The Dignity of Pelicans, Corporate Personhood and Citizenship

When I glanced just now at the last time I posted something on this blog, I read the date April 20, the date of the explosion which claimed the lives of 11 oil rig workers and began the ordeal which continues to poison the Gulf of Mexico. I have tried more than once to collect my thoughts about it, but nothing has rung true to this point. The anger and outrage are there, and I feel I can express them with a certain degree of eloquence and empathy. I've jotted down notes describing my intense feelings for the pelican, for instance, whose maternal image graces the Louisiana state flag, nurturing young union, justice and confidence until the day when they will eventually take flight.

And what flight! A pelican in flight is the embodiment of dignity overcoming adversity, as the elements which appear so awkward on land - tiny head and legs, oversized wings and beak, bottom-heavy body - combine in a seeminglyl effortless ballet, wings barely moving, eyes purposefully set straight ahead, until the moment of the plunge, followed by the return to the air, the twitch of the fresh catch discernible within the beak. The stubbornness of such a creature, daring to defy the gravity which holds back its fellow oddballs the penguin and the ostrich, is to me a true inspiration, and an apt metaphor for our oddball corner of the world. So when I see the images of Mama pelican assaulted by these catastrophic events, I see that corner of the world, with all of its cultural and ecological and economic riches, under assault, and I get fired up to do....what, exactly?

And there it is. The h word. Helpless. What to do? I'm not an engineer, a marine biologist, a member of Congress, a fisherman, an oceanographer, a member of the Coast Guard or the National Guard, someone with a level of expertise which could be brought to bear to deal with the most immediate challenges. I'm not a professional journalist, with the resources and time to devote to covering the story as it unfolds day-to-day, challenging the official spin and unpeeling the onion of corporate deception. What I am is a full-time homeschooling father and husband and part-time independent guerrilla bookseller, and very part-time blogger.

But now that I think about it, I left out one aspect of my personhood in that description. I am a citizen, a citizen of many communities unfolding like concentric circles around me (Old Jefferson, greater New Orleans, southwest Louisiana), in which I engage to the degree that I can. One of the larger of those circles is the United States of America, an often unwieldy, often immature, sometimes visionary community of lofty ideals, many of which are formalized in the United States Constitution, that confoundingly simple yet enigmatically complex document, and the constitutions of the separate states. And as dire as this situation appears, and as ineffectual as the political institutions around us appear in the face of this crisis, there are radical, fundamental steps that can be taken by citizens to hold the guilty parties accountable.

There are three corporations implicated in the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill: BP, Halliburton and Transocean. BP has received the lion's share of attention, while still attempting to deflect blame for the original explosion. Hopefully, a comprehensive criminal investigation and trial will sort out the blame for the deaths of the 11 workers, and civil litigation will quickly follow. But there is another step that I would argue needs to be taken by citizens and their elected representatives, a step that I think is justified by the heinousness of the crimes: revocation of the charters of the corporations who are found responsible.

In order to operate in a particular state, that state's legislature issues a charter which allows it to perform certain functions for a particular amount of time. If those conditions are violated, the state legislature and attorney general can revoke the charter, and that company can no longer operate in that state. Such rights were asserted often by states in the pre-Civil War period (Andrew Jackson's struggles with the Second Bank of the United States revolved around such issues), after which corporations began to gain the legal upper hand.

A key Rubicon was crossed in 1886, when the Southern Pacific Railroad argued before the Supreme Court that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which freed the slaves after the Civil War, should also be applied to corporations, therefore granting corporations the same rights to engage in politics as individuals. The Court ruled against the railroad, and Chief Justice Morrison Waite handwrote a note saying that there was no decision on the constitutional question. However, the Court Reporter, a former railroad president, rewrote the note to state just the opposite, and the Chief Justice died before the altered notes were published. Thus, a precedent was born, out of dishonesty and lies (the story is well-told by Thom Hartmann in We the People: A Call to Take Back America, 2004, Coreway Media, Inc.). Such corporate power grabs have been further institutionalized, most recently with the ruling in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, in which the Roberts Court ruled that corporate political funding cannot be restricted under the First Amendment.

If corporate personhood is currently entrenched in American law, then we the citizens should frame the crimes of corporations in personal terms. I am opposed to the death penalty for individuals for a number of reasons, but I see no reason to oppose the death penalty for one or more corporations found responsible for causing the deaths of 11 people and cultural and economic calamity for thousands of others, and I have a feeling a critical mass of my fellow citizens could be persuaded to share that view. Unfortunately, legislators in this state tend to have close connections to the industries involved in the explosion and spill, and I would not expect Jindal, Landrieu or Vitter to provide leadership on this issue. Perhaps Congressman Charlie Melancon, who is obviously deeply emotionally affected and whose anemic Senate campaign could use a rousing shot in the arm, or Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nunngesser, who seems to be emerging as the public face of the tragedy.

If there is any possible silver lining to this catastrophe, it could be a renewed willingness of citizens to confront the multi-national corporations whose greed and negligence have brought us to this state. We must unite. We must demand justice. And we must be confident in our citizenship. We are all Louisiana. More to come.