The stability of our democracy is continually being challenged. The court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission two years ago undermined the fundamental principles that govern a democracy by enabling legal fictions to maintain the same entitlement bestowed specifically upon the American people. Electing the president of the United States has ostensibly become a competition among corporate entities as opposed to a representative decision made by citizens of the free world.
If the unlimited corporate spending in federal elections and the granting of individual free speech rights to corporations is not evidence of a steadily deteriorating democracy, it is difficult to conjecture where the union is headed. The future of our nation rests in the hands of politicians who have refuted a sense of communal responsibility and solidarity by advocating a corporate plutocracy.
Although corporations should maintain specific rights, granting them the full-fledged ability to influence our electoral process compromises the role of citizens. The pillars of our democracy can only be upheld if the voices of the American public reverberate throughout the halls of Congress. However, the Supreme Court doctrine that establishes corporations as people with constitutional rights, including the right to contribute infinite sums of money to elect candidates of choice, silences citizen speech and promulgates corporate interests.
Romney's infamous statement equating corporations to people epitomizes the inherent negligence of a Congress indebted to corporate interests. When the interests of the people clash with those of the corporations that regulate power in the U.S. government, the citizenry will no longer allow inequity to monopolize their democratic rights. The events of Jan. 20 proved to be a pivotal movement for the American people, as hundreds protested the Supreme Court's verdict at the steps of the Federal courthouses.
The billionaire Koch Brothers and Super Political Action Committees have had unregulated influence, placing our nation in a tragic state, alongside politicians who would do well to acknowledge the damage and utter hardships they have bestowed upon us. Organizations like Move to Amend have made it their responsibility to initiate change, to speak up when we have virtually been spoken down to Move to Amend, a coalition inspired by the work of Occupy Wall Street and Cornel West Ph.D., successfully occupied the courts to be the genuine vanguard of our nation's fate.
At the heart of Citizens United is the paradoxical unification of a few elite who have successfully undermined the human necessity to be cognizant of our fellow man, to recognize that without a shared interest in our common good, our system of governance will continue to fail. For a decree of justice to emerge again as the pillar of our democracy, the courts must recognize that money is not speech, and that human beings- — not corporations — are persons entitled to constitutional rights. The votes of our citizens cannot be measured on the same scale as multi billion- dollar corporations. Our government "of the people, by the people, for the people" has neglected the bastion of our democracy, and in so doing, challenged the vitality of our nation by exploiting its people. But the people have spoken, and until justice and equity are reinstated into our mired system, they will continue to confront all that is broken around us.
