Communiqué
Lawyer David Cobb Explains the “We the People Amendment” Movement
By: Tom Hodson
Posted on:
David Cobb, an attorney and Outreach Director for the Move to Amend Coalition explains the effort to amend the constitution through the “We the People Amendment” to limit the constitutional rights of corporations in America.
Cobb was on campus recently co-sponsored by Democracy Over Corporations, the Center for Law, Culture and Justice, the Program on Wealth and Poverty and the Department of Political Science at Ohio University. He talked with WOUB while visiting.
The proposed amendment is to limit constitutional rights to human beings only and not to corporations. The second part of the amendment also states that the expenditure of money by corporations and other groups should not be considered a form of protected free speech.
Move to Amend was formed in 2009 and is a coalition of “hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of individuals committed to social and economic justice, ending corporate rule and building a vibrant democracy that is genuinely accountable to the people and not corporate interests,” its literature says.
Cobb acts as one of the group’s spokespeople. He is a lawyer and a political activist. He has both run for political office and been arrested for non-violent civil disobedience. He has sued corporations for pollution and also has acted as a lobbyist.
He graduated from the University of Houston Law School in 1993 and was a private-practice attorney in Houston before becoming a full-time activist.
In 2002, he ran unsuccessfully to be the Attorney General of Texas. He grew the Green Party in Texas from four chapters to 26 chapters.
In 2004, he ran for President of the United State on the Green Party ticket.
Cobb claims the movement for the amendment is a non-partisan effort involving liberals and conservatives as well as Republicans and Democrats.