This Op-Ed by Greg Coleridge appeared on Op-Ed News.com, June 4th, 2018.

Rising anger against the seemingly omnipotent power of corporations to dictate nearly every aspect of society has yielded predictable pushback from corporations and their minions (i.e. human, not small yellow creatures) in government. Laws against mass protests and stronger regulatory protections and increasing corporate SLAPP lawsuits to silence critics are just a few examples.

Not as predictable has been pushback against efforts to reassert control over corporations to protect people, communities and the environment by those across the political spectrum, including many “progressives.” This pushback has most clearly targeted the movement to abolish all corporate constitutional rights through a constitutional amendment led by Move to Amend.

What’s going on? Why do so many individuals who acknowledge major harms by entrenched corporate power advocate only relatively minor solutions.

Among the voices who recognize serious corporate harms but oppose ending all corporate constitional rights is UCLA Law Professor Adam Winkler. His new book, We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights, reflects this divergence.

Winkler’s historical account of how corporations came to acquire constitutional rights of people is helpful, especially if it reaches new audiences. It’s not, however, a new narrative.

Groups like the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy, Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund and Move to Amend — as well as authors like Thom Hartmann in his book Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became ‘People’ and How You Can Fight Back, revealed years earlier how corporations were strictly defined by We the People through elected representatives by separately granted and revoked corporate charters and later general incorporation acts. Sovereign people were in charge of their subordinate legal creations with corporations only possessing privileges. Constitutional rights, including the Bill of Rights, were originally intended solely for human beings — albeit, at first, only to white, male, property owners. MORE…