On June 4, 2003, Bill Moyers gave a major speech at the Take Back America Conference in Washington DC, titled "This is Your Story - The Progressive Story of America. Pass It On." The conference was sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future. Just 20 days later, on June 24, 2003, Richard Grossman published a scathing critique of Moyers' [...]
This article by Doug Hammerstrom was published in the Winter 2002 edition of By What Authority, the newsletter of Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy. Doug is an activist attorney living in Gualala, California. We who seek to build democracy must not be bound by the false assertion that the rule of law is democratic. A [...]
In the early days of the Community Rights movement, most of the envisioned legal strategies to dismantle corporate constitutional so-called "rights" were state-focused. This legal brief - written by Richard L. Grossman, Thomas Linzey, Esq., and Daniel E. Brannen, Jr., Esq - is an example of that strategy, and was published in 2003. Preface: This Brief [...]
An original essay by Richard Grossman and Ward Morehouse, which appeared as the Foreword in the book, The Elite Consensus, by George Draffan (2002). The 1st Amendment "does not intend to guarantee men freedom to say what some private interest pays them to say for its own advantage. It intends only to make men free [...]
This article was written by Peter Kellman, a labor organizer based in Maine and a principal member of Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy, and was originally published in the Spring 2000 edition of By What Authority. The purpose of this article is to introduce our readers to a key Supreme Court case from a working class [...]
This research article by Paul Cienfuegos was published in the Spring of 2000, and reprinted widely in activist journals and online - with substantial research assistance provided by Dean Ritz, Molly Morgan, and Patrick Reinsborough. It is substantially out of date, but still a fascinating look at the early phase of what later became a [...]
This article by Jane Anne Morris (DemocracyThemePark.org) was originally published in the Spring 2000 edition of By What Authority, & reprinted in Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy. What to expect next from corporate sponsors of the WTO? There’s a well-thumbed page in the corporate playbook, ready to go. Whether or not it works depends on us. The last time [...]
Community Rights US Director Paul Cienfuegos wrote this essay for publication in Access Magazine (McKinleyville, CA) in 1999. It has been periodically updated since then. It covers some history that is nearly unbelievable from today's jaded perspective, when most activists believe there is virtually nothing we can do to dismantle the legal and political powers [...]
Think you know about the origins of regulatory agencies and regulatory law in the US? Think again! This article by Jane Anne Morris (DemocracyThemePark.org) was originally published in the Fall 1998 inaugural edition of By What Authority, the newsletter of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy, and was reprinted in Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy. If you’re having trouble getting to [...]
This article by Jane Anne Morris (DemocracyThemePark.org) was written in 1998 "at the request of editors at Earth First! Journal, was never printed in full form there because they… couldn’t deal with it." It was finally officially published in Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy (Apex Press, 2001). A third of your friends are locked down in an old growth grove or at [...]