original article: http://jayceland.com/blog/archive/2013/10/26/on-corporate-personhood-finally/

On September 12 I headed over to Goergen Hall on the University of Rochester Campus for a panel discussion titled "Block that Metaphor? Corporate Personhood Before and After Citizens United". The panel consisted of Lynn Stout from Cornell Law School, Greg Urban of the University of Pennsylvania, and Elana Shever from Colgate University. It was moderated by Robert Foster at the University of Rochester.

Lynn Stout studies corporations from a legal perspective. She started off by emphasizing that corporations are real, not a metaphor. The term "personhood" refers to a set of legal rights that allow a corporation to, for instance, have the right to own property in its own name. She's enamored of the idea of corporations which give people the ability to perform long term projects that human beings would never do.

The key to this is the ability to lock up capital assets — the ability to hold money indefinitely, and prevent any stakeholder from reclaiming any part of jeir investment. As such, they need some first amendment rights to protect their property from expropriation. But, she added, corporations should never have the right to vote, for instance, and should not have a right to privacy.

As such, it is not simply an association of people: it is a separate kind of entity. And being a unique kind of entity, it does not have the same rights as an association of people.

Greg Urban brought an anthropologist's view of corporations. To him, they are cultural constructions that look like tribes or social groups and act as powerful agents or actors. They are part of a broader human tendency to form groups such a guilds, universities, and towns. He agrees, therefore, that a corporation has a right to exist as an entity unto itself.

Historically, corporations were once chartered which required political clout. And like other kinds of human groupings, they have rituals — business meetings, for instance.

Viewed from the outside, social groups appear as agents: things which exist in perpetuity. This is similar to things like family groups (i.e. family names) or clans which are comprised of — but separate from — their constituent human beings. Precedent exists for treating a group in place of the actions of an individual, for when a group acts, we do not look to the individuals in that group. They are agents with practical efficacy. And for any of these groups to move, it must be done so by discourse and agreement.

Economics had a hard time dealing with corporations what with being a new and separate agent, and in finance they are commodities with assignable values. In neither model are corporations considered persons. The concept of personhood is only in the popular culture and in the legal culture. And the corporate metaphor is dangerous when it is comprised of a single person rather than an aggregate for how would such a corporation exist separate from its sole constituent?

Elana Shever began by noting Michael Polan's work on examining himself as a group of organisms rather than a single entity, coining the term "first person plural". For what is an individual? Theoretically it is that part that remains constant in an ever-changing group. Thus, we can think of both humans and corporations as "ecologies" that contain organisms as well as goods and byproducts. As such, it's a false belief that shareholders define corporate action. Stout responded favorably to the "super-organism" model, adding that it is damaging to think of corporations as the property of shareholders.

Urban spoke of the Shell corporation in Argentina. Internal to Shell's management, there is a belief they are doing good, but many layers away, the people who operate the plants see the external populace as a nuisance. There are actually a series of separations — divisions between managers and workers — that cause this. It is an efficiency in the system that makes good business sense but it is not allowing Shell to work towards a unified goal.

Activists opposing Shell were often strongly reinforcing the idea of it as an individual citizen, and this popular idea is influential in increasing corporate power. So to take a different tack, could it be politically beneficial to rethink "personhood" as it relates to humans?

He said that there must be some kind of communication and common goals within the "divided corporation" model, adding that corporations should benefit society.

People from the audience had a chance to ask questions. Would more regulations be helpful? It seems that corporations are like a "monster that will devour the planet": do we have a super organism that can combat it?

Stout responded, noting that it's common to blame problems on the misbehavior of human beings, but we behave differently inside a group, and institutional environments create bad decisions. Government is probably more broken because lobbying can buy a corporation new rights yet the government needs to be a check on power.

The event organizers began taking questions three at a time (which I thought to be a mistake). I asked, given the way people's behavior changes inside a group, is there a way to make better members of corporations? Another person asked about ontology: if a person is an actor, then what about thinking of functional assemblages, since the parts may change but the unit endures. It seems transparency is key, but giving free speech rights to groups inexorably creates obfuscation. And finally, another person noted that it's less about rights than about responsibilities: how far does responsibility go?

Stout noted that sometimes an individual commits a crime as part of a group, but often it is the organizational design that causes an undesirable behavior. We need to view them as assemblages. How do we keep the useful ones? Should we have a corporate death penalty? Currently, if you want to sell stock, you need to disclose certain financial information, but we should add a requirement to have political disclosure as well.

Urban responded that he is not so excited about laws. For instance, rating agencies (forged organically) work well, but once the quality of the ratings become law, the goals change and the ratings companies just sell good scores.

Shever added that thinking of corporations as "assemblages" means it can easily become disassembled which is dangerous.

The final question that because of discussion of corporate personhood, are people are starting to think of themselves as little corporations? Urban noted that medieval Italy saw families this way. Stout noted that any thing before the law is some kind of person, and a corporation's property and the human agents that represent it are not invisible.

This discussion certainly offered some new information, but I found it lacking.

Stout expressed a belief that corporations let us make great things like railroads and bridges — things that would be impossible if it were attempted by human beings. I was skeptical that the corporate landscape is dominated by such beneficial behavior. And even when something is a benefit overall, it still has numerous negative repercussions.

In an ideal world, when a corporation is founded, it would have a specific benefit to society that serves as its operating goal — and "to make a profit" is not a concept that should be part of that goal. Making a profit should simply be a side-effect of providing a benefit, or a means to an end where providing the beneficial behavior necessitates continued existence.

Also, it seems to me that the only way to circumvent poor behavior of groups is to have a very shallow hierarchy. It seems necessary to have a small group of people whose sole function is to disseminate and clarify the goals of the corporation. The minimal case beyond that would be an anarchistic group that would organically form around tasks to achieve those goals. As layers of management are added, the communication of the goals is necessarily muddied.

Afterward, Stout encouraged us to look into the American Anti-Corruption Act. Echoing Stouts explanation, I'll quote the website:

The Act was crafted by former Federal Election Commission chairman Trevor Potter in consultation with dozens of strategists, democracy reform leaders and constitutional attorneys from across the political spectrum.

The Act would transform how elections are financed, how lobbyists influence politics, and how political money is disclosed. It’s a sweeping proposal that would reshape the rules of American politics, and restore ordinary Americans as the most important stakeholders instead of major donors. The Act enjoys support from progressives and conservatives alike.

It is an impressive list of ideas that appears to have been vetted by legal experts to ensure it can be passed. If all the line items are passed, it would indeed mean a tremendous positive shift in the way elections are held and how the country is run.

original article: http://rocredandblack.org/occupy-wall-street-and-anarchism/

On September 29th, Rochester Red & Black hosted a discussion about the influences that Anarchist ideals had on the Occupy Wall Street Movement. The talk was led by two authors that have recently written on the subject, Mark Bray and Nathan Schneider.

Writer Mark Bray is a former organizer and press liaison of the Occupy Wall Street movement, as well as a PhD candidate and a Wobbly. His work has been featured in a number of leftist books and periodicals. “Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street“, an account and study of anarchists in the erstwhile Occupy encampment at Zuccotti Park, is his first book.

Nathan Schneider was one of the first journalists to write about the Occupy Movement at its advent. He attended and covered General Assemblies and marches, acquiring the voices and perspectives of various participants. His new book, “Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse” is a study of the first year of Occupy; of its origin, goals and inertia.

Dr. Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese discuss the new organization, It's Our Economy,  which has an agenda for a democratized economy,  so it is OUR economy.  Margeret Flowers, MD., who was arrested at the Senate Finance committee hearing on heath care reform, speaks about her move from focusing primarily on universal, single payer healthcare to a more integrated agenda.   They also speak about The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is a secret trade deal being negotiated by the Obama administartion with the aid of hundreds of corporate "consultants".  It is described  to be  "NAFTA on steriods".

On October 24, 2013, members of Enough is Enough, along with others in the community gave testimony of Rochester Police Officers behaving aggressively and with brutality at a forum organized by The United Christian Leadership Ministry of WNY, The Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, the NAACP, Spiritus Christi Anti-Racism Coalition. 

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Pastor Nina Warr recounts the day her husband, Benny Warr was thrown to ground from his wheel chair, maced and then kicked and stomped.   She says that her husband has not been the same since.

Witness, Ricardo Adams, describes the intimidating manner in which the police addressed the crowd that day.  He was advised to bring his concerns to the Department  of Professional Standards but decided not to based on his wife's and other's experiences, he says "...it's not an interview, it's an interrogation, trying to find loopholes in your statement."  

Justin testifies of an incident in which officers pull down his pants, fully exposing him in public, searching for drugs that were never there.  Justin followed the protocol for complaining after this incident.  He said the interview room was all glass, exposing him to anyone that happened to be at the station, possibly raising suspicions of snitching, a risk many in the community are not willing to take. Justin questions whether this is a strategy to discourage people from complaining.  Ultimately, his complaints were never addressed and he continues to see the same officers, that humiliated him, patrolling his neighborhood.  I was recently informed that this type of violation by Rochester police officers in public is common, particularly against young men of color.  

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Mark Zullo describes an incident in which an officer holds gun to his head for 30 minutes.  When he does not give the police what they are asking for, they further intimidate him by turning the gun on his friend and threatening his friend's life.  Mark Zullo is a former deputy sheriff, knows the law and knows many influential people and still was not able to see the officers held accountable.

Felicia Abrams tells us how her son was assaulted from behind, choked with a baton and beaten up after stepping outside of a police station to smoke a cigarette. 

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Alleana Ross describes an incident in which her 14 year son, recently recovering from a broken neck, was dragged by his neck.  The officers ignored her pleas and flipped him to the ground by his neck. In her attempt to protect him, she was thrown to the ground, handcuffed and then maced. 

We hear incident after incident of police officers disrespecting, humiliating and brutalizing members of our community.  Many in attendance believe that those testifying at this forum are only the tip of the iceberg. 

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Eric Teifke, Brenda Hardaway's public defender, offers interesting insight about the police department.

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Loretta Scott, Lovely Warren, Alex White and Sherry Walker-Cowart  (the President of the Center for Dispute Settlement)  tell what the city has, could, should and will address.  This segment ends with a notable discussion.  

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Chief Sheppard is asked many questions.  Once again, this segment is worth watching to the end

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