Public Citizen and "We the People" vs. the Koch Brothers

Here are some rather famous words:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

That, of course, is the Preamble to the United States Constitution.

Notice how it starts with “We the People” not “They the Plutocrats”?

Yet the Koch Brothers and other plutocratic forces are feverishly attempting to undermine our democracy under cover of supposed constitutional rights afforded them by severely misguided U.S. Supreme Court rulings like Citizens United and McCutcheon.

That’s where you come in.

As part of Public Citizen, you’ve helped build the momentum for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and McCutcheon.

And now the U.S. Senate is expected to vote on just such an amendment later this term.

Considering how many people questioned whether an amendment was possible when we first launched the campaign to win one just four years ago, this is a major milestone and a moment we simply must capitalize on fully.

Here’s what we have to do in the weeks and months ahead:

• Massively scale up our nationwide grassroots mobilization, which has already seen 16 states, 550 cities and towns, and 150 members of Congress join us in calling for an amendment.

• Organize many more local and national groups to join the 120-plus that are already allied with us in solving the problem of money in politics and in connecting that problem to other issues that impact people’s lives.

• Intensify our lobbying work here in Washington, D.C., so that the American people know which senators are with them and which senators are with the dark money.

• Turn up our media outreach so that the public demand for an amendment gets even more attention than it already has.

The latest poll shows that 8 out of 10 Americans oppose Citizens United.

We know the American people want these anti-democratic Supreme Court rulings overturned.

We know we have an opportunity in the Senate that we haven’t seen in a generation.

And we know what the next steps are.

So we — you, me, and Public Citizen — have to do the hard work to go from “where there’s a will” to “there’s a way.”

The Koch Brothers and their ilk do not have a lot of people in their corner. They do, though, have quite a lot of money in their virtually bottomless pockets.

We have the people power to win no matter how much the Koch Brothers spend. But we need some baseline level of financial stability to activate that people power.

Can you chip in $5 or more right now to help push our defense of democracy forward — at this moment four years in the making?

Public Citizen’s board of directors is meeting in two days to formalize this organization’s programmatic and budgetary plans for the next six months.

My board is ready to ramp up our constitutional amendment campaign, but it needs to see that Public Citizen’s supporters are resolutely behind us.

Please remember, Public Citizen — to protect our unimpeachable credibility when it comes to holding corporations and the government accountable — does not accept funding from Big Business or Uncle Sam.

When we win, it’s because you give us the strength to keep fighting.

Show our board of directors that you want Public Citizen to be as aggressive as it possibly can be at this critical point in our campaign to overturn Citizens United and McCutcheon.

Thank you so much for standing with us.

Robert Weissman
President, Public Citizen

© 2014 Public Citizen • 1600 20th Street, NW / Washington, D.C. 20009