To the Editor:

Kudos to the Franklin Board of Aldermen for unanimously passing a resolution calling on the North Carolina General Assembly to petition Congress that the U.S. Constitution be amended to firmly establish that human beings, not corporations, are persons.

In colonial days, before our nation’s founding, England empowered corporations to plunder colonial resources and gave them privilege and power far beyond that of the colonists. In 1776, the American revolutionists rose against the Crown and its corporations to bring into being a new nation free of these oppressive forces. Given the colonists’ unpleasant experiences, it is no wonder that our Constitution does not mention corporations and our Bill of Rights protecting our human inalienable rights grants no such rights to corporations.

Throughout the decades following the Revolution, court rulings (not legislation) began eroding the freedom from corporate tyranny for which our forefathers fought and died.  In 1886, the Supreme Court sanctioned “corporate personhood” in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. Ever since, corporate-artificial-non-human entities have used the court sanctioned “personhood” doctrine to trump rights of humans. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), just one in a series of rulings relying upon the false notion of corporate “personhood,” grants rights to corporations while trampling our human inalienable rights.

The early American experience demonstrates that corporations can thrive without “personhood.” We can free our governance from the shackles of corporate rule. It is time for a new revolution.

I call upon all Western North Carolina municipal governments to follow the lead of Franklin’s Board in passage of the same resolution – humans, not corporations, are persons.

Dr. Allen Lomax

Sylva