MEDIA ROOTS – Massachusetts just became the seventh state in the nation to officially call for a repeal of Citizens United, the 2010 court case that recognized corporations as people and money as speech. That landmark ruling is the primary reason for the development of “super PACs” in the last two presidential elections. A super PAC is a political action committee that is able to accept unlimited political donations as long as they are not spent directly on candidates’ campaigns.

Referred to as “independent-expenditure only committees” by the Federal Election Commission, super PACs received considerable backlash from last year’s Occupy Wall Street movement. Additionally, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) recently published the donations made by 23 American billionaires to super PACs this election season. “Billionaires buying the 2012 elections have a combined $195 billion in wealth,” Sanders explains in the report’s introduction. “More than the bottom 43% of American households – 50 million families.”

The grassroots organization Move to Amend has been working since 2009 to amend the US Constitution to ensure the end of corporate personhood and Coffee Party USA has been calling to repeal Citizens United since its inception. Also, over 200 local governments now support the call to repeal this piece of controversial legislation.

Oskar Mosco

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Senator Bernie Sanders discusses the need for a constitutional amendment

to undo the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision of 2010.

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Photo provided by Flickr user  labiagaferrer