Striking Out Against Corporate Rule

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.

The American colonists were offended by the idea they should be vassals of a corporation and a kingdom that supported and profited from it. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, which explicitly stated that humans were born into this world endowed by their Creator with certain rights, that governments were created by humans to insure only humans held those rights, and "That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it..."

Stating flatly that "it is their right, it is their duty," to alter their government and thus claim their unique human rights, 56 men defied the East India Company and the government whose army supported it by placing their signatures on the Declaration of Independence, saying, "with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Thus began America's first experiment with democracy.

The first week of December of that same year, Thomas Paine wrote in a pamphlet he published a few weeks later that, "Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered ... What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated."

Exactly 226 years later, another small group in Pennsylvania also met in early December to sign a document that claimed the same right -- their duty -- to alter their government in a way that would restore the democracy the original Founders were willing to fight and die for. The democratically elected municipal officials of Porter Township put their signatures to an ordinance passed unanimously on December 9, 2002. It reads, in part:

"A corporation is a legal fiction created by the express permission of the people...;

"Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution by the Supreme Court justices to include corporations in the term 'persons' has long wrought havoc with our democratic processes by endowing corporations with constitutional privileges intended solely to protect the citizens of the United States or natural persons within its borders;

"This judicial bestowal of civil and political rights upon corporations interferers with the administration of laws within Porter Township and usurps basic human and constitutional rights exercised by the people of Porter Township; ...

"Buttressed by these constitutional rights, corporate wealth allows corporations to enjoy constitutional privileges to an extent beyond the reach of most citizens;

"Democracy means government by the people. Only citizens of Porter Township should be able to participate in the democratic process in Porter Township and enjoy a republican form of government therein;..."

And then, with an audacity and willingness to take on overwhelming multinational corporate power similar to that displayed by the Founders, the elders of Porter Township said that "Corporations shall not be considered to be 'persons' protected by the Constitution of the United States or the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania within the Second Class Township of Porter, Clarion County, Pennsylvania."