New York City Council votes against Corporate Personhood

IN ANTICIPATION OF NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION ON "CITIZENS UNITED", NEW YORK GENERAL ASSEMBLY CONSENSES TO RESOLUTION TO END CORPORATE PERSONHOOD
'It is a huge small step', said Jarret Wolfman today, after the decisionmaking body of Occupy Wall Street came together around a painfully simple, and significant, consensus that 'Corporations are not people, and money is not speech'. In the first days of 2012, the New York City General Assembly (NYCGA) passed the Resolution to End Corporate Personhood, and the New York City Council followed suit on January 4th with Resolution 1172, which calls for a Constutional Amendment. Council members Brad Lander and Jumaane Williams invoked Occupy Wall Street among other groups when making the case for the resolution.
Wolfman and the 50-some members of the Subgroup to End Corporate Personhood drafted the Resolution in advance of nationwide actions marking the second anniversary of the Supreme Court decision on "Citizens United vs. Federal Electoral Commission", set for the weekend of January 20th.
The Resolution to End Corporate Personhood begins: '...one critical threat to authentic democratic self-governance comes from the fact that corporations have been defined as legal persons... corporations are human-made legal fictions....human citizens are the source of all legitimate power in any democracy.' The Resolution reminds, 'corporations are not mentioned in the Constitution...The People never granted Constitutional rights to corporations... individual judges and courts have misguidedly done so without Our consent.' And it concludes with the conviction that 'defining property as people is fundamentally immoral and a threat to real people, all other life forms, and the planet.'
Occupy Los Angeles came to consensus on a similar resolution on November 27th, 2011 (2 days before their eviction) and on December 5th, 2011 - in support of a Los Angeles City Council resolution to end corporate personhood which passed unanimously on December 6th, 2011.
In New York City, the statement was consensed upon just a day before the New York City Council called on Congress to begin the process of amending the Constitution in order to reverse the 2010 Supreme Court ruling of “Citizens United.”
The text of the resolution reaffirmed, 'We propose this resolution as one of many strategies for self-empowerment, not as part of a political party or as an endorsement of the current political system, but as one of many parallel efforts at curbing corporate dominion.'
The Subgroup to End Corporate Personhood of the Politics and Electoral Reform Working Group, attempted to propose the resolution at the General Assembly three times, the first time on New Year's Eve. Early that evening they were interrupted by the closure of the park as police entered to remove a child's tent, pitched at the heart of Liberty Plaza. They returned the next night but were thwarted by police once more, as the police raided the General Assembly, which had been moved down to 100 William Street. The night the proposal passed, Council Member Steve Levin attended to show his support, and 'it was a peaceful, functional, extremely cold meeting' of 150 people, said Chen Tamir, of the subgroup. After the resolution passed, 'the next step,' said Wolfman, 'is getting support for a constitutional amendment'.