United States Supreme Court | Be a Seed for Change

Last year, the five-justice conservative majority on the Supreme Court decided to reaffirm its inclination to rule on behalf powerful corporate interests by giving corporations a gift that was not theirs to give: the People’s democracy.

January 21 will mark the one-year anniversary of the Citizens United v. FEC decision, which reinterpreted the Constitution to give corporations the same First Amendment rights as people and opened the floodgates of limitless, undisclosed spending by corporations and their shadowy front groups to influence elections.

PFAW‘s marking the anniversary by joining with our friends at the Coffee Party, Public Citizen, MoveOn and others to hold a weekend of events in Washington and promote citizen-organized local events around the country.

Please be a part of next week’s grassroots actions to take our democracy back for the People.

Find a local event near you here:

http://www.movementforthepeople.org/get-involved/organize-locally/distributed-events/find-an-event/

If you know of an event that is not on this list, please add it or contact Sergio Lopez at slopez@pfaw.org.

If there is not an event near you, and you think you can organize or hold something yourself (anything from a street protest or a small rally to a house party or a town hall-style meeting at a public venue), also please contact Sergio at slopez@pfaw.org for help doing that.

After the D.C. rally on January 21, we’ll be joining with our allies to deliver hundreds of thousands of petition signatures to Congress calling for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to overturn the Roberts Court‘s disastrous decision by giving lawmakers explicit authority to limit corporate spending in elections.

If you have not yet had a chance to join our petition, please do so now.

And ask others to join at http://www.pfaw.org/Amend.

Thank you for your activism to reel in the corrupting influence of unlimited corporate spending, and to take our democracy back for We the People.

— Diallo Brooks, Director of Field and Mobilization

Human Rights Campaign

Bullying judges?

NOM targeted three independent Iowa justices to send a message:

Follow our radical anti-gay agenda – or else.

Tell Chief Justice Roberts: Speak out for an independent judiciary.

The nation’s #1 anti-gay organization just struck a blow to our nation’s courts.

In 2009, every Iowa Supreme Court justice agreed that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. This election season, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) set its political bulls-eye on ousting three of those justices. On Election Day, all three lost.

It was a calculated warning shot aimed at judges nationwide, all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court: Either you cast aside centuries of judicial independence and rule according to our radical, anti-gay ideology – or we’ll come get you.

Add your name to our open letter calling on U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to speak out for a judicial system free from bitter and biased political intimidation.

We may not always see eye to eye with Chief Justice Roberts, but we can all agree that judges should be independent. NOM’s actions were a blatant, ideological assault on our nation’s courts. Iowa’s judicial retention elections were created to prevent fraud, misconduct or malfeasance. They were never intended to allow one hate group and its fringe allies to dump $600,000 into a state over a single — and unanimous — decision they didn’t like.

But that’s exactly what happened. Last month, NOM’s president Brian Brown said: “If the people of Iowa… remove these judges, there will be reverberations throughout the country all the way to the United States Supreme Court.”

Wow. Is that an ultimatum? That’s how bullies operate.

It gets worse. Marriage equality is in jeopardy. As NOM’s Brown boasted post-election: “We now have the ability to roll back same-sex marriage in Iowa and New Hampshire and pass a constitutional amendment in Minnesota.”

It’s time to speak out, like HRC and the Courage Campaign are doing at NOMExposed.org. NOM cannot be allowed to dismantle our independent judiciary. Iowa can’t be a beginning. It must be an end. Tell Chief Justice John Roberts to stick up for the judiciary and decry this attack on our independent court system.

A fair and independent judiciary is important for all Americans, and crucial to protecting the rights of LGBT people. Learn about what HRC is doing to educate the next generation about our judicial system at www.hrc.org/equalityinthecourts.

NOM’s gone rogue. It’s slash-and-burn, no matter the consequences. Being anti-gay is one thing. Tearing down our justice system is something quite different.

Enough is enough.

Sincerely,

Joe Solmonese
President