Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig does not look like someone who would advocate for an uprising. Thin and bespectacled, he carries no weapons. But this week, he calls for a New Hampshire Rebellion, a march through the state to protest corruption in the American government and promote campaign finance reform.
The march, which several Dartmouth students indicated they would participate in after hearing Lessig speak at the Rockefeller Center Thursday, began on Saturday in Dixville Notch and will end on Jan. 24 in Nashua, a total of about 190 miles.
Despite rain and ice, with temperatures hovering just above freezing, over 30 campaign finance reform advocates set out with their hoods up. “We demand fair elections,” one hand-written sign read.
In his lecture, Lessig said the emergence of what he calls the “money primary” — the period between elections when candidates must seek out campaign funds from wealthy individuals and corporations — has taken away ordinary citizens’ significance in elections.
In order for candidates to succeed, Lessig said, they must win this primary.
“It is obvious we have lost [our] republic,” he said
He estimated that relevant donors comprise just 0.05 percent of the American population, so a small majority of the electorate receives a disproportionate amount of attention and, presumably, favors from the government.
“The people do have the ultimate influence over elected officials because, after all, there is a voting election,” he said, “but they only have that influence after the funders have had their way with the candidates who wish to run.”
New Hampshire is the ideal place to begin a national debate about corruption, Lessig said, because of its centrality in the presidential election cycle. As the state with the first primary, New Hampshire residents are treated to speeches, events and rallies leading up to Election Day.
As the group marches on, Lessig wants to convince state residents to ask one question of every candidate: “How are you going to end the system of corruption in Washington?” Lessig plans to broadcast the answers and debates on social media, drawing attention to campaign finance reform in the hopes that it will become the central issue of the 2016 election.
Part of Lessig’s emphasis on New Hampshire comes from the state’s historic role in anti-corruption debates. In 1999, Doris Haddock, an 88-year-old New Hampshire resident nicknamed Granny D, walked from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. with a sign on her chest reading “Granny D for Campaign Finance Reform.” Even after her death in 2010, she has remained something of a cult icon in the state. In the same year, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., began his presidential campaign in New Hampshire by telling Bedford locals that campaign money “corrupts our political ideals.”
Fifteen years later, Lessig hopes to revive this mini-movement.
Lessig’s interest in ending government corruption stems from his work at Harvard, where he directs the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. More recently, however, Lessig was motivated to jump-start the New Hampshire Rebellion after the 2013 suicide of his close friend, Aaron Swartz.
Swartz, a renowned Internet activist before his death, was a fellow at the Safra Center and had been close with Lessig since the early 2000s. Following federal prosecution over his mass downloading of files from the academic database JSTOR, Swartz committed suicide last January.
Swartz had stressed to Lessig that much of the change they wanted to see in areas from intellectual property to climate change could not be achieved until they tackled the root problem of corruption in Washington, Lessig said at the lecture.
Lessig was moved to tears while talking about Swartz’s death, calling the rebellion a “labor of love” on his behalf. The march began exactly one year after Swartz’s death, and will end on the anniversary of Granny D’s birth.
Following the lecture, volunteers distributed sign-up cards for the march, finding themselves quickly overwhelmed by potential participants. Audience members swarmed Lessig, wanting to learn more about the movement.
Some students, including Wanda Czerwinski ’17 and Timothy Rizvanov ’17, told Lessig they were interested in joining him on a leg of his journey.
“I found myself primarily motivated by his fervent belief in his cause,” Czerwinski said. “Hearing him speak made me consider participating in the march because I admire his intellect and devotion.”
Other Dartmouth students who went to the lecture did not decide to participate in the march, but said they admired the movement’s underlying principles.
