People (and lawyers!) invited by @AZadvocacy to hear Corporations ≠ People author @ClementsJeff at @changinghands

Corporations and other people are invited to hear author Jeff Clements this Friday, January 9, in an Arizona Advocacy Network event at Changing Hands Bookstore.

WordPress can tell me exactly how many followers there are of my blog (more on that tomorrow). Oddly enough, though, when I scan the list, not one of those followers appears to be a corporation.

Why does that surprise me? Well, given that we have been taught that corporations are people, I figured they may like blogs in roughly the same ratio as do regular old-fashioned people. But no.

That thought leaps to mind as I consider an event at the Phoenix branch of Changing Hands Bookstore this Friday evening. That’s when we can meet Jeff Clements, attorney and author of Corporations Are Not People: Reclaiming Democracy From Big Money & Global Corporations. (What appears to be his own corporation-free blog is here.)

The event is hosted by the Arizona Advocacy Network, whose smart gatherings I have mentioned before. (Here is one regarding the negative qualities of judicial campaign dollars.)

Jeff Clements, looking a little corporate.

More detail about Friday’s event—plus a free-but-necessary RSVP—is here. (Another event partner is the Justice and Social Inquiry unit within ASU’s School of Social Transformation.)

And for some particularly pointed insight into how this book and its author are the ideal interlocutors to speak to a lawyer audience, read here. As this opinion piece by Eleanor Goldfield opens:

“The title says it all: Corporations Are Not People. And Jeff Clements is in a position to know. During his tenure at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office, Clements was involved in a number of cases that saw corporations eager to gain all the rights of a person without holding the responsibility of a person. … This is the cornerstone of Clements’s book: common sense blended with first-hand experience and pointed research. It’s a simple comment on what has become a complex issue.”

Not sufficiently persuaded? How about this: The book has a foreword by Bill Moyers.

Still nothing? How about this: This is the Phoenix location of Changing Hands Bookstore, the one in a building that formerly housed generations of lawyers who lunched at Beefeaters, the one with the bar and the ready access to Southern Rail Restaurant across the breezeway.

There you go. I figured those may be some corporations you can support. I hope to see you there; I’ll save a stool for you.

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