on the anniversary of the supreme court's crazed citizens united decision the man behind this movement to put an end to the bizarre idea that corporations are people and money is speech david cobb joins me for tonight's conversations with great minds and from wisconsin to the halls of congress and our nation's heartland american citizens have had quite a week standing up for democracy to touch and how corporations were dealt a big blow this week and asked the signals a new wave of public backlash is in tonight's big picture rubble. today at over one hundred fifty cities across america demonstrators rallied in front of federal courthouses and even in front of the supreme court here in washington d.c. to protest the two year anniversary of the citizens united decision this day of action encourage people to fight back against the radical ruling of the supreme court the declared corporations are people and money is speech

a ruling that has put our democracy up for sale to the highest bidder i had the honor of speaking at the rally in front of the supreme court earlier today. the supreme court saying that in their implicitly in their citizens united decision that they were expanding freedom that we should have the freedom to year with these corporate persons just you know i have to say this was the main rationale of soused solution but in fact the consequence of that is is that the freedom of real persons has been diminished or the freedom of these giant corporations and aunts. and rallies like this are translated into real change this week portland maine became the latest city in america to pass a resolution calling on congress to amend the constitution to overturn citizens united and declare that corporations are not people. joining a long line of other cities from los angeles to boulder to new york by the way that have passed similar resolutions so for tonight's conversations the great minds i'm

joined by a man who has been instrumental in raising awareness of this issue and organizing today's occupy the courts rallies across america david cobb is a lawyer political activist and engage citizen he has sued corporate polluters lobbied elected officials run for political office himself and even been arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience currently david is the national projects director of democracy unlimited and he's the spokesperson for move to amend move to amend or the organization that spearheaded today's national day of action back in two thousand and four david was the green party's candidate for president there was david earlier today speaking in front of the supreme court. all are not worth and they do not have any right in a legal right. hand money is not political speech. and i want to be clear the room to him and call him is coming into

a doctor and must be abolished we cannot overturn corporate personhood and still allow wealthy individuals to literally math of money and why we rely joining me now in the studio for our conversations the great minds tonight david david welcome thank you tom it's a pleasure to be here and to have you with us. a little bit about david cobb first of all. come from there what was your what what was your life like and what brought you into politics in the war well you know tom i was born in rural poverty in this country i'm not embarrassed to say i grew up in a house without a flush toilet in sam leon texas and i'll always remember one of the most important lessons that i was taught by my mama she doesn't remember this story but i certainly do i was arguing with my cousin and my brother over a toy pretty sure it was a car and i'll never forget she got down to our level she called us down and then she explained there's three of you one two three there's one toy so you can either

share it or there are other toys we can bring in but you can't fight over it let's learn to share and you know what time that made sense to me then it makes sense to me now really all we have to do is treat each other with respect learn how to share learn how to exercise power with one another and we can have a completely different world to let. go there so. you you grew up in a small town in texas and i understand you worked as work construction you were well i was in college i worked my way through college i worked on shrimp boats i worked as a waiter i worked in construction and. you know i got to say tom early on i even though i was born in poverty i was a proud american i really believed in the promise of democracy i was so proud of the concepts of liberty and justice and equality and it wasn't until i got to college that i realized in some respects i had been lied to that the country is not

operating the way that we were taught the way that we were that inspired me so much so i was in many ways it never had and it never has and that was really what i came to understand so i i have really grappled with how can we make this promise of democracy a reality because this really is the country where we're something as profound as throwing off the king is a big deal and creating the idea that we do people are sovereign is huge the problem tom is not in the framework of what we were taught the problem has been we never actually implemented it because only rich white men were actually legally persons and that's why the whole notion of who is the legal person has been the central fight for social justice in this country think of it this way the best lens to look at american history is as a series of struggles by actual human beings to be legal persons with rights protected by our constitution yeah it's absolute true and which which brings us

to this concept of corporate personhood which didn't really just start yesterday with two years ago tomorrow with citizens united no it didn't and let's be clear so corporate personhood is a shorthand for the idea that a corporation as an entity can claim inherent in alienable rights and i want to be clear your viewers me you as human beings we have sacrosanct rights the u.s. supreme court is supposed to merely interpret our constitution which is the supreme law of the land it's the codification of the social contract we the people have all of the inherent power but we delegate a certain power to our representatives elected. divs who are charged with the responsibility of making laws but the one thing that the law maker can never do is to actually pass laws that violate our rights because those rights are inherent they're in alienable they're sacrosanct and that's the nut why it is

outrageous for concentrated capital in the form of a corporation to claim that they have some sort of inherent in a legal rights corporations are created by state charters they are created through the process we the people can say what they can or cannot do and so to allow a corporate lawyer to go into court and overturn democratically elected laws whether it's environmental protection law worker safety law the public health law who are as most recently in the citizens united case campaign finance laws laws designed to protect the integrity of our elections that's what citizens united did any of this it is a perversion of the promise of a democratic republic and this idea of corporate personhood you contract back i believe to the dartmouth case an eight hundred fifteen it was the first time and that was even a foreign corporation. if i recollection is correct originally it was a british corporation correct with college versus what the state is yes. i forget

the dartmouth case though in essence was an effort immediately after the american revolution the legislature of new hampshire had actually said this will now be a completely public school and it was in the keeping of the american revolutionary spirit public things are public and we need to this is the start of the universe of virginia's a free college absolutely and so there was this idea that in order to have a democratic society you needed engaged educated citizenry so the idea that dartmouth was actually going to be privatized as a contract was the first time that the idea began but of course. as you know and i got to say you great book on equal protection that you wrote that really delves into the santa clara versus pacific railway case that's the first time ever that the idea of a corporation having constitutional rights made its way into the supreme court process and and not

a decision yeah yeah yeahs your answers which was so bizarre because for so long everybody said oh yeah this was decided by the supreme court it's actually now been decided but it will not it's not in santa clara and i will confess in law school that's what we were taught and we're at the head note in and just sort of went through what we do know though tom is that there have been a series of court cases after santa clara where the issue was briefed it was argued and not merely acting upon president the court did create the legal doctrine that a corporation is a person just as surely as the court created the legal doctrine that money is speech these are not in our constitution certainly no democratic process has what was engaged in order to reach those conclusions the court created these ideas out of whole cloth in order to legalize the ability of a small ruling elite to basically hijack our governing structures in the court itself ever since marbury ever since eighteen zero three has become

a small ruling elite and it would basically have nine black robes kings don't you know down the street here just a couple blocks from us who can knock down anything that our democratically elected representatives choose because of the marwari case and you know through the court took that power out of themselves right and and they aggressively do it all the time and let's just be clear the roberts course is probably the most the most extreme example of judicial activism we've seen in one hundred years from the supreme court i do believe that the courts should be used if individual human rights are actually being violated to the democratic process thank goodness that we had the court system to be able to you fight back. that's exactly to fight back against jim crow segregation but that's the point those laws violated the inherent in a legal rights of african-americans in the south or you could argue also that brown v board wouldn't have been necessary if the supreme court had and. you know plessy versus ferguson for the first or prior to that. so and that's i think

underlying really why move to amend has been so successful because we don't take a legal strategy we understand that real change in this country requires to engage citizens participating in a social movement it needs to be broad it needs to be deep but it also needs to be committed to real change and that's i think what move tonight is doing and in fact i want to get into move to him what we're going to take a break in just a second when we come back on the other end of the break i want to play for you a little clip from a listener of my radio show from a little town outside of harrisburg pennsylvania and what her experience was visiting your website and and how it changed your life so we'll do that when we come right back more with david as our conversation great minds right after this break.

is he just really needed to survive. these or is that to do with money. and suppresses the rights of the two for. those who don't just this year it's a true. goodbye. i mean your boss but no. people need to know about it i mean anything from the company from. those who saw to prosper. the seeds. from. licensing.

no one can live without it's in one of the largest banks in the world. on our t.v. . welcome back to conversations of the great minds i'm joined by activist david cobb former presidential candidate with the green party and current spokesman for move to him and dot org david i mentioned just before the break i want to play just

a short clip it's about a minute out of it was actually out of about a four minute conversation so there was some set up where this woman said you know i heard on your show about move to a mound and so i went to the website and i opened my i put my name on the website as inviting people to my house and well here i let her tell the story. heard about me to a man three year shadow and so we started interacting with their training whether i thought whatnot starting last summer and then we put up our name to house party starting in november that we were granted that hearing before our county commissioners than we thought this is the. fixing to be doing at the anniversary of the decision i did and three of us went they only granted it three minutes to speak . three of us for three minutes and we stretched it to nine and at the end of what was really interesting there was a whole group there who were interested in farmland preservation and it turns out

these folks had a natural resonance with what we were seeing so when we finished there was this amazing applause in the room so there were only eight of us there from our little move to a man but the impact of the room because it really resonated with people was just astonishing and depressing and this is this is one of. i can't tell you how many people have called and said things like this is one of the one of the more really articulate and short ones or the church with. how do you move to a man come about i know this is this is not your baby entirely but it's in some ways i was a was an active participant in helping to bring it together one of the birth of the . midwife if you will but i want to be clear you know you know you and i have known each other for over a decade now and we're doing this work around educating and trying to inspire

people to actually take the idea of a democratic republic seriously and really challenging the idea that a corporation can claim constitutional rights well various organizations have been inspired by you worked with you collaborated with others and collaborate together when i saw the citizens united case in the lower courts and coming up i said this roberts court is going to do something very bad with that so let's use this as an opportunity so about four months before the decision came down a group of us met. in northern california and said now is the time we've done enough educating we've got enough infrastructure in place let's actually take our individual word. ization and form a coalition and i'm so proud to tell you tom that move to amend is a functioning coalition it's multiracial it's multi-ethnic it is it is ordinary individuals and groups and organizations who are singularly committed to the idea of an ending the constitution to abolish all corporate constitutional rights and to

establish that money is not speech all supercross or shorts for all corporate customers exactly or not quite right but i just i think it's important because you know we're very explicit in clear we don't think non-profits should have constitutional rights either because those are creators of the state as well as human beings have inherent in a legal rights as individuals and what we found is that our approach is resonating with people that wonderful segment you played i wish i hope that i will get a chance to actually speak with her in person because it genuinely both warms my heart but also validates our approach to invest energy in time in local grassroots organizing we intentionally did not come to washington d.c. from the jump we spent the last two years organizing in our local communities where we live work and play i traveled the country giving workshops and seminars and helping people form move them into fillets and i will say to to listen to viewers

of the big picture please go to that website and let's bring a move to amend organizer to your community so that we can replicate what we are doing all across this country well you're doing it you said you started out as a core coalition organizations. well originally it was the alliance for democracy the liberty tree foundation democracy unlimited reclaim democracy the independent progressive politics network progressive democrats of america i mean we had really a great grouping of folks who had a history of actually working together i'm very proud to say that the coffee party usa has recently joined so the coalition is growing we had about eight to. again with we are over two hundred fifty organizations different groups have engaged in partnered with us at different levels but tom we have grown we had no local affiliates a year ago we have sixty local affiliates now we have helped to pass city council

resolutions and probably seven seventy communities across the country but even deeper than that for communities madison wisconsin boulder colorado missoula montana dane county in wisconsin have actually used the ballot box to demand a constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood and establish that money is not speech and i do want to be clear that occupy the courts action of today january twentieth was does bring board it's the launch we intend by november of two thousand and twelve to be on the ballot in fifty communities not just resolutions we want the people of the united states of america to speak their own mind and to instruct their elected representatives that they need to support and introduce an amendment language to abolish corporate personhood and establish money is not speech. not just resolutions what you mean by will a resolution is a can be a powerful expression and politically it's

a very good thing the declaration of independence is a resolution in one respect but the point i'm making is that a resolution is legally basically a state a state has to a law a binding law yes so the distinction we're making is that there are either resolutions that come out of city councils are county executives or there's binding law there's also something in between which is where you can put on the ballot a non-binding advisory opinion but it comes from the people so in those four communities that i just described tom they actually put it on the ballot so the people were able to vote not just city council members and here's the kicker we have won the. by seventy four seventy five seventy eight and eighty two percent of the vote this has legs like nothing else i've ever worked on there's a movement growing in this country it's getting larger stronger and better organized every day you know when back when i wrote on equal protection ten years

ago i think started working out in two thousand two thousand and one and and. and over the years but even even back then i talked to a number of people in the labor movement and they said oh yeah corporations should never rights but we should and i said no i don't think i don't think labor unions should and i'm a big fan and supporter of labor unions and the like what you want to strip us rights and non-profits the same thing what you want to strip us of rights and my take has always been that labor union is a democratic institution it's democracy in the workplace so if if fifty one percent of the membership elected the leadership of the union and the union says hey let's or fifty one percent of the membership says hey let's go out and work for a particular candidate you're probably going to have a lot of shoe leather and a lot of acting on the other hand if the head of a corporation you know if the church president eighteen t. says well we're all going to go out and work for newt gingrich or mitt romney or most of the people the employees are going to occur to me brick so even without

personhood union still have this tremendous advantage because the democratic institutions and and and nonprofit organizations also i think have an advantage because they tend to be more horizontal in their so i'm not at all concerned about that i'm curious how moved to amanda has has navigated those waters because sometimes i mean there are some people out there who are very aggressively saying no wait a minute you know you guys are going too far and i've had that you know i mean and there's others who are saying ok well you know how about this step or this and then there's even some people who are saying oh you know. scroll this stuff we need a constitutional amendment let's just open it up and take her with a. which scares the hell out of me when you've got the koch brothers only half the politicians in the country so any way they choose kerry's refunds it should scare you i want to be clear tom i think you've made a very important distinction and that is that both non-profits and for profit corporations are chartered by the state therefore whatever legal privileges they

have under law are subject to the democratic process like you i completely agree that a nonprofit is a different entity and so it should have different laws it should have different responsibilities it should be treated differently as it already is right but those legal privileges are subject to the democratic process your rights your viewers rights are not subject to the democratic process because we have constitutional rights corporations do not as it relates to unions i think you make a very important point i'm a trade union activist myself i came up and out of poverty in large part because i joined pipeline workers local number thirty eight so i believe in trade unionism and the power of unions in and collective action is profound and the courts have rarely actually treated unions as quote corporations with any rights at all anyway union rights have been fought for and actually been functions of victories at the legislative level so if you actually understand history and

especially labor history i would say not only is it historically true but you're correct the move to amend approach is actually going to strengthen not only organized labor but civil society in general because nobody look let's just cut to the chase tom large transnational corporations are not merely exercising power they are ruling us they're making the fundamental public policy decisions that affect our lives and then when we work our butts off to finally get a decent law passed not even a great law but just a decent law that tries to control them they get their corporate lawyers to go marching into court and argue that our law is now violating their fourteenth amendment rights or to fit them in their first amendment right. enough already this is ridiculous we need a movement that takes ourselves seriously we the people rule we are sovereign we have the ability to make the rules that will allow us to have genuine economic democracy as well as political liberty you know there's i have noticed that there

are other groups spring you know that are that have gotten this religion yes. and some of them are kind of taking themselves very seriously like you know i claudius this is our group. and others are a little more collaborative in the in the minute or so we have left your thoughts on how moved to amend or might change or interact over the years or or how the movement as a whole even independent of two events might well first of all you and i both know that we've been talking about this for a decade you and i have and most people were ignoring us including within you know most of these organizations that are now coming on board having said that move to amend is a coalition i would welcome in gauging any of these organizations and how can we actually collaborate and if they want to join the coalition we can talk about making that happen if not then let's figure out how we can collaborate we are they are working successfully with many of these groups we're working with public citizen in vermont we're working with common cause in colorado we hope to be

working with free speech for people in massachusetts. the people for the american way have done a tremendous job putting together united for the people as a constellation we're not actually a coalition but a constellation of groups working in partnership at the end of the day we're looking for opportunities to collaborate and work with any of these groups but most importantly we're interested in working with people on the ground and so i want to encourage your viewers once again that the way to get involved go to that website move to amend org sign up and let's replicate that phenomenal story that we heard from harrisburg david thank you so much thank you so much that was there was really to watch. this conversation again as well as other conversations with great minds go to our website conversations with great minds dot com. after the break it's been a bad week for lobbyists oil barons and corporate tycoon we'll see what my panel thinks about all that action in tonight's big picture rumble.

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thousands of people taking to the streets of damascus. political prisoners held since the start of the uprising. now stay tuned for part two of our big picture from our studios in washington d.c. . the. technology innovation. from russia. are you ready to rumble joining me for the friday night big picture rumble horoscope commentator and senior fellow at the national center for public policy research joe madison host of the joe madison show on sirius x.m. satellite radio channel one twenty eight and will rot.