On Town Meeting Day, 63 out of 65 Vermont towns voted to support resolutions that call on state lawmakers and our Congressional delegation to work on a Constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2010 which permitted unlimited corporate spending on political campaigns.
Besides opening the floodgates for hundreds of millions of dollars to be poured into this year's presidential election, Citizens United also sparked a debate over the idea of corporate personhood: the notion that a corporation has the same legal rights as a person.
Voters in Brattleboro, Marlboro, Newfane, and Putney joined their counterparts in 59 other towns in rejecting the idea that corporations are people and that money equals speech. Only in the western Vermont towns of Pittsford and Mendon did the measure fail.
Our Congressional delegation needs little convincing on this issue, with Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Peter Welch taking the lead in their respective chambers. Sen. Patrick Leahy has been a critic of Citizens United, but he has not endorsed any particular legislative remedy.
On the eve of Town Meeting, Welch was in Brattleboro to talk about the efforts to crack down on unregulated spending in political campaigns. Welch said he supported the effort to bring up the issue at Town Meeting.
“It's grassroots efforts that will ultimately make a difference,” he said. “A lot of good things happen at Town Meeting.”
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Welch cited as an example the town meetings around the state in 1982 and the votes that year aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. It's a good example for those who might think that Town Meeting voters asking Congress to amend the Constitution is a quixotic act.
An article on the warrants in 192 towns that year called on Vermont's Congressional delegation to urge President Reagan to propose to the Soviet Union a mutual freeze on the testing, production, and deployment of new nuclear weapons. The article passed in all but 32 of the towns considering the issue.
That vote attracted worldwide attention, and nuclear freeze measures were endorsed by 12 state legislatures, including Vermont, as well as the voters in nine out of the 10 states where it was placed on the ballot that year.
In June 1982, one million people participated in anti-nuclear demonstration in New York's Central Park, the largest peace and disarmament march in U.S. history. Leading religious denominations, unions, professional groups, and the Democratic Party all backed the freeze, an issue that had the approval of 70 percent of Americans, according to the polls.
In Europe, where the Reagan administration wanted to put new intermediate-range nuclear missiles, massive demonstrations took place opposing the plan. The public outcry became too big to ignore and by 1984, Reagan began publicly talking about seeking peace with the Soviet Union and moving toward a nuclear-free world.
Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader in 1985 and signaled a willingness to negotiate. Gorbachev and Reagan, pushed hard by global anti-nuclear sentiment, moved quickly toward disarmament and, eventually, an end to the Cold War.
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A mass movement supported by a strong majority of Americans helped put the brakes on the Cold War. And the role of Vermont in that movement was considerable.
That's what a grassroots movement can accomplish. That's what the power of direct democracy can accomplish. That's how little towns in a little state can make a big difference.
To amend the Constitution, it takes a two-thirds majority approval in both the U.S. House and Senate, as well as approval from three-quarters of the nation's state legislatures.
That majority will not be easy, but it must be done, before the power of big money completely and irrevocably corrupts the political process.
Fortunately, Vermont has a proud history on its side, a history of getting the ball rolling on issues from outlawing slavery in 1777 to legalizing same-sex marriage in 2009.
If we lead, the nation will eventually follow.