Winston-Salem City Council passes resolution against Citizens United

Councilman James Taylor greets resolution supporters.

Winston-Salem City Council voted 5-2 on Monday night to approve a resolution opposing the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision.

A compromise between Councilman James Taylor Jr., the resolution's sponsor, and Councilman Dan Besse, passed with little discussion following about three months of shuttling to and from committee and wrangling over language and intent. The changes were made to address reservations expressed by Besse and garner his vote for the majority.

"When you start to see federally, on the state level and even locally in other cities that money was being placed over the people, I think this resolution sent a clear signal to everyone in our city that we won't put money over people, that people matter," Taylor said.

In addition to Taylor and Besse, the resolution garnered support from council members Vivian Burke, Denise D. Adams and Derwin Montgomery. Robert Clark and Wanda Merschel voted against the measure. Councilwoman Molly Leight, who had earlier expressed support for the resolution, was absent from the meeting.

With approval of the resolution, Winston-Salem joins Greensboro, Durham, Raleigh, Asheville and Chapel Hill in opposing the controversial Supreme Court ruling, which allowed so-called "super PACs" to spend unlimited cash in media advertising buys to influence elections as long as the expenditures are not coordinated with any candidate. 

The Winston-Salem council's resolution expresses opposition to "the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission regarding constitutional rights for corporations."

The compromise resolution struck language calling on Congress to amend the Constitution to overturn Citizens United, calling instead "for the reversal" of the decision without naming any specific mechanism. But the title of the resolution still includes a reference to a Constitutional amendment.

To appease Besse the resolution also removed language stating, erroneously, that the Citizens United decision "declared corporations to be persons."

The final obtained by Besse removed the language articulating the stance that "only human beings, not corporations, are endowed with constitutional rights protected by the First Amendment," and avers instead that "the rights of corporations and other artificial beings under the First Amendment may be restricted to a greater degree and in a different manner than those of natural persons."

Supporters celebrated approval of the resolution at Foothills Brewing after the council meeting. Kim Porter with Occupy Winston-Salem said the resolution would not have passed without help from several organizations, most notably Democracy North Carolina, whose personnel helped gather more than 1,300 signatures on a petition.

"James Taylor has worked very diligently with residents of the city and different groups involved in this process," Porter said. "Many people told us that a corporate town like Winston-Salem would never pass a resolution against Citizens United. I'm glad we proved them wrong." 

Winston-Salem council postpones vote on Citizens United resolution

Citizens seeking to curb corporate influence over electoral politics leave Winston-Salem council chambers on Tuesday.

The Winston-Salem City Council decided tonight to direct its general government committee to consider a resolution in support of overturning the Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United decision, setting up a contest between clashing schools of thoughts on council – one holding that intervening in such a manner is an overreach of local government’s mandate and the other that corporate money poses a threat to representative democracy at all levels.

Members of Occupy Winston-Salem, who have led the effort to get the resolution passed, had hoped for a vote tonight, but one of the council members sympathetic to their cause was unable to get the item placed on the agenda.

Councilman James Taylor Jr., who represents the Southeast Ward, attempted to add the resolution to the agenda through a suspension of the rules. The legislative maneuver needs unanimous support, and Councilwoman Wanda Merschel, who represents the Northwest Ward, said she wanted more time to review the item before taking a vote. Supporters requested the resolution on Dec. 17 and members of Occupy Winston-Salem have been lobbying council on the matter since last summer.

Taylor said after the meeting that whether corporations are people or not is subject to debate, but the danger of vested corporate interests buying seats on city councils is real.

“Now these are people who may not care one way or another about the people, about the government; all they care about is the bottom line,” he said. “And I think anytime you run the risk of putting people there who only care about corporations’ bottom line you are tearing up the social fabric of what our forefathers and what our ancestors have built.”

The proposed resolution will be considered by the general government committee, which is chaired by Southwest Ward Councilman Dan Besse, on Feb. 12. Besse predicted from the dais that the committee will approve the resolution for consideration by the full council. East Ward Councilman Derwin Montgomery told supporters to expect full council to vote on the measure on Feb. 18.

Besse has stated that he opposes a resolution in opposition to Citizens United, but his is only one of four votes on the general government committee, along with Taylor, South Ward Councilwoman Molly Leight and North Ward Councilwoman Denise D. Adams.

“It will be my recommendation to the committee to send forward a resolution back to the council in whatever shape it’s in at the end of our meeting,” Besse said. “The committee may or may not approve that recommendation, but I suspect it may because my colleagues on the committee are those that say they favor the motion.”

Besse has previously that city councils should limit their actions to matters directly relevant to their mandated responsibilities of running city government.



James Taylor Jr.

“This particular resolution is germane to city business,” Taylor said. “There are at least 12 cities in North Carolina who also think it’s germane to city business and who also passed resolutions. The website that we invite our citizens to take a look at, it tells us that the city council is responsible for adopting and providing for all ordinances, rules and regulations as necessary for the general welfare of our city. Regulations are defined as principles that govern our behavior. I would argue that this type of behavior would be corporate behavior, and it deals with our ability to have fair elections and the general welfare of our city.”

Leight echoed Taylor’s sentiments and expressed public disagreement with Besse.

“Something that affects our voting process – yes, it’s a national issue, yes it’s a court issue, but it’s also a Winston-Salem issue,” she said, prompting applause from dozens of resolution supporters in the audience.

Montgomery, who does not serve on the general committee, also indicated he supports the resolution.

Among several concerns, Besse has argued that passing a resolution would have no practical effect, and that a Constitutional amendment eliminating corporate personhood – one of the primary objectives of resolution supporters – could have unintended consequences.

“The concept we are being asked to endorse on behalf of the city of Winston-Salem is a US constitutional amendment to make a broad-ranging change in the legal status of all corporations,” Besse wrote in an e-mail to fellow council members, City Manager Lee Garrity and City Attorney Angela Carmon earlier this month. “That change involves key legal implications that go far beyond the campaign finance issues addressed in the Citizens United case.”

Among other legalistic arguments, Besse cited a January 2012 editorial by Jeff Greenfield arguing that depriving corporations of rights of personhood could potentially hurt people who band together through non-profit corporations to make their voices heard.

Following the meeting, Besse and Carmon huddled with Leight and West Ward Councilman Robert Clark, discussing the legal implications of the resolution.

Afterwards, Leight said she doesn’t necessarily support the resolution in the language proposed by Occupy Winston-Salem.

“The heart of the matter I am in agreement with,” she said. “I think we have to find a way to state it without depriving corporations of their rights. But we don’t want them to be able to buy elections.”

If Leight ends up reversing herself, it would not be the first time she has taken a more cautious position after consulting with Carmon. Leight and Adams expressed support last summer for intervening with the federal courts on behalf of Kalvin Michael Smith, who was convicted of severely beating Jill Marker through a shoddy investigation by the Winston-Salem Police Department. Later, on Carmon’s legal advice, they voted in closed session to take no action.

Tony Ndege of Occupy Winston-Salem said there’s room for give and take on the final language of the resolution, to an extent.

“Two things we’re not going to compromise on is overturning Citizens United and the movement to amend corporate personhood,” he said.

Dozens of supporters attended the meeting, including Democracy North Carolina organizer and Forsyth County Board of Elections Chairwoman Linda Sutton. Kim Porter of Occupy Winston-Salem said organizers have collected 1,150 signatures in support of the resolution, including 900 from Winston-Salem. Among the signatories are NC Sen. Earline Parmon, Forsyth County Commissioner Everette Witherspoon and the Rev. Willard Bass.




Dan Besse

“It seems to me like there’s this ocean, this wave, this tide of greed that has every potential to destroy our entire civilization – the planetary civilization," Greg Gunter, a Richmond, Va. resident who is visiting his family in Winston-Salem, told council.."Our agriculture system is unsustainable. Because it’s cheap to be unsustainable. A lot of these massive corporations are so blind they don’t realize that climbing the corporate ladder only leads to a hole in the ground.”

Guest editorial: City council should support people over corporations

Guest editorial from Eric Fink:

The YES! Weekly blog (1/08/2013) reports on Winston-Salem City Council member Dan Besse's opposition to a proposed resolution concerning the legal status of corporations. Having worked with Occupy Winston-Salem and other groups on this issue, I wish to offer a response to Besse's objections.

First, Besse argues that the city council should not even consider the proposed resolution, because it is somehow beyond the purview of local government. Accepting the premise that "city councils should limit their actions to matters that directly affect their mandated responsibilities," it by no means supports the conclusion that the city council should ignore this issue.

The corrosive effect of corporate power on democracy is very much a local concern. Unrestricted corporate money distorts the electoral process, including elections for local government bodies like city councils. Unfettered corporate influence distorts public policy, including policy on core matters of local government responsibility like land use, transportation and education.

Given the direct and substantial impact of corporate power on local politics and policy, it is absolutely proper for local government representatives to educate themselves and the people they serve, and to speak up in defense of democracy.

Second, Besse cites various progressive legal scholars who have suggested that broad-brush criticisms of "corporate personhood" are misplaced. These are scholars I greatly admire, and whose work I greatly respect. In speaking publicly on this issue to groups like Occupy Winston-Salem, I have made similar points. Yet once again, Besse moves from a sound premise to an erroneous conclusion.

The valid and crucial point that professors Greenfield, Epps and Witt have made is that people — real flesh and blood people — frequently join together and take collective action on important political and social issues. But these organized groups — even when constituted under the legal label of a "corporation" — have little in common with the business corporations that are the true concern of those who views the Citizens United decision, and the unchecked power it ratified, as a grave threat to democracy. As Professor Witt himself notes, there is a crucial difference between "ordinary people... get[ting] together and form[ing] groups" and business corporations "invested with powerful amounts of capital."

Apart from the difference in wealth, which is itself considerable, there is a vast difference in structure and governance. When a business corporation "speaks," is a ventriloquist's dummy, operated by a board of directors that is, in practice, unaccountable to anyone, including the shareholders who supposedly own the corporations and whose money the directors are spending.

To equate political action by membership organizations or nonprofits with political action by business corporations is to commit a serious error, with serious consequences. It is the latter that concerns those who are working to build support for legal reforms aimed at curbing the "power of Big Money in our politics" (as Professor Greenfield nicely puts it). If the wording of the proposed resolution (which I have not seen) is too broad, the appropriate response is not to dismiss it out of hand, but to refine it.

Louis Brandeis famously warned, "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." The Winston-Salem City Council, like its counterpart in Greensboro and so many other local government bodies across the country that have already acted, has a responsibility to defend democracy against plutocracy.

Eric Fink is an associate professor at Elon University School of Law in Greensboro.

Supporters expect Winston-Salem City Council to address Citizens United on Tuesday

Occupy Winston-Salem has indicated in a mass e-mail that Councilman James Taylor Jr. "will likely" make a motion to introduce a resolution on Tuesday calling on Congress to amend the Constitution to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United vs. FEC decision, which allows unlimited corporate money in elections.

The item is not on the agenda for Tuesday's meeting, and Taylor could not be immediately reached to confirm that he intends to make the motion.

Meanwhile, Eric Fink, an associate professor at Elon University School of Law in Greensboro, argues in a guest editorial submitted to YES! Weekly that Councilman Dan Besse is wrong to assert that Citizens United is beyond the purview of the city council:

The corrosive effect of corporate power on democracy is very much a local concern. Unrestricted corporate money distorts the electoral process, including elections for local government bodies like city councils. Unfettered corporate influence distorts public policy, including policy on core matters of local government responsibility like land use, transportation and education.

Besse has said, "Either we end up taking policy stances on issues on which we're poorly informed, or we have to put a great deal of research and development into topics on which we can effectively do nothing."




UPDATE: Kim Porter and Tony Ndege with Occupy Winston-Salem say that Taylor has committed to bringing the resolution up tomorrow. A number of elected officials, including NC Sen. Earline Parmon, Forsyth County Commissioner Everette Witherspoon and Forsyth County Commissioner Walter Marshall have signed on as supporters of the resolution.

"I think we have a good chance of passing it because it makes sense and it affects local politicians and local constituents," Porter said. "People discouraged us, but we just fought on anyway. That just shows we don't give up when we feel the moral ground is on our side."

Occupy Winston-Salem protests Novant job cuts

Tom Garner, Tony Ndege, BJ Murphy and Brandon Holgersen (l-r) protested job cuts by Novant Health outside Forsyth Medical Center this evening.

About 16 people picketed at the corner of Hawthorne Road and Silas Creek Parkway this evening across the street from Forsyth Medical Center to protest job cuts by the hospital’s nonprofit owner, Novant Health, this evening.

They waved signs with messages like “Corporate greed makes us sick” and “We love healthcare workers” at passing motorists, eliciting honks and thumbs-up.

“We’re here to protest the fact that Novant, despite having non-profit status, is running their nonprofit like a for-profit company,” said Tony Ndege with Occupy Winston-Salem. He cited speculative land investments and exorbitant executive salaries.  

“Their [executives] are receiving millions of dollars in salaries and perks,” he continued. “It’s pretty ridiculous that they’re not taking cuts in their pay,” he continued. “They’re making bad business decisions and investments, and they’re showing their employees to the door. And to me, that’s the height of disloyalty.” 

Novant announced last week that it plans to cut 289 jobs. Headquartered in Winston-Salem, the company operates 13 hospitals, including facilities in Kernersville and Thomasville. The company employs 1,124 doctors and 25,000 employees in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia. 

“Last week’s job eliminations were painful and difficult decisions that happened as part of our need to make healthcare more affordable,” Marketing and Public Relations Director Cynthia Charles said in a prepared statement before the protest. “We are a not-for-profit healthcare organization that is not only responding to society’s demand for affordable healthcare, but that is also facing continued declines in reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid, along with growing needs for providing charity care. We remain committed to being a major employer and provider of high-quality, affordable healthcare to our local communities. We make decisions like this with a heavy heart, because the people who were affected have been part of the Novant family.” 

CEO Carl Armato said a memo announcing the layoffs that the company is currently recruiting for 1,300 positions primarily in clinical and patient care, and hoped to place some of those who had been laid off when their skills and training met the new jobs’ requirements.

Armato gave four main reasons for the force reductions: a national mandate to lower spending on healthcare, reduced demand for elective surgeries and diagnostic imaging, reduced reimbursements from federal programs, and a significant increase in charity care.

Ndege said the healthcare company’s claim that it must tighten its budget to adjust to declining reimbursement levels from Medicare and Medicaid strikes him as false. 

“I think it’s outrageous they’re trying to blame this on Obamacare,” he said. “Baby boomers are getting older. It’s obvious that there’s not less business for them.” 

Catherine Leinbach, 60, held a sign reading, “Greed equals 289 layoffs.” She has visited Forsyth Medical Center on a number of occasions as a charity patient. 

Once, she said she came to the emergency room at 3 a.m. and left seven and a half hours without being seen because she had to come back home to care for her bed-ridden mother. Leinbach said she was not seen despite the fact that she was the only one there for the duration of her visit, adding that she heard employees conversing down a hallway. 

Another time, she had to wait 11 hours to be seen for a problem with her gall bladder. Ultimately, the doctor said he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, gave her some pain pills and sent her home. 

“It was just horrible to wait and wait,” Leinbach said. “I was in a separate room. It gets aggravating when they pull people in front of you and you wonder: ‘What the heck is wrong with them?’ 

“Less than six months later,” she continued, “I had my gall bladder taken out and I had 72 stones. They put me through an MRI. You would thing they would have seen something.” 

Leinbach said she could not tell based on her experience whether she was treated differently from insured patients. 

“I think they’re overwhelmed and understaffed,” she said.  

UPDATE: Jeanne Mayer, a spokeswoman for Novant Health, questioned when Leinbach visited the emergency room at Forsyth Medical Center. The timing is significant, she said, because the hospital has transformed its emergency room. 

"The emergency room at Forsyth Medical Center is one of the largest in the state and has transformed its processes during the past couple of years to become more efficient in seeing and treating patients quickly while sustaining a high quality of care," Mayer said in an e-mail. "When you enter the ER, a nurse greets you and does a quick-look assessment. This lets staff identify those who need immediate care, such as patients with stroke or heart attack symptoms. 

"Patients who are stable may initially be seen by a nurse practitioner, who can order diagnostic tests even before the patient is brought back to a treatment room," she continued. "Traditionally, patients coming into the ER would wait in the lobby until a room was available and their care would begin once in the room." Occupy Winston-Salem protests Novant layoffs from Jordan Green on Vimeo.

Occupy Winston-Salem protests Reynolds American layoffs

Amanda Porter-Cox, Will Cox, Tina Campbell, Tom Grant and Kayla Porter-Cox (l-r) picketed Reynolds American's headquarters in downtown Winston-Salem today.

“This is the personification of corporate greed,” said Occupy Winston-Salem activist Will Cox as he stood in front of the Reynolds American headquarters this afternoon with a sign reading, “RJR workers got burned by big tobacco.” “Many times we’ll see in the media and lines fed by CEOs that profits are great and everybody benefits. But who gets hurt is the people that labored to create the profits that are treated as expendable.”

As the Winston-Salem Journal reported on Wednesday, the company confirmed that it has cut an undisclosed number of jobs at its Tobaccoville plant.

Protesters, numbering about a dozen, cried foul about the Winston-Salem-based corporation cutting jobs while reporting $304 million in profits for the fourth quarter of 2011.

“[The company says] there’s certain expenses we have and we need to be flexible in a changing market,” said Cox, who works in the healthcare industry. “The change they want to see is the arrow go up for profits. For us who are working, the change is our benefits are cut. Our hours are being cut. And sometimes our jobs are being cut.”

A spokesperson for Reynolds American was not immediately available for comment.