Diana Bailey

Our democracy is under attack when the court system colludes with corporations, and grants them the ability to wantonly destroy sacred burial lands and hire “security” guards to use dogs to physically attack people peacefully protesting the destruction of lands and threaten the inevitable poisoning of public waters.

It is under attack when the state restricts water from, racially profiles and fails to protect the citizens, surveils those same citizens and calls on the National Guard to repress those citizens ability to protect treaty rights and water rather than to stop the corporation – Dakota Access – from destroying the environment and abusing civil rights, as in the case of North Dakota.

Democracy is under attack when corporate media censors such stories from the main stream air waves, stating only “emotions ran high” or portrays the citizens as the enemy. It is not democratic for corporations to raise the cost of life saving medications 500 percent, and pay their CEOs millions of dollars in the name of performing a public good, as in the case of the Mylan Epi-pen.

Our democracy is being attacked when the Supreme Court grants corporations the same status as people, as in the case of the so-called “Citizens United.” Democracy is attacked when public service boards permit corporations to seize land through “eimminent domain” for profit.

There is no democracy when corporations are permitted to poison our air, water and land, cause earth quakes (as they are with fracking) and our Congress refuses to put in place or enforce environmental regulation and taxation that would benefit the public good.

Democracy is attacked when citizen dollars are used predominantly to wage war over the world, and subsidize oil and gas production rather than build a sustainable economy, repair our infrastructure, combat global warming, house our citizens, feed our nation, care for the sick.

We have no democracy when police are not prosecuted when they murder citizens. Democracy is under attack when the president of the United States lobbies to pass trade deals like the TPP.

We have no democracy when our main export is military weaponry, sold to some of the most repressive countries on the planet for the purpose of earning corporate profits. Ours is not a democracy when the president of the United States can kill U.S. citizens without using the court system, nor when the Congress can chose as it’s sole purpose the undermining of the president of the United States.

There is no democracy when whistle blowers who report war crimes are jailed for decades when those who commit those war crimes, bankrupt our nation, destroy our ecosystems or kill our citizens walk free.

Democracy is destroyed when We the People are brain washed to believe that some how our security is more at stake than those who flee the very wars our weapons are being used to wage. We do not have a democracy when a two party political system can control the media and the “debates” so as to prevent American citizens from full and complete knowledge of all candidates (and their platforms) running for president so as to have true choice around who will lead this powerful country in the best interests of We the People, (such as in the cases of Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party Jill Stein).

If there is any chance of us retrieving something close to democracy, we need to demand that our representatives:

1. Stop the Dakota Access pipeline.

2. Open up the presidential debates to include the Libertarian and Green Party candidates.

3. Stop the TPP.

4. Reverse Citizens United.

Diana Bailey lives in Fairfield.