Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Move to Amend SLC Re-Launch Wednesday
Posted By Eric S. Peterson on July 31, 2012, 6:38 PM
Move to Amend SLC has pushed forward with their first move to get Salt Lakers on board with a nationwide movement to amend the Constitution to eliminate corporate personhood. Now, the movement is taking new steps to rally actual people to resist the subjugation by corporate people.---
On July 26, Move to Amend faced a Utah Supreme Court hearing that stood to potentially undo hundreds of hours of canvassing and other work MTA had spent gathering more than 11,000 signatures to obtain a citywide ballot petition asking Salt Lake City residents to support a resolution calling for a Constitutional amendment that would say money does not equal free speech and that corporations are not people. Despite hitting their goal, MTA was informed by the Salt Lake City Attorney’s Office that state law does not allow citizen-led resolutions to be placed on the ballots.
While MTA awaits the Supreme Court’s decision, the movement is already preparing for the next battlefronts in the movement. The organization will continue to prepare to gather signatures for county and statewide calls for a Constitutional amendment, but now MTA is also launching a new organizing meeting it's calling the People’s Movement Assemblies. The PMAs, according to MTA’s website, are “spaces where communities make collective political agreements and action plans to work together across various issues.”
The move strikes a complementary chord with the local Occupy movement, which has, since 2011, employed assembly meetings defined by near-complete consensus decision making and maximum involvement by members who participate in leaderless committees. It’s a model that City Weekly also reported has been adopted in part by the environmental-activist group Peaceful Uprising, which in April began more community outreach and “community audits” to go into local communities to find every quarter a new group of activists to support and a new cause to fight against. Now, MTA is building also on that model with the hope the PMA can help create new cultures of resistance to overcome corporate dominance in politics and society.
If corporations aren’t your friends and the idea that “free” speech can be measured in dollars and cents offends you, then you’ll want to attend the Move to Amend Re-Launch.
Check it out, Wednesday, Aug. 1, 5:30-9:30 p.m., at Westminster College, Jewitt Center for the Performing Arts, 1840 S. 1300 East. Food and free childcare will be provided.
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