LEGISLATIVE MATTERS People are people — are corporations? BY SARA DONNELLY
	Acting (or not) in the public interest LD 1495 wasn’t the only bill regarding corporate power to be considered at the Judiciary Committee work session on the morning of May 27. Representative John Eder (G-Portland) sponsored another bill, LD 1474, " An Act to Require That Corporations Be Operated in a Manner That Does Not Adversely Affect the Public Interest, " which would have made actions contrary to the public interest by business corporations illegal. This bill, which was endorsed by the activist group People First Maine, was unanimously voted down in under five minutes without any debate. Why? Well, besides the fact that the bill would have broadly required businesses to avoid hurting people without really defining what that means, the sponsor of the legislation, Eder, was nowhere to be found. The following, therefore, is a transcript of the committee’s consideration of LD 1474: " Is the sponsor here? " asks co-chair Representative Deborah Pelletier-Simpson (D-Auburn). " Maybe we should place a call to the Green Party offices, " replies co-chair Senator Barry Hobbins (D-York). The committee then shares a laugh and votes down the bill. While the committee was having a laugh at his expense, Eder was over 50 miles away at his home in Portland. When reached by the Phoenix later that day, Eder said he didn’t know that the work session for LD 1474 was scheduled for that morning. In fact, he thought the bill had already been killed by the committee at some work session a few days back. " I thought everyone had the day off today, " said Eder. For what it’s worth, Eder says he was never confident the committee would endorse LD 1474 anyway. —SD

On May 27, a bill you’ve probably never heard of was labeled "ought not to pass" in a unanimous Judiciary Committee vote, essentially killing its chances of becoming law in this session of the Maine state Legislature. But the activist supporters of the deceased LD 1495, "An Act to Limit Corporate Power Over the Political Process," People First Maine, hope to hammer away at corporate power at the legislative level. They won’t quit until the notion of bucking an 1886 Supreme Court decision giving corporations some of the same rights as human beings — like the freedom to weigh in on political candidates, fund think tanks, or hire folks to gather signatures to combat anti-corporate citizen’s referendum (a strategy sometimes used by Wal-Mart) — is more palatable to our representatives in the statehouse.

They’re not acting on their own — the 2004 Maine Democratic Party platform challenges "corporate personhood" directly. This platform was one of the reasons the sponsor of LD 1495, Representative Ben Dudley (D-Portland) agreed to take up the bill for People First Maine in the first place. "Corporations," the platform reads, "may not claim they are ‘persons’ or ‘people’ under the US Constitution and obtain Constitutional rights thereby."

So, it’s apparently a goal, but it’s nowhere near a reality. Judging from the reaction of the Judiciary Committee to LD 1495 and John Eder’s similarly progressive bill LD 1474 (see accompanying sidebar), the day when Maine challenges corporate personhood is far, far away. After some chuckling, brow furrowing, and head shaking, the eight members of the committee present for the vote all agreed — "ought not to pass."

"If you want to talk about an unfriendly climate for business [in Maine], tell corporations large or small that they don’t have equal protection in this state," said Senator David Hastings (R-Oxford) during the debate.

Sean Faircloth, a Democratic representative from Bangor, put the whole thing more bluntly. He believes a bill like this, which would have set a precedent nationwide if made into law, doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting endorsed in committee. It’s just too risky, especially for a state that is struggling to attract businesses. Faircloth says progressives’ time would be better spent lobbying for less-flashy bills, like, say, his LD 1532 (which would warn tenants and homebuyers about lead poisoning) or his LD 563 (which would give elderly residents discount energy for their oxygenators). You know, just for example.

"I worry that progressives get all caught up in an issue that has zero chance of success," said Faircloth of LD 1495. "Nobody in this room was there when we were considering cuts on mental health, things that affect people’s day-to-day lives."

The grassroots movement to overturn corporate personhood is not limited to Maine and is, at its core, deeply preoccupied with the big picture. But the big picture in the corporate world, activists say, has a significant impact on the day-to-day. According to Virginia Rasmussen, a lead organizer for the Challenge Corporate Power campaign at the nonprofit Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, in Philadelphia, the national movement to strip personhood status from corporations has picked up over the past few years in part because activists are finding that until they take on this big-picture issue, they can’t effectively challenge corporations locally.

"Nothing’s going to change in regards to who holds the power unless public arenas become the acting agents of this change," says Rasmussen. The public arenas are municipalities and states which can enact ordinances or bills like LD 1495, forcing the nation as a whole to take up the issue.

"It’s absolutely fundamental that communities begin to function in this way and exert their self-governing rights in this way. It’s not going to come from above," she says.

According to Reclaim Democracy, an activist group in Montana which focuses on limiting corporate power, resolutions and state Democratic platform planks opposing corporate personhood and political speech have been adopted in New Hampshire, Washington state, and Oklahoma. In 2000, the city of Point Arena, California, became the first municipality in the country to pass an ordinance declaring that corporations "are artificial entities separate and apart from natural persons."

Chris Miller is a member of People First who attended the work session in support of LD 1495. Miller sat in the front row facing the committee in a black-and-white tweed blazer, typing notes on his computer. He typed in the remarks made by Faircloth, Hastings, and others. He typed the response from the lawyer who drafted the bill. And then, when the committee broke for lunch, he closed his laptop and stretched his legs. Though the committee would not vote on LD 1495 until later that afternoon, Miller had a feeling the bill was in for it.

He moved to a different chair, one off along the side of the room, and stared silently for a while before he spoke, elbows casually propped up on the seat back. He had hoped Maine would be the first state in the country to adopt a bill like Point Arena’s ordinance. And even though LD 1495 would be killed, Miller had faith that eventually the state will see the light. Sure, he understood Faircloth’s concern about LD 1495, and he even understood Hasting’s point that a bill like this could scare off larger corporations from a state desperate for more business. But Miller, who owns a small Internet service corporation, believes a bill to shave away some corporate power would in fact help with Faircloth’s "day-to-day" struggles by restricting political opinions to those originating from real, live people. And Miller thinks the bill might have even make Maine friendlier to small corporations like his own by curtailing the lobbying powers of larger ones.

So even though the bill lost steam in committee this time, even though Judiciary committee co-chair Representative Deborah Pelletier-Simpson (D-Auburn) was laughing to herself and shaking her head incredulously throughout much of the morning’s debate, People First plans bring up the issue again. And again. Until the notion of limiting corporate political speech seems reasonable, hell, even passable.

"I think Sean Faircloth has a really good point that a lot of work can be done on the margin," said Miller. "But small incremental stuff is not getting us anywhere. I have decided that we need to go for the big picture."

The big picture takes a long time to paint.