The good citizens of Pennsylvania have done it again.
Back in 1776, they hosted at Liberty Hall in Philadelphia a gathering of people radicalized by the predations of the East India Company. The world’s first multinational corporation then held a virtual stranglehold on commerce and politics in North America, and brazenly used British troops as its enforcers. On the first week of December, 1600, when she created the East India Company, Queen Elizabeth I became the first CEO monarch, and by 1776 King George II was following in her footsteps with his sizeable holdings in and open advocacy of corporate rule.
Thus began America’s first experiment with democracy.
It became the law of that land five days later.
Similarly, in 2000, one of the largest sludge hauling corporations in the United States sued Porter Township, claiming that as a “person” the corporation had rights equal to the citizens of the township, and therefore they couldn’t “discriminate” against the corporation under the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, which was passed after the Civil War to free the slaves.
Porter Township, supported by a coalition including the Pennsylvania Farmers Union, the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, The Sierra Club, the AFL-CIO, the United Mine Workers of America, Common Cause, the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD), the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), and other pro-democracy groups, fought back. They bluntly asserted that – as it was from the founding of this nation until the bizarre Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Supreme Court case in 1886 – only humans are entitled to human rights in their community.
Thom Hartmann is the author of “Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporation Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights,” a book containing a version of the above ordinance customized for each of the 50 states. www.unequalprotection.com. He holds the copyright to this article, but grants permission for reprint in print, web, and email media as long as this credit is attached.