During the Wisconsin recall election of 2012, an online video circulated via liberal outlets which showed Gov. Scott Walker telling a billionaire campaign donor during his 2010 election run that he was going to “use divide-and-conquer” tactics. The narrative of the 2012 recall campaign, forced by Walker’s ads, boiled down to the public sector, unionized worker vs. the private sector, non-union worker. By pitting workers against workers, Walker and the oligarchs who back him prevailed. All Wisconsin workers – public and private sector – have been losing ever since.

And while oligarchs divide and conquer the people to stay in power, our movement for justice is dividing and conquering itself to keep the oligarchs in power. What do I mean?

After the Citizens United v. FEC ruling in 2010, the Move to Amend coalition emerged as a group of democracy activists, environmentalists, indigenous peoples and revolutionaries seeking to overturn corporate free speech and corporate personhood by amending the U.S. Constitution. For the last four years, Move to Amend has been doing the hard work of talking to people in communities and passing resolutions at the city council and state legislative levels to build toward the goal of an amendment.

Despite the impressive number of people working on the MtA coalition, and the number of petition signatures calling for such an amendment nearing the half-million mark, the organization operates on a shoestring budget made possible by small donations. It was MtA’s groundwork that led to the U.S. Senate voting on SJR-19, which calls for a constitutional amendment to address election spending. Since proposing SJR-19 in June of 2013, Sen. Mark Udall – whose office originally approached MtA in the drafting process, and included their language in the initial draft – has rallied 40 other cosponsors, almost the entire Democratic caucus, around the bill.

But now, rather than rallying around MtA’s impressive organizing efforts and doing work to support them further, elements of the “progressive” movement are actually duplicating MtA’s work, taking credit for it, and fundraising off of an effort they had no part in building.

In a recent email, DC-based Public Citizen, with an annual budget of $15 million and a staff of 85 people, sent out a fundraising appeal which implied that the SJR-19 bill being voted on in the Senate, and the movement to undo both the Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions, were made by possible solely by Public Citizen’s efforts. Another organization, Free Speech for People, has also drafted an amendment that aims to do what Move to Amend has already been doing for the last four years – and is fundraising heavily off of their duplication of MtA’s work.

cd3db-plutocracy.jpg

Now, rather than just focusing on the mission of making our democracy work for regular people again, the Move to Amend coalition has to worry about competitor organizations in the nonprofit-industrial complex duplicating and taking credit for their hard work. More damagingly, these groups are actively siphoning away donations that could instead be used for actual movement building, rather than the preservation of cushy salaries in DC office buildings.

To accomplish a mission, a movement needs two things: people power, and money. If you have people power but little money, your movement will always be limited in the capacity of work that can be done. With plenty of money but no people power, a movement isn’t really a movement at all, just one of a million other moneyed organizations with a staff looking for the next gig to pay off their mortgage or their child’s college education.

The oligarchy loves it when the movement is divided against itself, because it distracts the movement from the true cause while the oligarchy is free to pillage and profit. Oligarchs have long since been united – the Powell Memo of 1971, written by a future Supreme Court justice to the man who, at the time, headed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, outlined the strategy for big business interests to unite and take over the democratic process. In the 40+ years that have passed since then, we’ve seen corporate power buy up and consolidate media companies, pack the courts, move up the chain of command at universities, and buy up elections. Because of their solidarity, the oligarchy is winning.

Rather than duplicating MtA’s work, Public Citizen and Free Speech for People could instead find ways to supplement and assist it. Big organizational budgets could be used to hire sophisticated researchers and legal scholars who publish reports and scholarly articles, which MtA’s organizers could then use as ammunition to take to city councils, state legislators and community members. Money and people power could work hand-in-hand to beat back corruption and win back democracy.

Let Move to Amend handle the amending the constitution part, and let Public Citizen and Free Speech for People handle the research and fundraising parts. By working together instead of competing with one another, our movement could have the oligarchs running scared.