From the founding of the republic, inequality has been built into our country’s DNA. As Ashindi Maxton, a former fellow at the New Organizing Institute, sees it, the first step toward a more just society is to recognize the pervasive nature of that inequality and confront it head-on.

The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC continues to be hugely unpopular. A poll taken again this year showed Americans opposed unlimited campaign spending by corporations or unions by a margin of two to one. Still, our corporate media doesn’t come close to expressing how deeply people feel about money in politics. Perhaps that’s because our money-mad media feed at the same corporate trough as the candidates.

To fill the gap, we’ve cut a series of short interviews with pro-democracy activists in which they talk not just about what’s wrong but why Citizens United moves them to act. Check out the others in this series of short videos on money and politics—with among others, Nation editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel and James Rucker of Color of Change, and feel free to share, record your own, comment. These interviews were originally recorded in the spring of 2011 by GRITtv for Free Speech For People.

For more on citizens against Citizens United, check how a group of San Francisco activists stood up—by lying down—to corporate money in politics.