“Amending the Constitution in Response to ‘Citizens United’: Pitfalls & Possibilities,” featuring Oregon ACLU director Dave Fidanque, University professor John Davidson and LCC professor Stan Taylor, was held Wednesday night in the Law School’s Duncan Campbell auditorium.@@http://aclu-or.org/content/staff@@ @@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=staff&d=person&b=name&s=John+Davidson@@ @@http://www.lanecc.edu/peacecenter/contact.html@@
The discussion featured proposed amendments to reverse Supreme Court decisions that have given constitutional rights to corporations, allowing unprecedented use of money as speech in the political process. These cases stretch from 1976’s Buckley v. Valeo, to the 2002 McCain-Feingold Act, to the present Citizens United v. FEC. @@http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0424_0001_ZS.html@@ @@http://uspolitics.about.com/od/finance/a/mccain_feingold.htm@@ @@http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZS.html@@
Lane Community College political science instructor and Peace Center chair Stan Taylor asserted that Wall Street and the Military Industrial complex have written their own rules, and that there has been no public process in this concentration of power.
“We need to be talking about a whole new social contract,” Taylor said, “We now live in inverted totalitarianism, where instead of the state controlling the corporations, the corporations control the state.”
Fidanque, also a harsh critic of many of the federal government’s actions, seemed to play devil’s advocate to some extent, calling on the audience to acknowledge the consequences of political action when free speech is involved.
“I want to challenge one (thing) — and that is the assumption that limitations on contributions to candidates and other entities, is a good thing,” Fidanque said. “Stop and think before you repeal our protections of expression and association.”
Even so, Fidanque said he couldn’t avoid expressing the general assumption that ill intentions rule Capitol Hill.
“Congress could fix these problems tomorrow if they had the political will to do it.”
John Davidson — a University political science instructor and frequent panelist, presenter and moderator in state and local politics — discussed disproportionate representation in the national economic model. Davidson claimed that a lack of corporate charter control has resulted in “hereditary nobility,” or an irreversible power structure with little requirement to promote any public benefit.
Following direct addresses by the three panelists, roughly a dozen questions or statements were fielded from the audience. They ranged from sample litigation verbiage for amendments to assertions that the intelligence community has sold us out to transnational corporations.
Among a sizable contingent of graduate students attending the event was Evan Shenkin, a university doctoral candidate in sociology, who appeared as concerned as the presenters themselves.@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=student&d=person&b=name&s=Evan+Shenkin@@
“There are some fundamental changes that need to occur within our political system to have a sustainable democratic model,” Shenkin said. “The average student that I come in contact with is largely apolitical, even though political economy affects their lives.”
The panel was sponsored by the Law School’s Wayne Morse Center and We The People: Eugene, a local chapter of Move to Amend, a national opposition movement to the notion of corporate personhood.@@http://www.wethepeopleeugene.org/@@ @@http://movetoamend.org/@@ @@http://waynemorsecenter.uoregon.edu/@@