Some scrappy citizens in the burg of Brecksville, Ohio produced one of the proudest progressive victories on Election Day.
Organized under the banner of Brecksville Citizens for Transparent Politics, they decided they needed to speak out about the U.S. Supreme Court’s outrageous edicts that allow unlimited sums of corporate cash to secretly flood America’s elections.
These determined citizens collected signatures for a local ballot initiative in their small town of around 14,000. The measure called for a U.S. constitutional amendment“to establish that corporations are not people and money is not speech.”
A couple of states and dozens of cities proposed similar initiatives this year, but Brecksville’s unique proposal added a useful bit of oomph. If passed, it would require city officials to designate one day in February for the next 10 years as “Democracy Day,” on which the mayor would host a citywide hearing about how the surge of campaign money was affecting the city. After the hearing, the mayor must send a letter to the legislature and Congress proclaiming the citizens’ opposition to corporate electioneering.
Mayor Jerry Hruby, however, balked at this outbreak of democracy, saying it required the city to take an official position on a federal issue outside its jurisdiction. He went to the board of elections to disqualify it from the November ballot — but the board deadlocked, and the matter went to Ohio’s secretary of state.
To the mayor’s surprise, this Republican office broke the tie in favor of the citizens. Then the mayor appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court, where, finally, with barely a month to go, a 5-2 majority of the judges ruled that the people’s proposal was legit.
Completing this triumph of citizens’ perseverance, 52 percent of Brecksvillians proudly voted the initiative into law on Election Day. See, it is possible to fight city hall and win.
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As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
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