The money that seemingly fell from the sky like confetti over downtown Seattle on Wednesday wasn't an Independence Day gift from our forefathers.
Rather, the spectacle -- in which $5,000 in bills were thrown out of a window -- was executed by an activist group called MicCheckWallSt, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement. (Hat tip: the Seattle Times .)
The dollar bills were emblazoned with messages that read: "Money as speech silences us all," and "End Citizens United," according to a MicCheckWallSt press release and its website. MicCheckWallSt organized the Money Drop to protest the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010, which allowed unlimited corporate political spending in U.S. elections.
By throwing the bills out onto the city streets, the activists hoped the money would be circulated and their message would spread, according to the press release.
"It’s time we declared independence from Citizens United," MicCheckWallSt said on its website in May. "The United States Supreme Court decision in Citizens United established money as speech, reaffirmed that corporations are people, and paved the way for a head-long rush towards plutocracy."
Some tourists and residents collected the money from the sky. A woman that needed money for a bus ride out of town collected enough money for her fare from the Money Drop, and a restaurant manager received more than $100 in dollar bills from the restaurant roof, which he distributed to employees, according to the MicCheckWallSt press release.
Like the Money Drop, the Move To Amend movement encourages people to rubber-stamp money with messages against corporate political spending. Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen, a bankroller of Occupy Wall Street, is participating in the movement. The stamps that will be circulated by Move To Amend include messages such as "Corporations are not people," "Money is not speech," and "Not to be used for bribing politicians."
You can watch MicCheckWallSt's video of the Money Drop on July 4 below:
No comments:
Post a Comment