Message from our President Heiderose Kober

Dear Progressive Democrat:

In his first State of the Union address, President Obama said that leaders in
Washington face a "deficit of trust" from the American public. No kidding! To
progressives who have struggled mightily and long to make government responsive to
the needs of the American people instead of yielding to the demands of corporate
America, this statement was neither surprising nor new. We know what we're up
against.

The Progressive Democrats of North Carolina came together last September under the
banner of "Confronting Corporatocracy/Saving Democracy" and hammered out a strategy
and plan of action. Our premise was that the major impediment to progressive
solutions to the problems our nation and state are facing is the corporatocracy -
the web of powerful special interests and their political allies that seek to
control the agenda, write the legislation, and manipulate the regulatory processes
so that their power and profits are maintained. Run by the boards and CEOs of
multi-national corporations and their allies, the corporatocracy uses campaign
contributions, an army of lobbyists, and the support of carefully cultivated
legislators to run roughshod over the democratic process. The recent Supreme Court
decision has deepened this crisis by opening the floodgates for unlimited amounts of
corporate money to flow into our political system.

A system that requires the many to live in poverty so that the few can live in the
lap of luxury is morally bankrupt and needs to be overturned. A system that
denigrates and short-changes workers and rewards gamblers, opportunists and frauds
is a path to economic and social destruction and must be stopped. A system that
shreds social safety nets for its most vulnerable populations and criminalizes the
poor while creating a bloated corporate welfare state that sucks vital resources
from the people has to be radically transformed. A system that celebrates the
blatant corporate take-over of government as a victory for freedom is so steeped in
denial that it can no longer serve as a valid model for democracy.

As Frederick Douglass said in 1857: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. The
limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

So what are our limits? How long are we willing to respond to the yoke of corporate
hegemony with misdirected anger and hopeless despair? How much of our people power
are we willing to cede to political players whose ambitions are many but rarely
include the concepts of public service and the common good?

If we want to keep democracy alive, we must act, and we must act together. We must
expose, oppose, confront, challenge, resist, dismantle the corporate hegemony and
its enablers and rebuild our democracy from the grassroots up!

On Wednesday, Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mi., and chair of
the House Judiciary Committee introduced an amendment to the Constitution to
overturn the Supreme Court's decision in Citizen's United that gave corporations the
right to spend unlimited funds in election campaigns as a matter of free speech.
Edwards, a truly progressive first term legislator with a strong commitment to free
and fair elections, quoted Justice Lewis Brandeis:

'We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in
the hands of a few, but we can't have both.'

She continued" "It is time we remove corporate influence from our policies and our
politics. We cannot allow corporations to dominate our elections, to do so would be
both undemocratic and unfair to ordinary citizens."

We have been bombarded for decades with the canard that all government is bad and
big government is downright evil. As the influence, reach and power of government
diminished or was co-opted amid successful deregulation campaigns, the deliberate
under-funding of regulatory and watch dog agencies, and the all too common practice
of putting foxes in the henhouse, government - the entity which is supposed to
represent us, the people - became a 90-pound weakling, unable to stand up to the
corporate and special interest bullies and protect the common interest and us
against corporate abuse and exploitation. By contrast, corporations have grown so
large and powerful that they were able to blackmail our government into handing over
hundreds of billions of our taxpayer money because 'they were too big to fail.' The
underlying message to us tax payers seems to be: you are too small to matter.

Of the world's biggest 100 economies, 51 are corporations, not countries. Thus it is
clear that individuals by themselves have very little chance to counter corporate
supremacy.

Only an independent, uncorrupted government that is truly of the people, by the
people, and for the people is big enough and strong enough to prevail against
corporate dominance. Democracy is a participatory form of government that needs us
to survive and grow.

For example, instead of corporations that are only beholden to their CEOs and
shareholders, let's support corporate models that also have the common good written
into their charters. There are 10 such B Corporations in North Carolina today. How
many will there be in 10 years?

Instead of elections that pit corporate-funded candidates against each other in an
obscene money race that ensures that whoever wins will remain a life-long captive of
the corporate interests that paid for the election, let's push for a voter-owned
elections where people-funded candidates have a chance of winning and actually
delivering on their promises to their constituents.

Aristotle said that every country gets the government it deserves. So let's embrace
our rights and responsibilities as citizen activists and commit ourselves to the
long and hard work of rebuilding our democracy from the grassroots up. I cannot
think of a better legacy to leave for future generations.