Democracy Day Event Slated in Brecksville

A group of citizens in Brecksville took a stand against the idea that corporations are equal to people and money is equivalent to speech.

Those efforts are taking another step forward.

The city’s first Democracy Day is set for Monday.

The idea behind the first biannual event — slated to take place in the Brecksville Human Services Center at 6:30 p.m. — is to discuss the effect of corporations, unions, political action committees (or PACs) and Super-PACs on the city.

According to its website, the organization wants to see a federal amendment to the U.S. Constitution stating that “inalienable rights belong to human beings only” and that money is not protected free speech.

Voters in Brecksville narrowly OK’d the measure in the Nov. 6 election with about 52 percent of the vote.

Part of the plan was to establish a “Democracy Day,” a meeting held in the February after a federal election to discuss the impact of political contributions on the city. 

“We need to stop the ability of corporations to run our lives,” said Rose Petsche, Jack Petsche’s wife who is also leading up the local Move to Amend initiative. Rose Petsche has been blogging about the movement on Brecksville Patch.

The Petsches learned about Move to Amend in 2011 after attending a speech at Cleveland State University.

While Rose Petsche is a member of the Brecksville-Broadview Heights Democratic Club, she stressed that it is a bipartisan issue.

Rose Petsche said she hopes they can raise awareness of the issue.

“At least we feel like we did something instead of just sitting around complaining,” she said.

Mayor Jerry Hruby recently said that he supports the Petsches’ effort.

“I believe in the concept that there needs to be reform,” Hruby recently said at the Conversation With the Mayor event. “The spending is out of hand, and the kinds of commercials today are out of hand.

“The bottom line is that this needs to be addressed at the federal level, the state level and the local level.”