Last week, a team of lawyers from the highly regarded
Washington law firm of Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans and Figel, working
pro bono, filed suit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia on
behalf of Anatol Zukerman, an artist whose oil pastel drawings are often
deadlier than the guns he abhors, and my gallery, which has represented Anatol
and his work since 2013.
The complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief asks the
Court to find
"the Defendant USPS has, both directly and through its
agent, unlawfully engaged in both content and viewpoint discrimination in
violation of the First and Fifth Amendments to the U.S.
Constitution." The case has been
filed as Civil Action No. 15-2131, Anatol Zukerman and Charles Krause Reporting
LLC v. United States Postal Service.
As many of you reading this know, I've long believed that
Art can be a catalyst for social and political change. Like many others, I've
also been convinced for some time that the Supreme Court's Citizens United
decision, permitting corporations, unions and individuals to donate unlimited
sums of money to political campaigns, would sooner or later undermine faith in
our elected officials and compromise our democratic system.
And that, it seems to me, is what's already begun to happen:
corporations and the super-rich are investing in start-up candidates for
Congress and the Presidency, the way Silicon Valley invests in start-up tech
companies. It doesn't matter if they drop $10 or $20 million on a couple of
start-ups who fail to deliver (Jeb Bush, for example, or Martin O'Malley)
because all the donor class needs is one of their candidates to make it to the
White House and they've hit the jackpot.
The pay-off is huge for all of them.
For the rest of us? Not so much, or not at all, which is why
the Republican base is in rebellion, why Bernie Sanders is doing so much better
than expected and why the Supreme Court's ruling in the Koch Brothers' Citizens
United case is so dangerous.
Everyone knows that investors, whether Republican or
Democrat, expect a return on their investment. And what more and more Americans
are beginning to realize is that as long as our elected officials are dependent
on the 1 percent to pay for their campaigns, the 99 per cent will get screwed,
one way or another.
Just like income inequality, middle class voters especially
sense there's a growing disconnect between their needs and their elected
officials' willingness to help them. It doesn't seem to matter which party they
vote for. Many of them don't know what to do about it or who's to blame.
That's why Citizens United will be a major focus of The 1 Percent Exhibit: Visualizing IncomeInequality in America, my next exhibit, opening in February. And why, last
April, I encouraged Anatol Zukerman to have his Citizens United drawing, which
had been exhibited in my gallery in 2013, printed as a postage stamp.
Having worked one summer as a researcher-writer for Chief
Justice Warren Burger and having studied Constitutional Law with one of the
great teachers of all time, Professor Henry Abraham at the University of
Pennsylvania, I want to believe that, if
enough evidence accumulates and enough pressure builds, the Court itself will
one day recognize its mistake and reconsider Citizens United, as it has on rare
occasions with other decisions before.
But I recognize that day, if it ever comes, is a long
way
off. Meanwhile, we've got to do what we can now to keep our politicians honest
(or, at least somewhat honest) and the One Percenters in check. I never thought the 40 stamps Anatol ordered
would be more than a band aid, a clever way to interest more collectors in his
wonderfully provocative drawings and call attention to an issue we both felt
strongly about.
