Stewart Acuff: Money and Organizing and Politics

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This blog is cross-posted at The Daily Kos.

Money is a bigger issue this year in the run-up to the Presidential and Congressional elections than ever before. That is mainly because of Supreme Court ruling in the Citizen’s United case. The Supreme Court ridiculously ruled that corporations are people, and as such, have a constitutionally protected right to freedom of speech. According to the ruling, corporations now have the unrestricted right to buy advertising about electoral campaigns, as long as they don’t coordinate with the candidates and/or their campaigns.

Guess which candidates and political parties corporations are supporting? That’s right, right wing, anti-worker, Republicans.

This Citizen’s United ruling, coupled with the greatest income and wealth inequality in American history is creating a potentially huge political advantage for right wing Republicans.

Even more importantly, this gross distortion of money in politics is further damaging our already faltering democracy.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Our American history is a history of average people organized together defeating the rich and powerful. That should be enough to convince all of us that we must organize ourselves, and other average Americans to not only fight and vote for pro-worker candidates come November, but also to fight to save our democracy.

Please order a copy of my new book  Playing Bigger Than You Are: A Life in Organizing to learn how to be a better organizer.

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Stewart Acuff is America’s best-known and foremost labor organizer. He is the former organizing Director of the AFL-CIO. Acuff has also written two books: Playing Bigger Than You Are: A Life in Organizing, and Getting America Back to Work, coauthored by Dr. Richard Levins.