The Story of Citizens United v. FEC: Why Democracy Only Works When People Are in Charge

http://www.commondreams.org/video/2011/03/01

The Story of Citizens United v. FEC is being released to support the growing movement for a constitutional amendment. The Story of Stuff Project will hold over 500 house parties around the country for participants to learn more about the Supreme Court’s decision and to organize in support of a constitutional amendment.

The Story of Citizens United v. FEC companion website (www.storyofcitizensunited.org) will serve as an interactive launch pad for information and activism. The site offers viewers additional educational resources, including an annotated script and FAQs, as well as ways to get involved in the constitutional amendment campaigns of Public Citizen, Free Speech for People and People for the American Way.



The Justices who voted in favor of Big Corporations against The American People:


Roberts
Alito
Scalia
Thomas
Kennedy


From an opinion concurring with the majority:
Chief Justice  John G. Roberts Jr.:
"The Government urges us in this case to uphold a direct prohibition on political speech. It asks us to embrace a theory of the First Amendment that would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasts, but of pamphlets, posters, the Internet, and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concern. . . . The First Amendment protects more than just the individual on a soapbox and the lonely pamphleteer."


For the dissenters:

Justice John Paul Stevens:
"At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."