Just a day after Senators introduced legislation to overturn Citizens United, Boulder, Colorado became the second city to pass a ballot measure calling for an amendment to the US Constitution that states corporations are not people and reverses Citizens United.
Earlier this year voters in Madison and Dane County, Wisconsin overwhelmingly approved similar measures by 84% and 78% respectively. Next week, voters in Missoula, Montana will vote. Move to Amend volunteers are working to place similar measures on local ballots across the country next year.
"From Occupy Wall Street to Boulder, Colorado and every town in between, Americans are fed up with corporate dominance of our political system," says Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, a national spokesperson for Move to Amend. "Local resolution campaigns are an opportunity for citizens to speak up and let it be known that we won't accept the corporate takeover of our government lying down. We urge communities across the country to join the Move to Amend campaign and raise your voices."
Editor's Note: Unchecked corporate power is preventing us from transitioning to a green economy, which is why this information is relevant to our news service. The social, economic, and environmental crises sweeping the planet are inter-related symptoms born from the same root causes.
The enormous amounts of money and influence of the fossil fuel lobby is making it impossible to level the playing field for renewable energy and many other green technologies.
Instead of allowing Americans to grapple with the reality of climate change, their misinformation campaigns make it impossible to move forward on an issue that affects every single person on this planet.
"So many lives are on the line right now. The system is crashing. It's crashing economically and it's crashing ecologically. The stakes are too high right now for us not to make the most of this moment." -Naomi Klein at Occupy Wall Street
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After Occupying Oakland, California's port yesterday, the fifth largest in the US, there are plans to Occupy Iowa Caucuses in early January.
They plan to "occupy" Republican presidential candidate campaign offices as well as President Obama's campaign office until they "start talking real turkey about what's going on in this country, where the 99% of the people who are not benefiting, at the expense of the 1% who are getting away with murder."
Move Your Money Campaign - Bank Transfer Day
This Saturday, many thousands of people will move their money out of the "too big to fail" banks and into community banks and credit unions.
Besides the anger that people feel about big banks and their impact on our economy, they finance destructive projects that contribute to climate change, such as coal plants, oil pipelines in the Amazon rainforest, and clear-cutting primary forests.
Unlike mega-banks, community investing institutions serve local communities, providing loans to support affordable housing, small businesses, and social services. They often lend money to people overlooked by big banks, such as green businesses.
They don't engage in abusive and predatory banking practices, since they have a mission of building communities.
The Credit Union National Association (CUNA) reports that a whopping 650,000 Americans have joined credit unions since Sept. 29, that's a lot of people considering credit unions got 600,000 new members for all of 2010.
CUNA says members save about $70 a year in fewer or no fees, lower rates on loans and higher return on savings.
Learn about Community Banks.
You can also get a Green America credit card that supports One PacificCoast Bank, which only finances green companies in the Pacific Northwest.
See the Move Your Money website and their Community Bank and Credit Union finder tool.
Here's info specifically on green banks and green credit cards for personal and business use:
