Corporations Are Not People: We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident…

[marmar]

Published on Wednesday, October 12, 2011 by Waging Nonviolence
Corporations Are Not People: We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident…

by Michael Nagler and Stephanie Van Hook


When is a Person not a Person?

Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PSR) recently answered this absurd question with the obvious and embarrassing answer: when it’s a corporation. According to PSR’s statement, in case anyone is confused, a human being:

is a complex organism with capacities for joy and pain, reflection, and the compassionate appreciation of others. Mature persons are expected to display reasoned judgment, and are personally responsible for their own actions (our emphasis). Human beings live, breath, think, experience emotions, and internalize values such as empathy and caring for others. Like all sentient beings, they suffer, and die.

Corporations possess none of these functions, which make being human sacred, valuable and worthy of dignity. As the Occupy movements grow in remarkably inspiring ways, they have a unique opportunity to raise the human image from the slander and propaganda of the corporate media—where our capacity for consumption defines us and our desire for wealth drives us—to a more promising, and far more accurate conception of what makes us truly human: our capacity for nonviolence, motivated by our most precious desire for freedom. As Gandhi put it, “Non-violence is the law of the humans…”

It is clear in these movements that we are not fighting against a dictator who has been in power for longer than his share of time; we are fighting a new form of colonialism. It is time to take Gandhi more seriously than ever, as he led a campaign against colonialism for more than 30 years before laying down his life for the movement that we are now called on to continue bravely. Overcoming the juggernaut of corporate personhood through our highest ideals and desires is by no means a painless and rapid process. By its very nature, nevertheless, it is undoubtedly the most rewarding course that we can take. The benefits of what we receive in the process will certainly outweigh any short term sacrifices we may be required to make, even if that means our very bodies. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/12-4

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. k&r

[librechik]

2. I wish this meme had come out as "Corporations are not persons"

because one can argue that corpoartions are made up of various people, workers, management etc, while persons is more along the line of the legal definition I want to reverse. Corporations should not have personhood.

I suppose it's too late now, thanks to Mitt.

[Uncle Joe]

3. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.

[xchrom]

4. recommend