Category Archives: Peoples Lobby

Critical Mass Conference

Critical Mass and the National Initiative.

Nearly 2,000 activists from across the country descended on Washington D.C. in November 1974. Most came at their own ex­pense. Some came as representatives of powerful utilities and had. to pay $100. to attend  Ralph Nader’s dream child, The Critical Mass Conference, seemed to be a success.

What was the purpose of the conference? To Nader it was to a

  1. Focus media attention on the swelling mass movement

against nuclear power.

  1. Expand the education process on nuclear power’s

dangers.

  1. Exchange ideas on alternative sources of power —

solar, wind, etc.

For two of Nader’s friends and fellow political crusaders of increasing stature, however, the conference became a forum for more.

Ed Koupal, Executive Director of People’s Lobby, and his wife Joyce, formerly of People’s Lobby and now director of Stamp Out Smog, were invited by Nader to speak to the confer­ence on the initiative process. People’s Lobby, having been the prime mover behind California’s successful Proposition 9, the Political Reform Initiative that still has organized labor, big business, politicians and lobbyists in a twitter, can claim more experience with the initiative process than any group in the nation.

Little did the Koupals realize that their experience was to make a national impact at the conference and, finally, with Ralph Nader.

That impact began during Nader’s thirty minute keynote speech in which 2 of the 3 people he paid tribute to were named Koupal. The Koupals were instant celebrities. Their workshops on the initiative process were jammed. And their initiative ideas seemed to offer the first positive tools to activists loaded with facts and dangers but few successes.

An example: A noted academic, speaking to his workshop on the dangers of radiation, continued raising his voice and thus interfering with Koupal’s neighboring workshop session. Koupal, with lungs like a bull, was not to be outdone. Finally, the academic appeared and asked Koupal to keep his voice down, “It interferes with my important teaching session,” said the professor.

“Important,” retorted Koupal. “All you are doing is talking about the dangers of atomic power plants. Stuff we all know. We’re learning how to get a 100,000 signatures and stop those plants from being built. That makes these people 100,000 times as important as you.”

A cheer went up from Koupal’s class. Then everyone in the professor’s class came to hear Koupal.

The importance of the initiative process is just dawning on some of those people. It has finally fully dawned on Ralph Nader, and he is ready to put it on many more people.

Those who have worked with Nader know he is barraged daily with exciting ideas, and that he attests belief in many of them. He does not, however, help carry many of those ideas, since he already has so many that are pressing and necessary.

The People’s Lobby goal of a national campaign for a con­stitutional amendment to institute the national initiative, to coincide with the 76 presidential elections and a nuclear moratorium, has hit Nader’s elusive ‘push button.’ Nader has tabulated the costs and benefits and decided to add the national initiative to his list of crusades.

After their times together on the Mike Douglas Show, in Washington D.C., and in California, the Koupals have finally elicited a pledge of financial aid from Nader to help make the 27th .Amendment — A National Initiative and Recall  —  a reality. Nader has made sure, however, that the Koupals raise their share. He has informed his booking agent to get the Koupals honorariums and out on the campaign trail.

Harper’s Weekly Staff

Submission 12-8-74 From Dwayne Hunn

 

Diamond v Bland 1974

On October 30, 1969 the sheriff of San Bernardino County ordered volunteer signature gatherer William Duxler to leave Inland Shopping Center.  People’s Lobby Attorney Roger Jon Diamond filed suit 11/5/69 and the case was appealed to the California Supreme Court where it was heard on 11/3/70.  On  12/6/70 the State Supreme Ct reversed lower court by ruling “PL did have  right to go on to shopping centers to collect signatures. The Diamond v Bland I, 1970 landmark ruling said

In Diamond v Bland II (April 25, 1974) the 1970 Diamond I (shopping center petitioners right to gather signatures ) was dissolved based on an opposite US Supreme Court 1972 Lloyd v Tanner decision.  California Supreme Court overturned Diamond v Bland 1970 (I) based on U.S. Supreme Court Lloyd decision which held that  petition gatherers couldn’t go onto shopping center grounds if their petitioning action is unrelated to the shopping center’s use.

US Supreme Court in Lloyd Corp v Tanner (6-22-72) found that owners of shopping center in Oregon had the right to prohibit distribution of handbills unrelated to the operation of the shopping center.  We (the California Supreme Court) conclude that Lloyd is indistinguishable from the instant case and, accordingly , reappraise out Diamond decision in the light of principles established in Lloyd.

Lloyd’s argument was that there were “alternative, effective channels of communication, for the customers and employees of the  center may be solicited on any public sidewalk, parks and streets adjacent to the Center and in the communities in which such persons reside.” 11CAl 3d p 335

Roger Diamond on Peoples Lobby video (available for sale) explaining Diamond v. Bland.

“Basically, the issue was do shopping center as private property owners have the right to exclude anybody they want to from their privately owned shopping centers.  The Supreme Court ruled that the shopping center,  even though private property was the functional equivalent of the old town square; and therefore they could not exclude people.  We got  on the shopping center and got our initiative qualified for the 1972 ballot, which was the Clean Environment Act 2, after losing  Clean Environment Act 1 in 1970, which was the initiative that started the law suit.  By the time it got to the Supreme Court we were into the second initiative…

“This was a private property v freedom of speech issue… We won on the ground that the first amendment gives us right of access.  Now it gets real complicated after that  and we have a 30 minute show (video) here.  The bottom line is the way the  law now is California allows access  to shopping centers but the US Supreme Court said in other cases that the first amendment doesn’t do that.  States are free to interpret their own constitutions more liberally than the way the federal Supreme Court interprets the Federal Constitnution.  So people do have the right of access to shopping centers if they are in states such as California which allows it which was our victory.”

Roger Diamond speaking on Peoples Lobby video 1994.

Click here to read  a summary of the Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner 1972 :

Click here to read  the full Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner 1972 case:

h

Prop 15 A-Plant safety

An Initiative for A-Plant Safety

San Francisco Chronicle 3-12-74
 A coalition of environmental and consumer or­ganizations launched a petition campaign yesterday to qualify a nuclear power plant safety initiative for California’s November ballot.

The group, banded together as Californians for safe Nuclear Energy, said  it’s goal is to make certain that nuclear p1ants operating now and in the future in Cal­ifornia, meet “reasonable safety standards.”

Plans to gather 500,000 sig­nature for the ballot measures were announced. at the coalition’s newly opened of­fice here at 2 Rowland street in North ‘Beach and in Los Angeles.

Alvin Duskin. San Francisco businessman an d chairman of the coalition, told a news conference at the local headquarters that the atomic Energy Commis­sion “has botched its job of regulating the nuclear pow­er industry.

“There are serious disagreements at the highest level of the scientific com­munity on safety. Until these conflicts are resolved, we should slow down nucle­ar operations.”

Attorney William M. Brinton, another spokesman for the citizens’ group, said enactment of the initiative would not mean a morato­rium on the building of nuclear plants in California. “New facilities would still be allowed, but they would have to meet standards set by the state legislatures” he said.

The measure would re­quire full compensation — instead of only partial pay­ment as is now required, un­der federal law — for all personal injuries, property damage and economic losses resulting from a nuclear accident.

Among organizations in­volved in the effort to qualify the measure for the ballot are the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, California Citizen Action Group, Zero Pop­ulation Growth and several shoreline preservation groups.

Courts have ruled that nuclear safety itself is an ex­clusive federal responsibili­ty, so the coalition has based its campaign on seeking a law establishing the princi­ple that California land can be used for atomic power plants only if “reasonable standards of safety” are maintained in their con­struction and operation.

 

 

Edison Speakers Taught Defend Company Views

 Los Angeles Times November 8, 1973

 Edison Speakers Taught to Defend Company Views

Faced with the energy crisis and challenges from environmentalists— a major utility company has in­creased its verbal voltage in a coun­terattack.

In a program believed to be unique in the United States, the – Southern California Edison Co. is training speakers at. its Rosemead regional headquarters for verbal combat, with environmentalists.

“A few years ago said Ronald C. Gossling, head of the company’s speakers’ bureau. “We found it easy to send speakers to college campuses, service and women’s clubs but then a change took place when the environmental ethic took hold.

“Students, environmentalists and others wanted to hear our side and we just. weren’t used to it.”

But the great ernbarrassment that triggered the idea of verbal combat came a little over two years ago, Gossling said. A student organiza­tion on a California- campus had in­vited Edison to send a representa­tive to a panel discussion with Ed­ward Koupal, president of the People’s  Lobby.

“We knew Koupal was very effective,” said Gossling, “so we sent out the best man we had. He was highly qualified and gave beautiful technical answers to non technical ques­tions. Among a group of liberal arts students it just didn’t work. Koupal clobbered him.”

In that instant, Gossling recalls, “the Edison Co. was embarrassed and the real issues never saw the light of day.”

As head of the speakers’ bureau, Gossling said he. went home from the panel discussion discouraged. But out of the experience, he said, he got the idea of developing a different kind of company speaker who could meet environmen­talists on their own ground.

When he broached the idea to management, Gossling said, executives were skeptical but decided to take a chance on a pilot program provided the costs were kept down.

Gossling said the – pro­gram was started with 15 volunteers from the com­pany instead of recruiting from outside which would have meant higher costs.

“The first speakers were trained at lunch time and. at night or during periods when they could be ex­cused by their bosses when work was slack,” Gossling said.

The only outside help was from paid professional speech coaches who were brought in several times a year.

Results of the program have been beyond expectations, Gossling said. Com­pany speakers have gone from campus to campus, around the service clubs, appeared at seminars and on television and radio talk shows “and they have proved more than a match for their opposition.”

The program is unique in that most companies tradition­ally have taken a “no comment” approach when con­tacted on controversial issues.

“Alternatively,” says  Gossling, “they will greet inquiries with silence or speakers who are to­tally unprepared for the verbal barrages they can be subjected to today.

“It used to be that we would spend money only in speaking to our allies,” Gossling said, “but this program is meant to pre­pare our speakers for dia­logue with people opposed to us. We want the energy prob1e~ms and the pollution issues clearly understood.”

Seminars within the company are. simulations. of real encounters. Trainee speakers alternate from being proponents of an issue to devil’s advocates.

“We throw them the toughest questions we can think of,” Gossling said.

The original 15-member team is engaged in train­ing other speakers with the company’s blessing, Gossling said.

Gossling, who said he re­ceived a fantastic response when he gave a talk on his company’s program at a national convention, as a result is joining a New York consulting firm which will  offer his ser­vices to other major utility companies interested in setting up similar pro­grams.

“The reason such programs are necessary to­day,” Gossling asserts, “is that the public has become a part of the decision-making process in a way that it never had before.”

The success of proposi­tions such as the Coastal Initiative (Proposition 20) to preserve the coastline in California Gossling cited as evidence of the sweep­ing changes that compa­nies, particularly in the utility field, are being confronted with.

Koupa & PL: PGE’s strongest nuke opponent

San Luis Obispo County Telegram-Tribune

  September 12, 1973

Ed Koupal and the People’s Lobby

Who’s the strongest opponent of nuclear power in California?

“The Sierra Club” was the unanimous response of a score of construction workers from the Diablo Canyon project, bellied up to a beer bar in Avila Beach on a weekday afternoon.

“Nonsense,” said the PG&E public relations man in San Francisco. “The Sierra Club—at least the Santa Lucia chapter in San Luis Obispo—may have hurt us a little on siting the transmission lines from Diablo. But the real enemy of nuclear power in California is an ex­-used car salesman named Ed Koupal. He’s massive. He runs the People’s Lobby down in L.A.”

Ed Koupal is lying, shirtless, on the bed in a motel room In Morro Bay. It is a Sunday afternoon in late August. His wife Joyce is seated in one of the two chairs. Sprawled all over the floor of the small room and out onto a second floor balcony are a dozen young people, the People’s Lobby shock troops the Koupals call “the elephants and the mules” of  their  20,000-member organization.

“We’re not against nuclear power,” says Koupal.  “We’re against unsafe power.”

People’s Lobby was founded in 1970. It cut its political teeth on Prop. 9 (the Clean En­vironment Act), which it says went down to a 3.6 million to 2.1 million defeat statewide because a five-year moratorium on the construction of nuclear power plants was Included as an after thought—”like the caboose on a freight train.”

The Koupals and their young cohorts, mostly college students from Los Angeles, San Jose and Sacramento, are in Morro Bay to talk about the strategy of their next initiative campaigns and about the economic realities of running a statewide political organization full time.

They hope to qualify three measures for the November 1974 ballot; one on cleaning up the environment, one on cleaning up the state govern­ment, and a third called “The Energy Act.”

The last is all about nuclear power, but it deliberately steers clear of the moratorium angle, the Koupals explain.

“Nuclear power is con­troversial,” says Joyce Koupal, ‘‘and you can’t qualify initiatives with controversy.”

(Qualification  will mean gathering about 500,000 petition signatures in order to come up with 325,000 valid ones.) This is where the elephants (who never forget what they’ve been told) and the mules (who do all the work) come in. The petition drive is under way.

They’ve already been busy. In the room are 20-vear-olds who have been active in the tight against a PG&E-proposed nuclear power plant at Davenport, near Santa Cruz; others who’ve been keeping an eye on the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District’s Nuclear plant under construction near Rio Seco; still others who have crowded into bearing rooms to urge the state Public Utilities Commission to halt the projected tripling of the size of the 430,000-kilowatt nuclear plant at San Onofre, operated since 1968 by Southern California Edison and San Diego Light and Power Co.

–      “1 think nuclear power is a dead industry, at least in California,” says Ed Koupal. “When a former used car salesman (10 years peddling Chrysler products) like me can go up against a nuclear physicist and stop him cold with nothing but the plain truth, I’m scared for the future of that industry.

“The only physics I ever had was Ex-Lax”

People’s Lobby, the Koupals say, is supported by the sale of memberships ($10 for non~ students, $5 for students an­nually), the “Bike for Life” marathons and, most recently, by two “instant” job printing shops in Los Angeles and San Jose and a bike shop in Los Angeles.

(The Morro Bay meeting has a communal air: the printers and the bike people are there to talk about profits. There’s a general feeling of getting together to slay dragons. The fiery breath of PG&E’s Morro Bay steam plant comes in for comment. Says Koupal: “They release so much from those stacks it made it rain here last night.”)

“PG&E and Edison are ab­solutely paranoid about Ed,” says Joyce Koupal proudly, talking of his appearances on talk shows like Mike Douglas’s and a segment of the recent three-hour National Broad­casting Company special on the energy crisis. “They tape him every time he’s on.”

Koupal, fussing with papers in a briefcase, wants to get back to what he sees as the fundamental issue.

“We’re not against nuclear power,” he repeals. “We’re pro-safety. If the Atomic Energy Commission and PG&E and the rest of them can prove to us that it’s safe, we’ll take out newspaper ads in whatever papers they select to let the world know that we’re buying their deal.

“We just want them to prove that there’s no risk in the emergency core cooling systems of the reactors, that atomic garbage won’t poison the un­derground water for our children and their children’s children and that the industry is able to insure itself.

“Is that so much to ask?”

Lloyd v Tanner 1972

Reading the Diamond v Bland cases gives a summary understanding and adds perspective to the Lloyd case.

U.S. Supreme Court

LLOYD CORP. v. TANNER, 407 U.S. 551 (1972)

407 U.S. 551

LLOYD CORP., LTD. v. TANNER ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

No. 71-492.

Argued April 18, 1972
Decided June 22, 1972

Respondents sought to distribute handbills in the interior mall area of petitioner’s large privately owned shopping center. Petitioner had a strict no-handbilling rule. Petitioner’s security guards requested respondents under threat of arrest to stop the handbilling, suggesting that they could resume their activities on the public streets and sidewalks adjacent to but outside the center, which respondents did. Respondents, claiming that petitioner’s action violated their First Amendment rights, thereafter brought this action for injunctive and declaratory relief. The District Court, stressing that the center is “open to the general public” and “the functional equivalent of a public business district,” and relying on Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 , and Amalgamated Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U.S. 308 , held that petitioner’s policy of prohibiting handbilling within the mall violated respondents’ First Amendment rights. The Court of Appeals affirmed. Held: There has been no dedication of petitioner’s privately owned and operated shopping center to public use so as to entitle respondents to exercise First Amendment rights therein that are unrelated to the center’s operations; and petitioner’s property did not lose its private character and its right to protection under the Fourteenth Amendment merely because the public is generally invited to use it for the purpose of doing business with petitioner’s tenants. The facts in this case are significantly different from those in Marsh, supra, which involved a company town with “all the attributes” of a municipality, and Logan Valley, supra, which involved labor picketing designed to convey a message to patrons of a particular store, so located in the center of a large private enclave as to preclude other reasonable access to store patrons. Under the circumstances present in this case, where the handbilling was unrelated to any activity within the center and where respondents had adequate alternative means of communication, the courts below erred in holding those decisions controlling. Pp. 556-570.

Majority opinion:

The argument reaches too far. The Constitution by no means requires such an attenuated doctrine of dedication of private property to public use. The closest decision in theory, Marsh v. Alabama, supra, involved the assumption by a private enterprise of all of the attributes of a state-created municipality and the exercise by that enterprise of semi-official municipal functions as a delegate of the State. 13 In effect, the owner of the company town was performing the full spectrum of municipal powers and stood in the shoes of the State. In the instant case there is no comparable assumption or exercise of municipal functions or power.

Nor does property lose its private character merely because the public is generally invited to use it for designated purposes. Few would argue that a free-standing store, with abutting parking space for customers, assumes significant public attributes merely because the public is invited to shop there. Nor is size alone the controlling factor. The essentially private character of a store and its privately owned abutting property does not change by virtue of being large or clustered with other stores in a modern shopping center. This is not to say that no differences may exist with respect to government regulation [407 U.S. 551, 570]   or rights of citizens arising by virtue of the size and diversity of activities carried on within a privately owned facility serving the public. There will be, for example, problems with respect to public health and safety which vary in degree and in the appropriate government response, depending upon the size and character of a shopping center, an office building, a sports arena, or other large facility serving the public for commercial purposes. We do say that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights of private property owners, as well as the First Amendment rights of all citizens, must be respected and protected. The Framers of the Constitution certainly did not think these fundamental rights of a free society are incompatible with each other. There may be situations where accommodations between them, and the drawing of lines to assure due protection of both, are not easy. But on the facts presented in this case, the answer is clear.

We hold that there has been no such dedication of Lloyd’s privately owned and operated shopping center to public use as to entitle respondents to exercise therein the asserted First Amendment rights. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment and remand the case to the Court of Appeals with directions to vacate the injunction.

It is so ordered.

  1. JUSTICE MARSHALL, with whom MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, and MR. JUSTICE STEWART join, dissenting.

The District Court observed that Lloyd Center invites schools to hold football rallies, presidential candidates to give speeches, and service organizations to hold Veterans Day ceremonies on its premises. The court also observed that the Center permits the Salvation Army, the Volunteers of America, and the American Legion to solicit funds in the Mall. Thus, the court concluded that the Center was already open to First Amendment activities, and that respondents could not constitutionally be excluded from distributing leaflets solely because Lloyd Center was not enamored of the form or substance of their speech. The Court of Appeals affirmed, taking the position that it was not extending either Logan Valley or Marsh. In other words, the District Court found that Lloyd Center had deliberately chosen to open its private property to a broad range of expression and that having done so it could not constitutionally exclude respondents, and the Court of Appeals affirmed this finding.

Petitioner apparently concedes that if the lower courts are correct, respondents should prevail. Brief for Petitioner 19. This concession is, in fact, mandated by our decision in Logan Valley, in which we specifically held that members of the public may exercise their First Amendment rights on the premises of a shopping center that is the functional equivalent of a business district if their activity is “generally consonant with the use to which the property is actually put.” 391 U.S., at 320 . If the property of Lloyd Center is generally open to First Amendment activity, respondents cannot be excluded. [407 U.S. 551, 579]

In his dissenting opinion in Logan Valley, 391 U.S., at 339 , Mr. JUSTICE WHITE said that the rationale of that case would require affirmance of a case like the instant one. Mr. JUSTICE WHITE, at that time, was convinced that our decision in Logan Valley, incorrect though he thought it to be, required that all peaceful and non-disruptive speech be permitted on private property that was the functional equivalent of a public business district.

 

Proposed 27th Amendment

proposed *27th amendment

  national initiative

THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA RESERVE TO THEMSELVES THE POWER OF THE INITIATIVE. THE INITIATIVE IS THE POWER OF THE ELECTORS TO PROPOSE LAWS AND TO ADOPT OR REJECT THEM. AN INITIATIVE MEASURE MAY NOT BE SUBMITTED TO ALTER OR AMEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.

vote of confidence (recall)

EVERY ELECTED OFFICER OF THE UNITED STATES MAY BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE AT ANY TIME BY THE ELECTORS MEETING THE QUALIFICATION TO VOTE IN HIS STATE THROUGH THE PROCEDURE AND IN THE MANNER HEREIN PROVIDED FOR, WHICH PROCE­DURE SHALL BE KNOWN AS A VOTE OF CONFIDENCE, AND IS IN ADDITION TO ANY OTHER METHOD OF REMOVAL PROVIDED BY LAW.