Jim Allison Turns 90: WILPF US Proclaims January 21st a Day of Pro-Democracy Action in His Honor

Jim and Tomi Allison at an Inaugurate the Revolution event in January 2017. Photo credit: Limestone Post

by Marybeth Gardam
Chair, W$D Committee

January 2023

Shortly before Jim Allison’s 90^th Birthday on December 23, 2022, he agreed to an interview over Zoom with Marybeth Gardam, Chair of the Women, Money & Democracy Committee (formerly Corporations v Democracy Committee). Read on to learn more about Jim’s important pro-democracy contributions. Watch the video of the interview here. Passcode: @mB2PUip

At 90, Jim Allison has had a life well lived alongside the woman he loves and admires as his “most respected” person. He’s owned and flown his own planes and a glider, owned several motorcycles and driven them to the coasts. He’s raised children, enjoyed a very successful academic career, and in a second chapter, has become a successful pro-democracy researcher, writer, playwright, and activist.

In honor of his birthday on December 23, and on behalf of our membership, WILPF President Darien De Lu signed a Proclamation proclaiming January 21^st, the infamous day of the 2010 Supreme Court’s catastrophic Citizens United decision, as Jim Allison Day in WILPF and requests every member and branch honor Jim’s activism and enduring contributions by taking action: staging protests, lobbying your elected representatives, using any of Jim’s pro-democracy plays to educate and inform, and taking any other effective actions to promote democracy and demand the rights of human persons be sovereign over those of “corporate persons.”    

Jim Allison and his wife Tomi are familiar to longtime WILPF members who recall the deep involvement they had in updating and promoting the WILPF Corporate Study course during the early 2000s. He’s also well known as a researcher, writer and playwright, having penned around a dozen plays that use humor and wit to educate about the lies and corruption corporate robber barons have used from the 1880s through the present to steal the constitutional rights intended for human persons and transfer them to the legal fiction called “corporate persons.” Many of Jim’s plays, and the Corporate Study course, can be found on the Women, Money & Democracy committee webpage.

Jim and Tomi are a brilliant team whose political and economic research, writing and activism have united them. They are a ‘power couple’ in the best sense of the words, and also they are delightful company. I learned a lot about Jim I didn’t know, and I bet you didn’t either.   

Professor and ‘Accidental Mayor’: Jim and Tomi’s Careers

Born to young parents, Jim was raised on a farm in Fresno, California by his grandparents and was an excellent student. He attended university at UC Berkeley studying Psychology. During that time the Korean War was going on and Jim knew he probably would be drafted. After graduation he enlisted and was sent to Fort Ord in Monterey, CA, for basic training and clerk typist school, then sent to Heidelberg, Germany, to work in Medical Division-Headquarters, US Army Europe. When he returned to Fresno, Jim took a job in the Juvenile Probation office, where he met his future wife Tomi. She was working with the juvenile girls while Jim worked with the boys. Shortly after they married Jim moved them to Claremont Graduate School, where he earned an M.A., then to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for his PhD. At Indiana University, as a professor of experimental psychology, he did significant work on reinforcement theory that led to his development of behavioral economics and to a novel non-punitive therapy for the treatment of OCD patients.

While at Ann Arbor, Jim and Tomi began reading the weekly newsletter of independent progressive journalist I.F. Stone, who was reporting on the facts behind the war in Vietnam.  “Ann Arbor was where the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) started, but we weren’t part of that. Still, Ann Arbor was really the start of our radicalization.” Tomi smiles. “Our eyes were opened to the facts that were not being reported by mainstream media, and how important it is to look deeper at original sources.” Those were busy years with the arrival of children and Jim’s academic career demanding much of their time. In 1963, when they moved to Bloomington, Indiana, Tomi got involved with Bloomington WILPF’s Vietnam War protests, then she entered local politics. She served first on the City Council then was catapulted into the position of Mayor of Bloomington. (You can read about her Mayoralty in her delightful autobiography “The Accidental Mayor”). Jim’s unwavering support of his wife’s political career, and her support of his academic and writing career, are nothing short of inspirational.

After Tomi’s mayoral term ended, she returned to WILPF and, at a cocktail party to support Howard Dean in 2004, a WILPF member told the Allisons about the WILPF Corporate Study Course, “Challenge Corporate Power: Assert The People’s Rights.” They were intrigued and then hooked after they attended the WILPF Triennial Congress in San Francisco and met some of the course authors: Virginia Rasmussen, Jan Edwards, Molly Morgan, and Mary Zepernick. They returned to Bloomington determined to use the course to inform and organize the public about the threat to democracy that unchecked corporate power presents. Another significant teaching tool was Jan Edwards’ Timeline of Corporate Constitutional Rights, a cogent graphic history of how corporations stole rights intended for human persons and used them against people and planet. For the next several years the Allisons were immersed in not only facilitating the course, but eventually in updating it.

Translating the WILPF Corporate Study Course into a Podcast

The course is still a useful tool. I asked why they thought it had fallen into disuse. “Young people absolutely need to learn about how an unequal balance of power affects their future,” Tomi insisted. Both Jim and Tomi agreed that WILPF members became bored with facilitating the course, long before their communities had fully absorbed its lessons. “We WILPFers are constantly wanting to know the next big thing,” Tomi explained, “always curious about what we’re missing.” But they both agreed that consistently reaching out to newer, younger activists is essential. “Young people have everything to gain by the kind of small group organizing and fact-finding that course offers,” Tomi said. “We have to get them ready to dig in and find the facts themselves, not be so ready to accept what the media (and others) tell them is the truth about this rigged system.”

That’s why they enthusiastically endorse translating the Study Course into a Podcast being prepared by the W$D Committee for launch sometime in 2023. The working title of the Podcast is “POWER GRAB” and will offer a format that is more accessible to younger activists who like to absorb information this way. The flashpoint for each episode of the podcast will be a current issue related to the oppression of young people, people of color, and the poor, then it will quickly pivot to document the history behind the issue at hand as well as emerging solutions and ways to organize against corporate power. This new resource aims to incorporate a parallel timeline to the Timeline of Corporate Constitutional Rights, demonstrating how racism has fueled a ruthless capitalism. The project is partially funded by a mini grant from WILPF US and another from WILPF International, but much more funding is needed.

Jim’s keen sense of justice, his need to uncover the facts and to do so by consulting original sources and source materials and rooting for underdog, has defined his work for WILPF.  His most recent work is an excellent Podcast with the Bloomington League of Women Voters. This podcast has recently been picked up statewide. You can listen to it here.

“The pendulum is shifting back towards a more progressive era,” Jim said. “We’re encouraged that Biden has begun to enforce the anti-trust laws that have been on the books since the 1900s.” But Tomi added, “What is needed is a powerful youthful movement to push him further. Those systemic injustices will affect the lives of the young for decades to come and must be reversed.” I asked Jim what one thing he would change if he could. Without hesitation he answered, “The Supreme Court…I’d end lifetime terms. Those were set at a time when lifetimes were usually no more than 50 or 60 years. And I’d set more oversight. Right now the only very weak oversight is the House of Representatives which holds the ‘power of the purse.’ The Supreme Court is an expensive operation to fund.”

It’s been an honor to work with Jim and Tomi over the years, and a lot of fun too. They know the importance of the personal touch in organizing and networking. They’ve accomplished so much, with hopefully much more on the horizon. For me, the most valuable part of what Jim and Tomi have taught me is that, despite appearances and deliberate efforts to quash such enthusiasm, the persistent and careful work of a single person, especially when united with other like-minded activists, can accomplish a great deal. The fact that we haven’t yet fully transformed an oppressive and ruthless economic system should not slow down our efforts.

Recommended Reading

Jim and Tomi Allison currently recommend the book EVIL GENIUSES: The Unmaking of America by Kurt Anderson.