Earlier this week, Mitch Perry posted a Q&A with MoveToAmend.org spokesperson and 2004 Green Party presidential nominee David Cobb in anticipation of Cobb’s weekend appearances throughout Tampa Bay. The following is an account of Cobb’s stop in Tampa.

They could have been anywhere, doing anything, on such a beautiful afternoon. But there they were, a hearty group gathered for hours in the John F. Germany library auditorium. They stayed in that cavernous room, listening to David Cobb speak, so long they nearly risked being locked in. To them, Cobb said, “You’re all freaks.”

“And that’s a good thing,” Cobb continued. “Freaks started the American Revolution. Freaks ended slavery in this country. Freaks guaranteed women the right to vote. You’re the type of people who create change.”

The change they conceived Saturday concerns corporate personhood, which, in a nutshell, means corporations having constitutional rights. Cobb’s group, Move To Amend, wants to strip corporations of those rights they say the founders intended for only living, breathing human beings. As their name implies, they aim to achieve that through constitutional amendment.

The tipping point for Cobb was a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year in a case called Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which struck down campaign finance laws that limited the amount of money corporations could directly donate to political candidates. According to the Court’s five-person majority, those laws restricted corporations’ free speech by limiting their contributions, as money equals speech, in the eyes of the Court.

This article appears in Sep 23-29, 2010.