Posted on December 11, 2012 (November 2, 2020) Democracy Amendments Share: Congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia has recently come under attack in certain blogs for speaking up for the truth that corporations are not people and do not have the same constitutional rights as people. Rev. Dr. Samuel has written a spirited defense of Congressman Johnson in the Huffington Post. Here’s an excerpt: It’s not every day that our political leaders truly do the right thing. As the pastor of Victory for the World Church who has experienced backlash for taking principled stands, I know that doing the right thing is not always easy. So today I want to stand in solidarity with those who are speaking out against an obvious problem in America: corporate money in our democracy. A representative from my home state of Georgia, Rep. Hank Johnson (GA-04), has been a champion of fighting the corrosive influence of big money on our elections. Rep. Johnson has been working to counter the effects of the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court ruling that said corporations have the same right to spend money to affect elections as individual people. As he wrote earlier this year, “The idea that corporations have the same First Amendment protections of free speech as people is troubling. Corporations are not people. They don’t attend our schools, get married and have children.” It’s no surprise then that a myopic right-wing website CNS News attacked Johnson for this and other comments, implying that his call for limits on corporate money in politics was somehow akin to a call for the authoritarian suppression of speech. We encourage you to read the whole piece, here. Photo by spatuletail / Shutterstock.com