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Citizens United For Poetic Justice

Note to Citizens United: It's generally wise to be careful what you wish for.

You didn't much like it when we started a protest of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on election financing in the case known as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and called it "Citizens United Against Citizens United." You considered our effort trademark infringement and sent us a letter demanding that we cease and desist immediately. Not wanting to encourage frivolous litigation, we happily changed the name of our protest to United Citizens Against Citizens United.

You would have been better off if you'd left well enough alone. The stink you raised inspired hundreds more to join our Facebook group and sign our online petition. And then not long after we dropped the phrase we coined in favor of another that says the same darn thing and is a palindrome to boot, another group snatched up the original.

Part of me wants to say "serves you right." Another part needs to say "thanks."

AT&T Pushing More Deregulation

Proposals to sharply reduce state regulation of telephone companies so they would no longer have to receive approval to raise their rates, among other things, could be considered by the legislature before it adjourns the 2009-10 floor session later this month.

Backers of the bills include telecom giant AT&T - which reportedly helped write the legislation - and the cable industry, while opponents include smaller telecommunications companies, grocers, municipal electric utilities, the AFL-CIO, Citizens Utility Board and the Communications Workers of America.

AT&T and the cable industry have contributed $506,974 to candidates for statewide office and the legislature since 2003. Opponents of the measures contributed $643,193 to state candidates from 2003 through 2009.

Business interests, which are split on the measures, contributed $7.25 million candidates during the seven-year period.

The proposals, Assembly Bill 696 and Senate Bill 469, would give AT&T and other telephone companies the option of no longer being classified as telecommunications utilities. That means they would no longer have to receive approval from the state Public Service Commission to change their rates and they would not have to report profit and expense information to the agency. The measures also would strip the PSC's authority over consumer complaints about telephone service and telecoms also would not be required to provide land line service to all parts of the state.

Supporters of the measures argue they would create more options and improve prices through increased competition. The bill was sponsored by Democratic Senator Jeff Plale and Democratic Representative Josh Zepnick, both of Milwaukee.

Plale has received more campaign contributions from AT&T and the cable industry than any other legislative Democrat and ranks third among all of the 132 legislators for contributions by cable providers and the telecom giant. AT&T contributed $4,000 and the cable industry $6,446 to Plale from 2003 through 2009. Zepnick received $1,400 from cable providers and AT&T during the period.

The latest proposals come shortly after AT&T tapped Plale for a 2008 law that deregulated the cable industry and helped make it cheaper, easier and faster for AT&T to provide video products.

The law's supporters argued deregulation would lower costs and increase competition but a legislative audit released last December showed basic cable rates rose an average 21 percent in 2008 and 2009.

WDC Response To Cease-And-Desist Letter

After the letter we received from the Washington, D.C.-based interest group Citizens United was made public, we have heard from a number of attorneys with expertise in trademark law and have reviewed numerous cases including Bosley Medical v. Kremer, TMI v. Maxwell, Taubman v. WebFeats, Lamparello v. Falwell, Utah Lighthouse Ministry v. Foundation for Apologetic Information, and Citizens United v. Citizens United Not Timid.

We are convinced that Citizens United does not have a legitimate claim of trademark infringement against our protest of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that we called "Citizens United Against Citizens United." We use the phrase in a generic, descriptive sense and both our online petition and the campaign's Facebook page clearly state that the protest was organized by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

We did not appropriate Citizens United's logo. The logo we created for the campaign is a play on the Democracy Campaign's logo, not Citizens United's mark. Nor did we seek to trade on the group's name. We are not doing the equivalent of selling "MacDonald's" hamburgers under a yellowish arch or using something resembling the Nike swoosh to sell shoes. We aren't selling anything. No t-shirts, no bumper stickers, no buttons. We are not using this effort to solicit contributions to our cause. We are simply seeking to mobilize public opposition to the Supreme Court's assault on our democracy and mobilize public support for legislative actions to repair some of the damage done by the court's decision in Citizens United.

It is clear we were singled out because we do not share Citizens United's view that the Supreme Court ruling was a great victory for the First Amendment and for free speech. After all, there are a great many groups that should have received the same letter we got a long time ago but have not . . . Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy, Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants, Citizens United Resisting Euthanasia, Citizens United for Animals, Citizens United for Democracy. The list goes on and on.

It is preposterous to claim, as Citizens United's attorney has, that the name we gave our protest might confuse people and leave the impression that it was organized or approved by the group Citizens United. Nevertheless, it is in our interest to remove any possibility of confusion, however remote, and it is in our interest to make sure our effort is not associated in any way with the unsavory tactics employed by Citizens United or the dubious body of work that group has produced. So we are changing the name of our protest to United Citizens Against Citizens United, effective immediately.

We believe the claim of trademark infringement made by Citizens United was silly and stupid and more than a little ironic. The temptation is great to get all macho about these kinds of things and strike a belligerent pose. But we see nothing to be gained by responding to this sophomoric act with more silliness and stupidity. Surely our federal courts have more important disputes to consider.

In any case, our quarrel is not with Citizens United, it is with the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United. In the end, we had to decide whether we wanted to spend our time in court in a legal squabble with this interest group, or spend it organizing public opposition to the court's decision and working for reform. We choose the latter.

Changing the name of our campaign to United Citizens Against Citizens United does not diminish it in any way. We are still citizens. We are still united in opposition to the outrageous judicial activism of the current court majority, whose behavior was summed up by Justice John Paul Stevens this way: "Essentially, five justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law."

They legislated from the bench, and in so doing gave a great gift to the wealthiest and most powerful interests in our country and dealt a horrible blow to ordinary citizens. We will continue to do everything in our power to see that this ruling does not stand for long.

Making Free Speech Expensive

The public square has always been as much a metaphor as a real place, but in either case it's on the endangered list. Shopping malls pretty much led to the extinction of the traditional town or village square in most American communities. The money-is-speech doctrine is doing the same to the metaphoric version.

Those who wish to control speech in this country don't have to engage in censorship or book burning to achieve their aims. All they have to do is commercialize speech and then make it prohibitively expensive. Turn the proverbial public square into a gated neighborhood with an entry fee so high that most people are priced out. The right to speak is an empty one if entering the public square involves paying a small fortune for air time or otherwise compensating those who get to decide whether yours will be among the voices heard.

I've made this point before - in an Earth Day speech back in 2003 and at Fighting Bob Fest in 2007 and probably a thousand other times - but a letter that arrived by certified mail today put this issue in a whole new light. The letter was from a law firm in Virginia representing the group Citizens United claiming that the Democracy Campaign's protest of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on election financing (that we called "Citizens United Against Citizens United") is a trademark infringement.

I'm having a hard time deciding whether the letter is more remarkable for its stupidity or its irony or the utter audacity of its premise. It claims we've created the impression that our protest was "somehow originated by, affiliated or associated with, connected to and/or approved by Citizens United - which it is not." That's the stupid part. Anyone looking at the online petition or the Facebook page can clearly see that this effort was organized by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and is protesting the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, not the special interest group itself.

The ironic part is that this group described the outcome of the case as a great victory for the First Amendment and free speech, but now seeks to stifle the speech of others who have a different view of the ruling's implications for political speech and the health of our democracy.

The audacious part is the presumption that some private interest can claim ownership of words like "citizens" and "united."

It's apparently not enough for those who wish to control political speech to own the place where public discourse occurs. It seems they also are intent on owning the terms of the debate.

"Get The Job Done Or Go Home!"

Doris "Granny D" Haddock was tiny by any measure of physical stature but a giant in civic terms. Her passing at the age of 100 has made international news, I suppose mostly because of the amazing story of her walk across America a decade or so ago. But Granny was so much more than the sum total of that remarkable trek. She was a great many things, foremost among them an unforgettably powerful example of the difference one person can make.

Granny made at least four trips to Wisconsin that I know of after her legendary journey across the country, to give speeches and network and campaign. In between her visits, I would get an occasional e-mail from Doris and an even more occasional phone call, although her faithful assistant Ruth was in much more regular contact. Considering how well Granny D was known and how much in demand she was across the nation and indeed throughout the world, especially after a movie about her life reached an international audience, my mind always reeled at the thought of how many reform advocates like me she must have been keeping in touch with in places scattered across the globe. Her boundless energy in her 10th decade of life was both inspiring and humbling, to say the least.

Most every time I talked to Doris she apologized to me about something, usually her inability to plan too far into the future or commit too far in advance to participate in this event or that. More than once she joked that "at my age, I don't even buy green bananas at the grocery store."

One thing she never apologized for was her contempt for corrupt politicians and the wealthy interests that own them. She could never be accused of failing to speak her mind. She had lived too long to bite her tongue. Her words had a bite to them, though. I'll never forget back in 2006 when she came and spoke at the "public telling" we decided to hold when state lawmakers here were refusing to hold public hearings on proposed reforms. In her signature New Hampshire accent, she said "If you are reformers, get the job done or go home."



Her remarks were ostensibly aimed at Wisconsin legislators, but I couldn't help but take her words to heart too. Granny D lit a fire under people. I felt that flame every time she was near.

The last time I asked Doris to come to Wisconsin was last September. She initially contacted me to say she appreciated the invitation and was excited to make another visit to our state, but called back several weeks later to apologize. She just didn't feel up to making the trip.

It goes without saying that no apology was necessary. We owed her a lot more than she owed us.

Thank you, Granny

I first met Doris Haddock in February 2003, at a forum on campaign finance reform at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. The woman affectionately known as Granny D already was known far and wide by then, having completed her 3,200-mile trek across America to demonstrate her concern for the health of our democracy and dramatize the need for campaign finance reform. I was privileged to be able to see Doris once or twice a year since that first time our paths crossed.

News came this morning of Granny's death at the age of 100. She was . . . no, make that is . . . a true American hero and an endless source of inspiration. I know I join a multitude of admirers in mourning her passing, but also in celebrating a life exceptionally well lived.

I'm glad I met you, Doris.