Citizen Comments Deflected--Civil Disobedience Must Follow

“Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time.” 
― Thomas Paine, The Age Of Reason

“When it shall be said in any country in the world my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government” 
― Thomas Paine, Rights Of Man

A tweet from  Jenn Walling, of the Illinois Environmental Council:  "My favorite part of today was my hair looked amazing..."  (5pm on day of her House testimony regarding fracking regulation bill, SB1715)

On May 22, 2013 the Executive Committee of the Illinois House of Representatives unanimously passed SB1715, the so-called fracking regulation bill. The full House is expected to vote on the measure before the end of May. The committee vote reflects a common reality in 21^st century American politics: committees allow the expressions of majority citizen opinions in strong opposition to a bill but know full well that corporate opinions on the issue will trump any evidence concerned citizens might present. In other words, free speech in America has become our version of the bread and circuses that Rome provided for its suffering citizens. When free speech of U.S. citizens is discounted in arena after arena—and when corporate desires prevail again and again—American citizens’s first amendment right becomes a sham. Careful viewing of Sandra Steingraber’s testimony before the House Executive Committee is an example of this current reality.

At the May 22^nd hearing, scientist and writer Sandra Steingraber presented powerful evidence refuting claims in support of SB1715 by Jen Walling of the Illinois Environmental Council, Mary Morrisey, Deputy of Chief of Staff for the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, and Mark Denzler, spokesman for the Illinois Manufacturing Association. The hearing room was packed with citizens opposing the bill. Steingraber’s testimony was strong enough to set mouths into tense lines of disapproval for all four of the pro-fracking witnesses (John Bradley is hidden behind Mark Denzler in the photo below).

Photos thanks to EcoWatch, “After One Arrest, Sit In Continues Demanding Moratorium on Fracking,” May 22, 2013, http://ecowatch.com/2013/after-one-arrest-sit-in-continues-demanding-moratorium-on-fracking/. The video can be seen at “Testimony by Dr. Sandra Steingraber on Illinois Fracking Regulatory Bill” on YouTube.

 

The House sponsor of SB1715, John Bradley of Marion, found Steingraber’s words so difficult to listen to that his head drooped, in frustration or shame, as she spoke. Notice the dark-haired woman in the gallery, to the upper left in the photo, who is staring intently as he hangs his head.

When Steingraber’s excoriating testimony continued for longer than Bradley seemed willing to endure, he actually looked up at the Executive Committee chair, and later toward someone seated slightly above him to his left, as if asking for someone on the committee to end his torment. Notice how interested Jen Walling and Mark Denzler seem to be in his attempt to communicate, albeit silently, with the committee member. Shortly after Bradley’s wordless appeal, the committee chair informed Steingraber that her time was up.

At the conclusion of witness testimony on the 22^nd, the committee voted in favor of SB1715 and passed it on for a vote in the House. The members of Illinois House Executive Committee in 2013 include eight Democrats and five Republicans: Daniel J. Burke (23^rd District in Chicago), Joseph M. Lyons (95^th District in Chicago), Dan Brady (88^th District in Bloomington), Edward J. Acevedo (2^nd District in Chicago), Maria Antonia Berrios (39^th District in Chicago), Bob Biggins (41^st District in Elmhurst), Richard T. Bradley (40^th District in Chicago), Brent Hassert (85^th District in Romeoville), James H. Meyer (48^th District in Naperville), Robert S. Molaro (95^th District in Chicago), Robert Rita (95^th District in Crestwood), Angelo Saviano (95^th District in River Grove), Arthur L. Turner (95^th District in Chicago). Of the thirteen members, only Dan Brady represents citizens outside of the greater Chicago area. Notice, too, that party affiliation provides no clue as to a representative's position on this environmental issue.

Five counties in southern Illinois have passed resolutions calling for a fracking ban in Illinois. None of these counties’s districts were represented on the Executive Committee. These counties are located in a part of Illinois where fracking would likely first appear, should SB1715 become law.

Citizens calling for a moratorium on fracking, or an outright ban, who attempted to meet with Governor Quinn about SB1715, received no admittance to the Governor’s office. He has already expressed his willingness to sign off on this bill that promises to regulate fracking, in spite of the fact that fracking has proven impossible to effectively regulate in every other U.S. state where it has secured a right to do business. Illinois citizens are already going to jail when their attempts to continue a peaceful protest outside the governor’s office are meeting with police attempts to remove them.

As they say in the world of professional gambling, “The fix is in, boys.” In other words, the Executive Committee was required by law to allow public testimony from those who registered to provide such comments, but the law does not require the committee to stay its course even if persuasive testimony against proposed law is brought before it. The committee can decide to find industry evidence more persuasive even when any reasonable person would wonder why evidence of pollution, health dangers, and the inability of other states to control fracking indicate that legislators should, at the very least, further study fracking before allowing the industry a foothold in Illinois.

Interestingly, the Illinois Sierra Club, after seeing the outpouring of public comment against SB1715 and considering Steingraber’s testimony, has reversed its position on the bill. The Illinois Sierra Club is now calling for a fracking moratorium in Illinois. In some arenas at least, a citizen’s right to freedom of speech has the potential to effect change. The Illinois Sierra Club is a major player in the state and its change in position could exert some influence on the course of the fracking bill. But the crucial reality to focus on is the cavalier way in which legislators now treat the protests of citizens.

In April, Sandra Steingraber commented in an interview with Bill Moyers that she now chooses to commit civil disobedience when fighting to keep fracking out of New York, the state where she currently lives. After pursuing, as she described it, “every legal avenue to raise serious health, economic and environmental concerns,” (http://personal.alternet.org/fracking/sandra-steingraber-issues-statement-being-led-jail-act-civil-disobedience-last-resort-me) Steingraber and two other activists, stepped onto a fracking storage company’s driveway and attempted to prevent operations at the plant. She was arrested and convicted for trespassing and, when she refused to pay the fine required by the court, she was sentenced to fifteen days in a New York jail and served eight of them. She seems to have realized that a citizen’s legal rights to express an opinion has no effect on the legislative process.

When a citizen’s First Amendment right to free speech becomes a way to make him or her feel, mistakenly, as if the act is part of the decision-making process in our country, when it becomes a way for citizens to stay occupied so they do not choose more active approaches, then our right to freedom of speech has become a way for the government to create a façade of democracy, even as corporate money and influence exert hidden power.

Steingraber’s turn toward civil disobedience has company in calls by Bill McKibben for activists to “peacefully but firmly” stand up to the Keystone XL pipeline. He aims to put thousands of protestors in the path of KXL, some of whom are willing to be arrested. His actions are founded on those of Martin Luther King, Jr. who protested the conditions faced by blacks in 1960’s Birmingham, Alabama. From jail, King wrote, “I am here because injustice is here. I would agree with Saint Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’” http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/king/aa_king_jail_2.html.

Just as laws can be unjust, the process whereby the laws are crafted can be unjust. Steingraber and McKibben and all citizens opposing current attempts by the oil and gas industry to wring a few more billion out of the world, having exhausted all legal means at their/our disposal, and must now follow in King, and Thoreau, and Ghandi’s footsteps. When free speech is deflected, civil disobedience must follow. The stakes are too high, for us, for our children, and for the planet to allow backroom deals and corporate/government collusion to prevail. Citizen speech that cannot influence government policy is a reality that insults the American people.  The people are marching now.

In a separate post today I will publish a point-by-point comparison of government promises regarding SB1715 and Illinois State University professor emeritus William Rau's analysis of how the bill will put the state of Illinois at risk. Please read and then join a civil disobedience action on this issue near you. Springfield on Tuesday should be jumpin'.

The Fallacy of Corporate Personhood

You probably know two people in your town like these:

The first, a woman who knows times of pretty good living and other times of struggle, she still takes care of her family and her community even when years are tough. She raises a couple of kids and supports them as they explore where to take their lives. When a cousin hits a wall, this woman takes in her cousin's son and raises him the best she can. People respect her and like her and, when she passes on, her many contributions to the community are sorely missed.

You've probably met this next person, too, or at least read about him. In his younger years and as an adult, he never lacks the physical comforts of life. His struggles lie elsewhere--too much drinking, and an appetite for every pleasure he can imagine. He secures a prestigious position with a large company, but his work keeps him away from his family. A DUI (driving under the influence of alcohol conviction) leads to an expensive court case. And his children, as they grow older, struggle with unhealthy appetites of their own. He contributes to his community in ways that are expected of someone in his line of work. When he passes his obituary is long but the memorial service for him seems proper and well rehearsed. He is politely missed even as a few breathe a sigh of relief that he will no longer drive while under the influence of a controlled substance.

Two people in your town. One maybe more good than bad. One maybe more bad than good. They share a human trait, however: both are mortal. Whatever good or ill they brought to their town had only so long to affect the community. And then they died.

If only the same could be said of corporations and LLC's (limited liability corporations).

When members, or shareholders, or directors of certain businesses die, the businesses don't necessarily die with them. With the right operating or management agreements, some businesses can survive beyond the founder's death. The companies are said to enjoy what the law describes as a perpetual existence. And their ability to survive unlimited human lifetimes can prove to be a most pernicious reality, especially when coupled with the growing list of rights bestowed on businesses by the legal fiction of corporate personhood: rights to free speech, the right to equate political spending with free speech, and the right to pursue legal actions against others just as a human being of means might do. But there is a terrible inconsistency in how corporate personhood has been interpreted.

Maybe every time you go to the dentist, you must endure the ministrations of an overly muscular dental hygienist. If you don't change dentists all together, you may resign yourself to a clean but sore mouth every six months or so and comfort yourself with the awareness of the hygienists' increasing age. Happily for you, s/he will eventually retire.

There is a natural limit to a human being's influence on the earth. And sometimes that's a very good thing.

On the other hand, a corporation, or limited liability company--at least as currently defined in the U.S.--can set itself up to deliver pain for a very long time. If it's an oil company that causes the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history, it can survive that catastrophe. Oh, it may shed a director or officer or three, but that destructive entity--especially if it has vast economic resources--can survive to pollute another day. Its criminal behavior or negligence may have caused the deaths of some of its workers and/or neighboring community members, but the company can survive even that.

There are few humans who wield such power that they can go on with their lives largely unchanged after a felony conviction or after they are required to pay great civil damages.

Some businesses, on the other hand, seem to weather such legal consequences with hardly a stutter to their operations. Companies such as these will have multiple lifetimes in which to threaten the lives of other mortals who have only one existence in which to pursue their dreams.

Corporate personhood has been immorally granted to these U.S. businesses. To bestow on them the rights granted to individuals by the U.S. Constitution even as the corporations are given immortality--these paired characteristics saddle the rest of us poor mortals with a ridiculously disadvantaged position.

And I haven't even explored a corporation's ability to shield its stockholders, board and officers from personal liability, yet another madness in which an entity that exists on paper is held liable while the actual human beings who made the decisions for the business and acted in its behalf are not to be held liable when the corporation runs into trouble. That's another insanity to explore. Real people would love to be able to shield themselves from liability, too.

The courts could somewhat level the playing field between often contending corporate and human interests: U.S. courts could finish the job of defining corporate personhood by limiting a corporation's existence to the average life expectancy of we poor mortals. That way, if the country is forced to endure the unscrupulous practices of a particular business, at least we know we won't have to suffer its selfishness forever. We can comfort ourselves with the understanding that a cruel or greedy corporation, like the less than favorite fellow citizen in our town, must inevitably pass from earthly existence. And at the natural end of such a corporation, should it attempt to resurrect itself, the community and the state could examine its preceding record to decide whether a corporate charter should be granted to individuals once involved with a corporation that abused the people or land where it did business.

If corporations are to be termed persons, then they, as we, should exist knowing they will eventually die. We make decisions based on this understanding. So should they.

What Is Intention?

What Is Intention?

My marriage fell apart while I was in grad school. Sooner than I could take it all in, my husband said he’d sold our house in Idaho and needed me to come from California to move my stuff out so the new owner could move in. It didn’t matter that I was in the middle of understudying two shows and about to open another one. I had to get to Idaho.

I had two days. So I rented a fourteen foot truck, drove all the way to Idaho, loaded the truck with my ex’s help, slept a few hours and then got back in the truck for the drive back to San Diego.

It was January. I’d checked the weather reports and knew that snow had been predicted for the evening of my return drive. My plan was to outrun the storm.

I thought things were going really well. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for driving this big truck with the stick-shift from hell all the way up there by myself. Feeling proud for not falling apart emotionally when I saw him and the house, when I went through the process of separating all the possessions. But in the back of my mind I knew that what I was doing was more than a little crazy.

The return drive was uneventful until twilight when I found myself going up the mountains between Las Vegas and Barstow. As I switched on the headlights I saw thick snowflakes begin to swirl in the beams. A few flurries, I thought.

Darkness came as I pushed the truck up the mountain highway. And flakes got thicker and thicker until flurries became the wrong word for them and I had to admit I was driving in a full-blown snowstorm. I noticed, too, that there was roadwork on this side of the highway and all the run-away ramps and rest stops had been blocked off with barricades. No shoulder on this mountain road.

I was nervous and full of second-guessing about what I’d set out to do. Why did I insist on going alone? Why did I always push myself like this? Why did I care about these lousy pieces of furniture and kitchen stuff anyway? Why had I ever left California? What was I going to do with all this stuff when I got there? As I allowed these ideas to swirl through my mind, my focus on the driving lapsed for a moment. The truck hit a little thickness in the snow and went into a skid.

Time stopped as I learned fast how to feel my way into the skid and keep the truck from doing a three-sixty right there on the interstate. I got her back under control, cursing myself for the attention lapse. Berating myself for putting my life on the line like this for a truck-full of stuff.

And the berating was interrupted by another threat of a skid. As my heart raced faster than I thought it could possibly go, a big light went on inside me. I wanted to survive this mountain. More than anything I’d ever wanted before. And to do that I was going to have to keep every bit of me awake to the here and now. Even though I was terrified. Even though all I wanted to do was pull to the side of the road and wait out the storm. There was no side of the road, and I couldn’t just stop because when I looked in the rearview mirror I saw at least six cars behind me.

By this time I had reached the top of the mountain and was coming down the pass on the other side. Barstow, I thought. Just get me the hell to Barstow. The snow was so thick now that it was hard to see the road. All I knew was that I wanted to get down off this mountain. That I wanted to keep the truck from fish-tailing. That I wanted to stay on the road. That I sure didn’t want my last night on the planet to involve losing control of a truck and causing a pile up that would bring harm to me and the people trailing behind me.

Suddenly, life seemed very sweet. I didn’t care that I was going to have to deal with a failed marriage. I didn’t care that the weeks ahead would be filled with unknowns of every kind. I just wanted the chance to wrestle with all of it. The rotten and the joyful and the boring, too. I wanted tomorrow more than I’d ever wanted it in my life.

I sang at the top of my lungs to fight away my terror. I cursed with every evil word I knew. I prayed and made bargains with gods and goddesses. And every second I kept my attention on the road, the storm, and the truck. Even though I was tired. Even though I was afraid my heart was going to explode from the pounding. Even though I just wanted some extraterrestrial to beam me up off that highway and end this ordeal.

It took hours to get down the mountain. When I saw the lights of Barstow, I cried and laughed and pulled into the first motel parking lot I saw. I got into a hotel room, took off my clothes that were sopping with sweat, and switched on the TV.

I learned from the news that four cars went off the mountain that night. Six people died. Somehow, I wasn’t one of them. The somehow that kept me alive was what acting books call “intention.” Otherwise known as the will to live.