Tomorrow night's meeting

[We the People Massachusetts/North Shore]

Dear Friends,

We'll be meeting at 7 at the Beverly Library tomorrow night (October 5) and hope you can join us.  We are gearing up to introduce the bill into the Legislature in the new session in January and are working on a plan to get it passed.  

We are looking for new members, so please don't hesitate to invite anyone that you think would have an interest in rebuilding our democracy. 

The deadline for lining up co-sponsors of the We the People Act for the next two-year session of the state legislature is approaching fast and, even if you can't attend, please let me know if you'd be willing to speak with your legislator about being a co-sponsor.

Remember, whatever your first legislative priority happens to be, fixing our broken democracy should be your second (or first!), because until we restore government that serves the all people rather than just special interests, your first priority will probably be hard to achieve.

Kathy Lique

781-710-3471

PS - American Promise’s National Citizen Leadership Conference in Washington, DC this past weekend was a big success. About 300 people from 40 states showed up to hear from and interact with 60 speakers beginning on Friday evening, Sept. 30 and ending at noon on Sunday, Oct. 2. 

We heard speakers such as author Jeff Clements (Corporations Are Note People), war hero Joe Goodwin (son of author Doris Kearns Goodwin), Congressman James Leach (R-Iowa), Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC), Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-Maryland), State Senator Nina Turner (D-Ohio), State Senator Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), Congressman Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts), and the Rev. Dr. Katharine Hepburn of Auburn Theological Seminary. We also heard from panelists such as Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and founder of the Stamp Stampede, author Frances Moore Lappe (Diet for a Small Planet), Rabbi Jonah Pesner, Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap of Move to Amend, John Bonifaz of Free Speech for People, John Pudner of Take Back Our Republic, Hedrick Smith of the New York Times, and Michelle Sutter of Money Out Voters In, and many others. 

I got to meet Paul Westlake of the Amendment Gazette at the conference. I encourage everyone interested in the pros and cons of the various bills proposing a democracy amendment filed in the 114th Congress to read Paul Westlake’s analyses of them at the Amendment Gazette.

Some members of We the People / Massachusetts (including myself) met with staff of several members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation (Joe Kennedy III, Seth Moulton, Ed Markey and Stephen Lynch) on Friday, Sept. 30 before the conference. We expressed the urgent need for a democracy amendment to establish that money is legal tender only (not First Amendment Speech) and therefore can be limited by government, and to establish that only human citizens should be entitled to unalienable constitutional rights (corporations should derive their rights exclusively from their charters and business law). We discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the multiple bills currently filed in Congress, expressed our preference for HJR 48, and presented them all with copies of Corporations Are Not People. We also discussed the possibility of a sign-on letter from members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation encouraging Massachusetts state legislators to pass the We the People Act.