As Americans learn more about the avalanche of outside funding that dominated the 2010 election, we are taking steps to focus the nation on an issue that goes far beyond partisan politics.
Friday Jan. 21, 2011 is the first anniversary of the Citizens United decisioni which opened the floodgates for unlimited, anonymous electioneering. Coffee Party USA will join with coalition partners to host three days of actions in Washington DC. This will include a strategy summit and a Lobby Day on Capitol Hill, supplemented by local chapters of partnering organizations who will visit Congressional district offices.
Participants in the DC summit will be invited to sign the Backbone Campaign's giant Preamble to the Constitution — a centerpiece for the Coffee Party at the Rally to Restore Sanity and at our 2010 convention. The Preamble will then travel the United States for regional summit meetings to be announced.
Join our grassroots campaign to demand power for citizens over the power of money in America.
- Attend our action Jan 20-22, or plan a corresponding action in your area including visits to your Congressional Representative's disctrict office. (Stay tuned for more details.)
- Share this blog post, and two related posts: We Demand Democracy and $ in Politics an Election Issue in 2012
- Email volunteer [@] coffeepartyusa.com to join the conference call about our campaign.
- You can join our new group/forum focused on this on the Shared Purpose network.
- Please read: http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266026
Power of the Citizen Must Overtake the Power of Money
The fact that the power to legislate can be so easily purchased in Washington is at the heart of the frustrations most Americans share — from the Wall Street bailout, to our inability to regulate industries that poison our environment and gamble away our futures, to our inabilty to contain deficit spending. It is the answer to the question, "Why is our government so unresponsive to the people?" We need to focus our efforts on solving this problem now — not as members of any political party, but as the American people demanding fair representation.
To restore government of, for and by the people (not the funders), we must insist on legislative and Constitutional remedies to the reckless Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court, which declared corporations are persons with inalienable rights, allowed to spend unlimited, undisclosed amounts of money to influence our elections and thereby dominate our government.Unfortunately, real leadership on this issue will not come from Washington. It simply can't because any elected leader who seeks to address this problem will face the wrath of institutions who can simply threaten to destroy them. The power of the voter must overtake the power of money. The leadership must come from us, the citizens. We must make them do it.
The Coffee Party is urgently calling for a sustained, citizen-led movement to address the problem of money in politics and the harmful effects of the Citizens United decision.
Our growing coalition already includes the Backbone Campaign, Fix Congress First, and Move to Amend. Today we are reaching out to many other organizations such as Public Campaign, Free Speech for People and Common Cause. We will:
- Become "Paul Reveres" in our communities, and inform the public about how this problem is crippling our economy and our jeopardizing our future,
- Help bring together a broad-based coalition of existing organizations,
- Develop strategies to make this THE issue for the 2012 elections, including recruiting candidates and raising funds for a Political Action Committee (PAC),
- Focus our respective memberships on a grassroots campaign to put pressure on the House of Representatives to pass the Fair Elections Now Act during the lame-duck session,
- Work with our coalition partners to organize community meetings and regional strategy summits around the United States.
Below, Lawrence Lessig of Fix Congress First makes a powerful speech calling for sweeping reform at the 2010 Coffee Party Convention. This was preceded by Mark McKinnon's speech calling for the same.
