It wasn’t until I married my husband that I realized what an equalitarian really is. I used that word in the first book I wrote and had quite a time with my editor. She insisted that there was no such word. I said, “If there isn’t such a word, I have now created it.”

Today I decided to look it up in my old 1980 dictionary and there it was. But the definition wasn’t one a feminist could accept. It stated, “Pertaining to the doctrine of equality among “men.” Someone told me just today that I don’t have to worry about being politically correct anymore. I realize that I have probably done my share in attempting to change the world but I can’t seem to stop trying.

Recently I brought together some kindred souls in the area of social change to research Corporate Personhood which has tweaked my interest for a long time. We decided to begin by getting the attention of people who are sick of TV drug ads. However, until Corporate Personhood is finally declared unconstitutional, corporations have the right to buy Congress and advertise on the unregulated TV and get tax breaks for this very advertising.

I then Googled Corporate Personhood and was shocked to discover that as early as 1886 corporations have had the status of persons under the law. Or at least the Supreme Court has maintained that they have. William H. Boyer is an astute writer who has come up with the need for citizens to at last recognize what is at the basis of democracy gone bad. It is the complete domination of government by Corporate Personhood, which has run amok.

Corporations once were chartered by states to engage in building bridges and taking on other ventures that individual citizens alone could not accomplish. It was to serve the public. During the chaos of the Civil War, President Lincoln noted that state legislatures were taking bribes from corporate executives to loosen legal restrictions, grant lucrative business contracts, and to have the government subsidize their businesses.

In 2005, Ralph Nader wrote a Nation magazine article about curbing Corporate Personhood and reclaiming the principle that companies should serve the public good. Even though my husband subscribed to the magazine we were too busy at home with his health care to notice the article at that time.

Thom Hartman in his book Unequal Protection claims that in all these years that the court has presumed corporations were persons that “the court said no such thing, and it can’t be found in the ruling.” His findings may erode any presumptions of the legitimacy of Corporate Personhood. With the rising momentum for the citizens of this country to take back their government, perhaps the move to erase Corporate Personhood will be the next great civil rights movement.

Combining all the pressure groups in this country into one powerful force for returning government to individual citizens once more might be a start.

Georgie Bright Kunkel is a freelance writer who can be reached at
gnkunkel@comcast.net or 206-935-8663.