Videos

Call your Assembly and Senate Reps and ask for a statewide vote on Citizens United
It’s easy. Just pick up the phone and call your rep!
OWR Comms Director, Grace, just called her State Senator’s office asking him to co-sponsor LRB -1201/2 and LRB 1397/1.

Jennifer Lawrence is Unbreaking America’s Political System Failure
Watch Jennifer Lawrence break down why ‘we are witnessing a total political system failure in America’ and how we can stop it.

Noam Chomsky – Anti-politics: Hating Government, Ignoring Private Power Chomsky on right-wingers focusing all their anger on the government, while ignoring private power.

How the Corporate Takeover of American Politics Began | Robert Reich The corporate takeover of American politics was rapid and ruthless. In 1976, I watched as thousands of corporate lobbyists descended on Washington. Fast forward to today, and lobbying has become a $3.7 billion dollar industry. It all began with the Powell Memo.

Why we need the We the People Amendment by Peter Coyote Move To Amend video with legendary actor, director, screenwriter, author and narrator Peter Coyote – narrator of numerous PBS documentaries.

How the Citizens United Decision Changed U.S. Political Campaigns (full documentary) | FRONTLINE
How did the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision change political campaigns in America? In 2012, FRONTLINE and APM’s Marketplace investigated how the controversial ruling was playing out in Montana, an epicenter of the campaign finance debate.

How corporations infiltrated the Supreme Court
American Promise and Charlie Stuart produced this mini-documentary to show how corporations have infiltrated the Supreme Court through a decades long scheme outline by former Justice Powell prior to his appointment.

The Story of Citizens United by Annie Leonard
The Story of Stuff – Citizens United.

How economic inequality harms societies | Richard Wilkinson | TEDxGlobal
We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.

Our democracy no longer represents the people. Here’s how we fix it | Larry Lessig | TEDxMidAtlantic
Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig makes the case that our democracy has become corrupt with money, leading to inequality that means only 0.02% of the United States population actually determines who’s in power. Lessig says that this fundamental breakdown of the democratic system must be fixed before we will ever be able to address major challenges like climate change, social security, and student debt. This is not the most important problem, it’s just the first problem.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy speaks at Harvard Law School
On October 22, 2015, Anthony Kennedy, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, visited Harvard Law School and talked about Citizens United (see 57:25 thru 1:00:25).

Can we heal our great divide? | Hedrick Smith | TEDxOrcasIsland
An investigative journalist explores the cause of economic disparity in the United States, its effects, and what we can do to correct our course as a country.

Bill Moyers: How Can Ordinary People Fight Citizens United?
How Can Ordinary People Fight Citizens United (2 minutes, 17 seconds).

A 28th Amendment to Restore the American Promise
It’s time for 28th Amendment to end Citizens United, so that America is governed by people, not money.

Are members of Congress becoming telemarketers?
Stop fundraising, start working, says Fla. Rep. David Jolly, who is seeking to ban federal-elected officials from dialing for dollars.

Corruption is Legal in America
Great little video…but not the best solution.

Buckley v. Valeo – Video Case Brief
A video case brief of Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976).

Citizens Divided Debate – David Cobb v. James Bopp
“Citizens Divided: Corporate Money, Speech, and Politics”
Indiana University in Bloomington hosts a public debate between David Cobb of Move to Amend’s National Leadership Team and James Bopp, General Counsel for the James Madison Center for Free Speech and lead attorney for Citizens United.

Thom Hartmann’s TED Talk
Lincoln didn’t fight the civil war to free the corporations. (17 minutes, 46 seconds).

Lawrence Lessig’s TED Talk
We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim. There is a corruption at the heart of American politics, caused by the dependence of Congressional candidates on funding from the tiniest percentage of citizens. That’s the argument at the core of this blistering talk by legal scholar Lawrence Lessig. With rapid-fire visuals, he shows how the funding process weakens the Republic in the most fundamental way, and issues a rallying bipartisan cry that will resonate with many in the U.S. and beyond. (18 minutes, 19 seconds).

Of Metaphors and Magic Wands: Are Corporations Really People? | Ken Chestek | TED Talk
One of the most destructive metaphors in public policy in recent years is the notion that “corporations are people.” Some legal scholars justify this construct as a mere legal fiction; in reality it is a metaphor run amuck. UW law professor Ken Chestek will discuss how, by simply choosing a more useful metaphor, more just results would follow. (17 minutes, 20 seconds).

Lawrence Lessig: How Money Corrupts Congress
Lawrence Lessig: Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It

Lee Camp’s “Moment of Clarity” re: McCutcheon v. FECWhat if there were a secret poison you could give to politicians that would cause them to lose their elections? This poison would just decimate our democracy… The Supreme Court stands to make this poison even more potent in a new case called McCutcheon v. FEC.

Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) presents his take on the gap between rich and poor Americans in Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream. Gibney contends that America’s richest citizens have “rigged the game in their favor,” and created unprecedented inequality in the United States.

Big Sky, Big Money
A tale of money and politics from Montana, the epicenter of the campaign finance debate.

How a Bill(ionaire) Becomes a Law(maker)
Super PACs and special interests have turned our politicians into money junkies only out for their next fix. We have to fight back before this becomes the new normal in American politics. It will take millions of people to defeat billions of dollars. Join us at www.unpac.org!

The Prosecution of Judge Waite
Docudrama about the 1886 US Supreme Court Case of Santa Clara County California vs. Southern Pacific Railroad Company that brought us the first mention of “Corporate Personhood.” As a result of the court reporter’s inclusion of a reference to the 14th Amendment in the decision summary, which was not part of the opinion of the court, this case set the precedent that gave us the 2010 Citizens United US Supreme Court decision. (38 minutes, 3 seconds).