money was spent in total but as you can see it's pretty meager amounts all the way up till two thousand six hundred just a few million then citizens united happens and here's what happened to the election spending in two thousand and ten boom all the way up just like that tripled to just under three hundred twenty million dollars in outside spending this is the problem

occupy wall street knows it's a problem and now so do members of congress democratic congressman james mcgovern from massachusetts just introduced an amendment that's what he's calling the people's rights amendment to strip corporations of their personal as congressman mcgovern said corporations are not people they do not breathe they do not have children they do not die in a war they are artificial entities which we the people creates and as such we govern them not the other way around. so with people in the streets and amendments like this in congress how much longer will corporations enjoy their personhood rights steve probably joins me now he's a national board member with progressive democrats of america associate fellow with us new institute for policy studies and political advisor to the group free speech for people steve welcome thank you very much great to have you on so here i find

this really amazing a few years ago you much no one was talking about corporate personhood i mean there were a few voices talking about it at least in the mainstream it wasn't really in issue here and then after citizens united happen in two thousand and ten things look pretty grim but since then and i would argue occupy wall street has a lot to do it do with it this corporate personhood issue has just jumped to the forefront i mean we we have members of congress now introducing amendments i mean do you think it's because of occupy wall street will go to cause this i think i can buy wall street is definitely expanded the space in which is conversation happens the citizens united ruling opened the door but occupy wall street has changed the conversation there's no question about it you might be interested the fact that progressive democrats of america has been doing brown bag vigils every month once a month a congressional office today we did a series of the super committee members offices including in massachusetts and

months ahead and pennsylvania and they were good crowds these i give part of the credit here dr paul was treated on this and i think the reason that congressman mcgovern was interested in doing this bill the people's rights and meant was that he understands there's a new space and he understands that citizens united as you said has created a very tilted vicious playing field where the one percent will dominate the ninety nine percent even more than it used to and of course the field was already grossly unfair and tilted toward. all right it's a huge problem and we saw. just a few weeks ago we saw a group of democratic senators introduce a different amendment. to overturn citizens united by letting congress and by letting states regulate how much corporate money is said to be going to grow in our in our election cycle. so we have that amendment out there but that amendment doesn't say anything about stripping corporations of their personhood so where does

that amendment kind of fall short and how do we i guess coalesce the people who support that amendment behind congressman mcgovern's amendment that goes a step further and says you know not only not only should we be regulating the spending but we need to address corporate personhood too so we think that free speech for people and progressive democrats america both we think you need to do but you have to address the money is speech question because the core years ago in buckley diva layo messed that up but the egregious ruling that thom hartmann has taught so many of us about starting in one thousand nine hundred six where the headers that was mean part of the ruling made a corporation a person and twisted the fourteenth amendment. that needs to be addressed in a fundamental way and that's what congressman mcgovern so mehmet is designed to do and so we think senator udall as bill congressman mcgovern bill or complimentary

bill they run we have to do both we have to do something along the lines of what senator udall is asking for and we definitely have to do something along the lines of what jim mcgovern is asking for because. everybody in the world knows that a corporation is not a person i mean no matter whether your left going the right way and it's called and said you've heard of that eighty six percent court it's just completely mind boggling that over a century of laws said that is a precedent but you know tom wrote a book on it and wrote the book people people should read it because it really will blow your mind but so over the last few weeks we've seen referendums passed in boulder colorado right calling for an amendment to strip corporations of a person we just saw another referendum passengers all of montana to do the same thing so how do we kind of i mean these are these are very small steps when it comes but they're still steps forward how do we build on these these i guess smaller victories and you know get a nationwide get the nation behind this to pass

a twenty eight constitutional amendment to do this well there are a series of suggestions if you're interested you can go to free speech for people dot com and you can check out the language of the amendment and some of the things you can do the key thing about the missoula in boulder votes which groups like move to a man played a key role in. they were by big margins and there was a it was like we had vast sums of money this was just something that people voted on when we've done talent halls in the new england they passed with overwhelming vote people get this right away we're going to continue and we're working with a group of people people for the american way common cause not everybody agrees on the details of all the amendments but we all agree on the need for a meme instant deal with this is united and we're moving ahead with having people express themselves in various ways outside of washington to make it clear to their

representatives at every level that we want a constitutional amendment to deal with this and frankly as you know the court has forced this because they made the ruling in such a way that the only real way to deal with this is the constitutional amendment they wore the first amendment in the citizens united ruling they worked it back in eighty six they're essentially amending the constitution with these bad rule but they're not going through the proper process that the constitution so we have to do it we're going to do it in we're taken it to new mexico we talked there's groups organizing in montana and colorado obviously watch it all around the country to get people to come back and bring it to washington and you mentioned the courts that's probably for another day but we've got to pick some about supreme court steve is going to have no say things are right. whether tea partiers in other

republicans who are against crony capitalism realize it or not any corporate personhood will solve a lot of their gripes about the government too tom weighed in on this issue recently and here's what i have to say. in two thousand and eight the nation wanted a revolution and they elected barack obama a man who promised to quote fundamentally change the country and if he was elected i'm not talking about a violent. a revolution in the sense that the old ruling elite and the old economic powers that be had pretty much worn out their welcome after crashing the economy over our country and the planet and there was a broad consensus among the people in the united states that it was time for some new ideas some major reforms it was time for the country to take a big step forward just that just as it had done in previous revolutions be it the civil rights movement franklin roosevelt's new deal or the progressive era of teddy

roosevelt. the man who wrote the declaration of independence sparking the first american revolution thomas jefferson wrote repeatedly about the need for generational revolutions he said no society can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual law the earth belongs to the living generation they manage it and consequently may govern as they please its every constitution in every law it naturally expires at the end of thirty four years he said naturally he's talking about as in a law of nature so after those thirty four years roughly the span of time that it takes for one group in power to get old and step down a new generation comes to power and governs as it sees fit and then a revolution occurs but jefferson also wrote about what happens if these sorts of revolutions these periodic transformations are stopped or blocked he said if this avenue be shut to call of sufferance it will make itself heard through that

a force and we shall go on as other nations are doing in the endless circle of oppression rebellion reformation and oppression rebellion reformation again and so on forever. barack obama's revolution never materialized at least not in the first three years of his presidency for a number of reasons career republicans. crisis paralysis in the senate or the use of the filibuster fox news is tireless efforts efforts to sabotage the obama agenda is just a few of the reasons why jefferson's generational revolution never materialized and as jefferson warrant it that avenue to revolution is shut off. that it will make itself heard through force. we're seeing that today in the streets of oakland the nation pregnant with revolution is ours is today doesn't just give up but the

real question is what kind of revolution does the nation want. what's the real change people are looking for. since president obama took office two reveller revolutionary groups or ideologies have sprung up just in the past three years the tea party and the occupy wall street. and more on the surface they may seem like they are about bringing about completely different things and good revolutions a closer look reveals that there is a common thread. i saw this chart on democratic underground today and it breaks it all down this is pretty pretty straightforward and pretty amazing actually the actually the the kind of commentaries of the most important this pisses off people who protest that occupy wall street is that corporations are too big you know care about average people etc and corporations are ripping us off ok this of says the people who support the tea party government is too big they don't care about the average person and working people are suffering from the government's taxing too

much but if you put it together. he end up with corporations donate huge sums of money to government officials and the government officials do what the corporations want and the corporations have more money to government officials and then the government officials do it the corporations route and at the very end people are left out totally this should upset both groups. and i would submit to you that this is right this this right here in congress is all of this is really what this what today's revolution is about whether it's the occupy wall street revolution whether it's the the tea party revolution or whether it's frankly the election of two thousand and eight of president obama which i believe was a revolutionary moment. is that the people are saying on both sides whether rather they're concerned about big government or whether they're concerned about big corporations it's too big they're in bed with each other there's too much going on like this the idea that corporations are people and money is speech is

contaminating america the idea that government should be in our face it you know with the patriot act for example is not america frankly so what do we do where do we go from here it's all about ending corporate personhood the idea that corporations are people and money is speech that is the cornerstone of the next revolution america the supreme court enshrined corporate personhood into law way back in the eighteenth eighty's so according to jefferson's thirty four year long expiration date on laws in the constitution repealing corporate personhood is long overdue and it's at the top of the list of where occupy wall street is trying to do and where the tea partiers know it or not it's the real reason why they were in the streets back in two thousand and nine if you kick the corporations out of government then you end capitalism and are like the representatives have to work for we the people again as our founders envisioned. so how do we do it. it won't be easy and in corporate personhood the good news is that the hard part is

already out of the way people are organized they're in the streets they're pressuring congress on both sides just ten years ago when i wrote the first major book on corporate personhood an equal protection how corporations became people and how you can fight back no one even knew what corporate personhood meant but now it's in the forefront of the debate in america so with the with with people aware of the real problem corporate personhood it's time to undo all this damage the supreme court has done with the doctrine of corporate personhood and the only real way to do that is to amend the constitution the amendment can and should be very simple and just say the corporations are not people and thus not entitle the constitutional rights and that money is not speech and so corporations and rich people can't rule the nation any longer but the power goes back to we the people. are operations are up people die from it after the next revolution that will be the

law of the right. it's not just for breakfast anymore dainties foods has a simple motto everything should taste like big jim that's why the company has produced bacon salt because man is known as bacon is it can live own and even bacon flavored globes but the company move finely crossed the line with. bacon flavored lube you're be right they came flavored lupa in two thousand and nine as an april fool's joke the company pretended to release bacon loot calling it the mcrib of sex but over three thousand people then take it as a joke and actually ordered the bacon looper you know who you are so now jane d. has the liberty and for just under twelve bucks you can lather yourself up and bacon lube and get porked. coming up if you say tomato

i say tomato republicans say vegetable after the break why what republicans are doing to nutritional standards on school lunches is actually the least of our worries and why another vote slated for later this week could be doomsday for our economy. and what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions it's completely breakthrough that sort of if you may who can you trust no one who is human deal with the global mission we see where we had a state controlled capitalism it's called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.