Lexington Community Education presents Corporations Are Not People: An Evening with Jeff Clements

Jeff Clements is the president and co-founder of Free Speech for People, a national, non-partisan campaign to challenge the creation of Constitutional rights for corporations, overturn Citizens United v FEC, and strengthen American democracy and republican self-government.  In his recent book, Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It (Berrett-Koehler 2012), Jeff shows how the largest corporations in the world organized and funded a three-decade effort to take over our American government and Constitution, culminating in the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission striking down a century of law restricting corporate spending in elections. Jeff connects the recent fabrication of “corporate rights” under our Constitution to the disabling of republican democracy in America. Elections and government now are dominated and controlled by corporations and the extremely wealthy, with devastating results: lost jobs, stagnating wages, and vanishing benefits for most people and extraordinary riches for a very few; environmental destruction and accelerating global catastrophe; dead-end fossil fuel energy policies demanding unjust, unwise use of military force around the world; and a loss of faith in the American promise of government of, for and by the people.  At the same time, Jeff will discuss the rapidly growing movement for a Constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and corporate rights, the work of Free Speech for People (www.freespeechforpeople.org) in this effort, and the ways in which you can join the work of millions of Americans to build anew that rarest of things: a peaceful republic of free people with equal rights and an equal voice.