We talk to Channel 7 News, on a snowy Iowa day, with temperatures hoovering between 4^o and 12^o F.  Twelve to fourteen hardy souls braved the snowstorm to stand on a busy streetcorner across from the new Federal Courthouse built in the floodplain after the old one was flooded out in 2008.  

TODAY, January 20th, 2012, MovetoAmend.org called a national day of action. Occupy the Courts took place all over the United States and at the Supreme Court in Washington D.C.  This is the first anniversary of the Citizens United decision by the  Supreme Court which removed all accountability for Corporate Funding of political campaigns.  It must not stand.  

 Note the Farmers Market sign in the background.  The new, non-corporate local economy, and the protesters.

I have returned to the freezing street corner, walking quickly through the snow dodging cars on the busy Eighth Avenue corner to join my eclectic group of friends and compatriots.  

Two CR Move to Amend activists, Judith and Ashley, freeze in front of the yet unfinished courthouse.  Later we enjoy coffee and soup at a locally owned coffee shop, The Blue Strawberry. We vote with our dollars.

We are in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; famous for the Flood of 2008 that destroyed 3,000 houses, every government office, several schools, the Department of Education, sheriff, police, and fire departments and many churches, and the Mother Mosque of America.  

This state should be more famous for the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and intelligence than pigs and corn and the resulting pollution from corporate feed lots and corporate farming.  With all the farming toxins in our soil and water, I'm afraid we'll become famous for cancer, autism, MS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and dementia.

I am freezing.  I know we have to do something. Maybe this demonstration will  draw attention to the eroding rights and freedoms guaranteed to We-the-People by the U.S. Constitution.  

I can only hope so as I stomp my feet clad in new Uggs as I too support the corporate monster.   I cross the busy street another time, to get another shot with my iPhone of the signs and the demonstrators. I wait obediently each time for the “WALK” signal.

I wrap a black antique wool horse blanket over my down overcoat, pulling it tight  under my chin as I hold my borrowed sign, “MONEY # VOTES,” sometimes in my mouth, when my hand is too cold to grasp it.  I left my dog Frankie in the four-wheel drive Chevy crew cab truck.  Probably would get cruelty to animals if I had her marching on the sidewalk with me.  Hey, she could have a sign, “I am NOT A PERSON.”

How could the Supreme Court give corporations the right to spend as much money as they wanted on political election through political action committees with no disclosure or accountability of any sort?  They said that  Corporations were “persons” with a right to “free speech!”  

And where is OUR right to free speech?  Drowned out by the big mouths, the big budgets of mega-corporations who have swallowed up small business and now hold the politicians and the American people hostage. 

“If you disagree with us, or don’t let us have our pipeline, we’ll run an ad campaign against you like no other.  And we know it doesn’t even matter whether it is true or not.  If we say it enough times in enough places, the public will believe US, not you.”

Corporations rule because we allow it.  We buy their products.  We believe their lies.  All the time we have this feeling that there is something not right about this.  There is something NOT RIGHT about a corporation have the same rights as a PERSON.  

Is a corporation a person?  Can it register to vote?  Does it have compassion for others? Does it stand trial in Texas for murder? What kind of friend would a corporation be when it’s sole purpose for existence is to make money for its shareholders?  That is how it is defined.  If anyone who works in the corporation wants to have compassion for the people, employees or customers, they will be fired unless the company makes money from it.

I understand the Corporate Personhood.  It gives corporations so much power that we can’t afford to let it stand.  

Corporations, as (immortal) persons, have a right to privacy.  The EPA and regulatory agencies can not make surprise visits.  How does that work for regulating pollution?  

They have the right to free speech, thus can donate unlimited amounts of money to any cause they want without having to tell anyone.  They have the right to OWN our DNA for genetic pharmacology, and the DNA of 80% of the seeds farmers now use, and will continue making “franken-seeds,” “franken-fish,” and everything else they can get their hands on as only two or three companies own all of the seeds in the world.  We should  be protected from these deadly experiments, but the FDA is riddled with former corporate officers who were put in place to prevent regulation of their companies.

Monsanto has just purchased Blackwater, the notorious hired guns of Iraq who have a rule in their charter saying that no one is allowed to bring rape charges against any of their soldiers.  Monsanto is exercising its right to bear arms and create a militia.

There is only one way to stop this flood of human rights out the door.  Pass a constitutional amendment that says what we all know...WE THE PEOPLE of the United States of America are natural born people, not immortal corporations.  Corporations were meant to have limits, and used to operate “for the common good.”  Can you imagine a corporation operating for the common good today?

We-The-People need to take back our power.

That is what we are doing today.  Standing outside in freezing weather, saying that we are here, we are people, and corporations are not.  

Become part of our grass-roots movement.  MovetoAmend.org

We the People of every political persuasion value our freedom and our right to have a say in our government, not to be shouted down behind barrages of ads.  One by one our cities and states will pass resolutions removing corporate personhood, and we will again be free.

As I leave the street corner, hands and feet numb, I am smiling.  More cars honked and gave us a thumbs up, grateful for our demonstration of democracy.  Only two of the hundreds of cars and trucks were negative, one thumbs down, and another shouting, “Get a Job.”  

By the way, here are our jobs: lawyer, mediator, legal secretary, archaeologist, counselor, organic  farmer, Peoples Unitarian Universalist minister, student, state employee from Wisconsin who just migrated to Iowa City.  (To name the ones I know.)  

I am still cold, but I am smiling.  I see in these people the quality of freedom, of democracy, that won’t be denied, that keeps coming up like weeds through the cracks in the pavement.  No matter what the Corporatocracy does to us, we will keep coming back until we have our freedom back.  Just like the Arab spring. 

                 I  AM  NOT  A   PERSON....I am Frankie, the blue-eyed bitch (as in girl-dog).