How small towns are reversing a century of corporate personhood

[R. A. Hettinga]

Mopping off the leftist drivel from the facts below, :-), the idea of
abolishing the personhood of corporations, as a step towards freeing
enterprise from the claws of the state, is a very attractive idea. A
limited partnership can get the same results, without the "artifical
person" nonsense.

Financial cryptography actually has solutions in this regard, of course,
with bearer equity, anonymous voting, m-of-n key sharing, etc.

By way of a Google cache. Sue me.

Cheers,
RAH
-------

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Bad Company?

How small towns are teversing a century of corporate personhood

STORY:
 KEN PICARD

Tom Linzey speaks at Vermont Law School, South Royalton, Thursday,
September 30 at 12:45 & 7 p.m.

Image: Tim Newcomb

Porter Township in northwestern Pennsyl-vania was an unlikely hotbed for an
anti-corporate uprising. The tiny rural community about an hour north of
Pittsburgh has a population of only 1500 people, many of whom are staunch
Republicans with deeply-held conservative values.

But after the Alcosan Corporation, a Pennsylvania sewage-sludge hauler,
threatened to sue Porter Township in 2002 for passing a local ordinance
regulating the dumping of sludge in their community, town officials decided
that their citizens had taken enough crap from corporations. Literally. So
on December 9, 2002, Porter became the first municipality in the United
States to pass a law denying corporations their rights as "persons" under
the law. Weeks later, Licking Township, another rural Pennsylvania
community facing a similar lawsuit, passed a more expansive ordinance
revoking all constitutional rights of corporations within their
jurisdiction.

Since then, dozens of other municipalities across Pennsylvania, some with
as few as 1000 residents, have followed suit, reversing nearly 120 years of
corporate encroachment on the rights guaranteed to all citizens under the
U.S. Constitution. Prompted by the failure of state and federal regulatory
agencies to protect citizens' health, safety and quality of life from
large-scale corporate activities, these municipalities took matters into
their own hands and reclaimed their right of self-rule. Though the laws fly
in the face of more than a century's worth of legal precedents that say
corporations are "persons" protected by the Bill of Rights and the 14th
Amendment, thus far these ordinances seem to be working.

Now some Vermonters are looking to follow Pennsylvania's example and draft
similar ordinances here to address environmental and public-health problems
stemming from large corporate activities: the influx of big-box stores, the
spreading of toxic sludge, even the proposed power increase at the Vermont
Yankee nuclear power plant. Proponents of this strategy suggest that these
laws may even be used one day to challenge undemocratic principles that
were written into the World Trade Organization charter and the North
American Free Trade Agreement.

Championing this fight is Tom Linzey, a 35-year-old Alabama-born attorney
who is the executive director and co-founder of the Community Environmental
Legal Defense Fund. Founded in 1995, the Pennsylvania-based CELDF was
initially set up to provide free legal services to small community groups
that were fighting big environmental battles: toxic-waste incinerators,
landfills, municipal sludge fields and corporate factory farms. Since then,
however, the nonprofit law firm has expanded its mission to help
municipalities around the country roll back corporate rights through local
ordinances. CELDF conducts "democracy schools" - intensive, weekend-long
seminars that trace the history of corporate rights and help citizens
reframe local issues according to a new paradigm. Once such democracy
school was held two weeks ago in Putney for 20 Vermonters from the
Brattleboro area.

Linzey, who speaks on September 30 at Vermont Law School, explained in a
recent interview how this movement began. In the mid- to late-1990s, large
out-of-state agribusinesses began applying for permits to build large-scale
hog farms in rural Pennsylvania. Local residents, who overwhelmingly
opposed these farming operations, sought the help of state and federal
regulatory agencies like the EPA. However, these communities soon realized
that waging their battle on the regulatory front wouldn't stop undesirable
businesses from moving into town - it would merely lessen the harm those
activities caused.

The proposed factory farms were huge operations - 5000- to 6000-head hog
farms - that would dwarf neighboring family farms. Before long, CELDF was
inundated with phone calls from local officials across Pennsyl-vania - some
400 townships in all - seeking their help at fending off these corporate
farms. So CELDF began researching how this issue had been handled in other
states, particularly in the Midwest, where 300,000- to 400,000-head hog
farms are common.

This was when Linzey made a startling discovery: Nine Midwestern states
have laws banning large corporations from owning or controlling farms.

In fact, Nebraska and South Dakota went so far as to incorporate that ban
into their state constitutions. So CELDF copied the South Dakota
constitutional amendment and used it as a model for local ordinances. Ten
townships and five counties in Pennsylvania have adopted the anti-corporate
farming ordinance. To date, only one has been overturned by the courts.

During this same period in the 1990s, CELDF also began receiving calls from
community groups and local officials who were trying to stop the permitting
of sludge fields. Sludge, the solid-waste byproduct of wastewater treatment
plants, is not considered a "hazardous waste" by the federal government.
Although it can contain as many as 600,000 different toxic contaminants,
the U.S. Environ-mental Protection Agency requires testing for only 11 of
those contaminants.

Spreading sludge on farmland, a practice known as "biosolid land
application," was already a controversial issue in rural Pennsylvania
because of its impact on human and animal health. In 1995, two youths died
after coming into contact with a newly applied sludge field. In an effort
to prevent more sludge from being dumped in their communities, 68
Pennsylvania townships passed anti-sludge ordinances.

The corporate waste haulers didn't take these ordinances lying down. They
challenged the laws in court, arguing that townships were denying them
their constitutional rights and didn't have the legal authority to pass
these laws. The corporations also tried to hold town officials personally
liable for passing these laws. They based their argument on a federal civil
rights law that was passed in the aftermath of the Civil War in orders to
protect African-Ameri-cans from state-sanctioned discrimination.

Since these corporate sludge haulers had deep pockets, it wasn't even
necessary that they win in court. All they had to do was deplete a town's
financial resources by waging a long and costly legal battle. How did CELDF
respond? As Linzey explains, CELDF helped Porter and Licking townships
draft a "Corporate Rights Elimination Ordinance," which effectively
stripped the corporation of its right to sue. Though these laws were an
unprecedented challenge to corporate empowerment, they remain in effect
today and have yet to be challenged in court.

"Corporate rights sometimes get talked about as some academic or abstract
concept like something that's taught in a college political science class,"
Linzey says. "Here, what folks have said is that our vision for our
community does not include land-applied sludge. It does not include factory
farms. And that's the community we want."

Critics were quick to label the movement the work of liberal, anti-business
activists. But as Linzey points out, about 80 percent of the communities he
works with are overwhelmingly conservative and Republican. "Keep in mind,
these are rural township officials with the shit-kicker boots and the John
Deere hats. These are the guys who clear and salt the roads in the
wintertime," he says. "These are not activists. They are folks who saw a
problem and tried to do something about it."

How effective have the ordinances been? Very, says Linzey. "In the 68
townships that have passed sludge ordinances, not one new teaspoon of
sludge has been land-applied," he says. The same holds true for the ban on
corporate hog farms. In the 10 townships that passed anti-corporate farm
ordinances, Linzey says, not one new corporate hog farm has been
established, even though those areas were targeted for more factory farms.

Vermont is no stranger to the legal perversion of corporate "personhood."
In April 1994, the Vermont Legislature passed the nation's first law
requiring the labeling of dairy products containing the genetically altered
growth hormone, rBGH. In response, agribusiness giant Monsanto and a
coalition of dairy-industry groups sued the state, asserting that the law
was unconstitutional. A federal judge agreed, ruling that the new law
violated Monsanto's First Amendment right "not to speak."

Several weeks ago, 20 people from southern Vermont spent a weekend at
Landmark College in Putney, attending one of CELDF's democracy schools.
Among them was Larry Bloch, a small-business owner from Brat-tleboro who is
with Vermonters Restoring Democracy. It's an umbrella organization of
groups that deal with issues ranging from genetically modified organisms to
nuclear power to social and economic justice. Though its members come from
a variety of political backgrounds, what unites them, Bloch explains, is a
desire to combat corporate dominance over local decision-making.

"When a predatory corporation comes in and says, 'We're moving in no matter
what and we don't care if we push out your independently owned local
businesses,' that doesn't affect only progressives or only conservatives,"
Bloch says. "To hear the stories from Pennsylvania was inspiring because
these were people who had never been activists and weren't blessed with a
lot of free time or money or the inclination to shake things up."

Representative Sarah Edwards (P-Brattleboro) agrees. Edwards, who also
attended the democracy school, says the seminar helped reframe the debate
in her mind, especially on the issue of nuclear power. "It's helping me to
know who my adversary is," Edwards says. "I'm not talking about
individuals. I'm talking about the corporations.

"I have friends who work at [Vermont] Yankee. I know management who work at
Yankee," she adds. "This is not about them. This is about the system, the
machine of the corporation squeezing out the diversity of voices that is
necessary to have a good and healthy democracy.

Democracy schools already have been held in six states. By next year, there
will be five permanent "Daniel Pennock Democracy Schools" - named for one
of the two boys who died after coming into contact with the toxic sludge.
In the past, these schools have largely addressed environmental issues. But
that's charging, Linzey notes. Activists in Roxbury, Massa-chusetts, for
example, hope the Pennsylvania model can be used to challenge the
pharmaceutical industry on its policies pertaining to AIDS drugs.

Others see the approach as a way to counter international agreements like
NAFTA. John Berkowitz is executive director of Southern Vermonters for a
Fair Economy and Environmental Protection. He points to a law passed in
Massachusetts 10 years ago that prohibited municipalities from signing
contracts with companies that do business with Burma - a country with an
abysmal human rights record. After Japan and the European Union filed a
complaint about the law with the WTO, in 1997 the U.S. Supreme Court struck
down the Massachusetts laws as unconstitutional.

"Wait a minute. Who's deciding what's best for a community?" Berkowitz
asks. "Is it absentee corporations and people working for trade
organizations like the WTO? We're finding that people's local
decision-making abilities are being trumped by trade agreements that
basically say, 'You can't decide that at the local level.'"

But as Linzey reminds people who attend CELDF's democracy schools, local
communities can reclaim the power of self-rule. Like hurricanes that feed
off warmer waters, the anti-corporate movement draws strength through legal
provocation. Says Linzey, "This is about shifting the paradigm to let
people understand that the courts do step in to defend community rights
over corporate rights."

) Seven Days Newspaper, 2004

www.sevendaysvt.com

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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'