Lucas,
There's no way to sugarcoat it.
Seemingly unconcerned with the slippery slope from "contribution" to corruption — and seemingly intent on dragging us back to the era of the Robber Barons — the Supreme Court's McCutcheon and
Citizens United rulings have granted billionaires and Big Business practically unlimited power in our elections.
It's bad.
But it is not hopeless.
If it were hopeless, 16 states (with more around the corner) would not already have called for a constitutional amendment to overturn these Supreme Court disasters.
If it were hopeless, 500 cities and towns, from every part of this country, would not already have passed amendment resolutions.
If it were hopeless, 150 members of Congress would not already have endorsed an amendment.
Nobody has done more than Public Citizen — remember, that's you — to make all that progress happen.
But there's so much more to do.
Are you going to bail out now?
Of course not. That's not who you are. That's not what Public Citizen is.
Together, we have faced — and defeated — "hopeless" before.
I'll remind you of just one example.
We once took on the entire auto industry, along with its political puppets, its legions of lobbyists and its media shills.
People said it was "hopeless."
But let me ask you something.
Would anybody market a car today without airbags? Would you buy one?
Thanks to the resolve of Public Citizen supporters like you, airbags — once considered a "hopeless" cause — are now all but taken for granted as an essential and obvious safety feature of the cars and trucks that are so key to American life and culture.
Public Citizen has a well-earned reputation for confounding those who deem progress "hopeless."
It's the single best thing about being part of this shared project.
I mentioned the Robber Barons at the start of this message.
Louis Brandeis, one of the most insightful and inspiring jurists ever to serve on the Supreme Court, said this about them:
"We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
Today, right now, which do you choose?
If you chose democracy, it's time to roll up our sleeves and truly commit to putting plutocracy in its place.
Public Citizen is doing the hard, "hopeless" work.
The best way to help right now is by chipping in whatever you can — $5 or $50, $20 or $200 — as we fight for nothing less than the democracy that is the lifeblood of our nation.
CONTRIBUTE NOW
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Robert Weissman
President, Public Citizen