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Law Serving Human and Natural Communities
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Law-Making: About the People's Business or Giving them the Business?
who decides who makes and wields the law? why not the People?
Pennsylvania Community Rights Network Launched On February 20, 2010, citizens from more than a dozen counties met in Chambersburg to initiate plans to convene a Pennsylvania People’s Constitutional Convention made up of delegates from municipalities across the state. They concluded their deliberations by pledging to become Community Rights Networkers, and by issuing the Chambersburg Declaration. Prelude to a Pennsylvania People's Constitutional Convention
The Chambersburg Declaration
US Supreme Court Elevates Corporations Over People --- AgainCELDF PRESS RELEASE
CELDF ARTICLE in YES! MAGAZINEHow Companies Became "Persons" - Clarence Page
Local Rights-Based Laws Developed by CELDFLatest Community Assertion of Rights:YES! Magazine Looks at Spokane's Local Bill of Rights, November 4, 2009
Cheltenham Citizens Win Court Case: Force Montgomery County, PA to Put Local Bill of Rights on Ballot, September 20, 2009
PA Citizens Denied Ballot Question to Add Local Bill of Rights: They Sue County Board of Elections, August 28.2009
Nestle Pulls Water Theft Wells from Shapleigh, ME; Press Minimizes Key Role of Community Law Making, July 30, 2009
Should Nature Be Able To Take You To Court? - Boston Globe, July 19, 2009Envision Spokane Qualifies City Bill of Rights for November Ballot - July 15, 2009
Reuters Covers Blaine's Battle Against Big Dirty Energy Corporations for Community Rights
Democracy Now! Interviews Thomas Linzey about Spokane's Proposed "Bill of Rights" for the City Charter
Pittsylvania County, VA Citizens to County Government: Ban Uranium Mining, or Step Aside and We'll Govern Under a New County Constitution!
Beccaria Township Citizens Appalled: Elected Official Calls Constituents "Traitors" and "A Mob" for claiming citizens' have rights and corporations do not
Newfield, Maine Citizens Adopt Local Law to Stop Corporate Takeover of Ground Water
by Virginia L. Woodwell
Shapleigh, ME Bans Corporate Water Withdrawals - 02-28-09
More on Shapleigh Ban on Corporate Water Withdrawals - 03-02-09
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Why Not Home Rule?
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Who Decides?
The Attorney
General of Pennsylvania continues to file lawsuits on behalf of large
corporations against self-governing communities. In a court filing on
January 31, 2008, AG Thomas Corbett's office argued:
“There is no inalienable right
to local self-government.”
The Hell There Is Not!
The idea that communities by right may govern themselves is central to the notion of democracy. The Declaration of Independence enumerates a long list of oppressive measures brought by England against American community governments, from the overturning of local laws to the subordination of community assemblies to "higher" forms of government.
Layers of bureaucracy, regulatory agencies, state and federal statutes and judicial decisions have created a sediment of law that smothers and snuffs out self-governance by the people who, all state constitutions acknowledge, are the source of governing authority.
For over one hundred years, a simmering home rule movement has haltingly created the framework for communities to take charge of their future, by drafting into law local constitutions, or home rule charters. It is time for this movement to take center stage in American politics and governance, in order to fulfill the barren promises of real democracy.
Find Out More:
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Welcome
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CELDF was formed to provide free and affordable legal services to community based groups and local governments working to protect their quality of life and the natural environment through building sustainable communities. Increasingly, that means teaming up with people and their municipal representatives to mount campaigns that challenge the legal clout of corporations to overrule decisions made by citizens for their communities.
Our Daniel Pennock Democracy School teaches a new organizing strategy for communities, by first uncovering the hidden history of the usurpation of people’s decision-making authority. If we are going to make a difference, we're going to have to think and act differently! The Democracy School is now offered in locations across the country.
Building on the lessons learned
at Democracy School, the Legal Defense Fund has assisted many
communities to draft and adopt local laws that do more than “regulate”
the amount of harm that is permitted by state and federal regulatory
agencies. Some of those laws can be viewed in our Ordinance Library.
For some communities, safeguarding their future means creating local constitutions, or home rule charters, that enumerate rights of local citizens, and of ecosystems -- and backing up those rights with enforceable law. Our Home Rule program area is tailored to offer assistance to communities that are ready to take this bold step in local self-governance.
In keeping with our commitment to grass roots solutions, The Franklin County Coalition is part of the work we do right here in our own back yard.
And finally, you can make our work part of your work by staying in touch with our Calendar of Events and Speakers Bureau.
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Spotlight
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The Legal Defense Fund's Work Gains (Inter)National Attention 
Ecuador's Constitutional Assembly Calls on CELDF to Assist in Drafting Rights of Nature Language
"If Nature Had Rights" - by Cormac Cullinan in Orion Magazine, Jan-Feb 2008
Leonardo DiCaprio's Film "The 11th Hour" Features Thomas Linzey of CELDF See the Trailer
Communities Take Power: YES! Magazine's Doug Pibel writes about the work in Barnstead, N.H.
Bringing Democracy To America: Pennsylvania Natural Pages Offers an Overview of CELDF's Work
When Does A Tree Have Rights? Nova Scotia Paper Covers Tamaqua Ordinance - January 7, 2007
Richard Grossman on WYSO talks about the relation between corporate "rights" and a community
Mother Jones Magazine Article Nov/Dec 2006
The Guardian Unlimited: "Wild Law"
PA Township Is First To Ban Corporations From Mining
Tamaqua Law Is First In Nation To Recognize Rights Of Nature
Radio Conversation: Asserting Community Governing Rights
Deborah Lindsay Interviews Ben Price, Shannon Biggs and Elsa Dooling
Streaming Video...
...of lectures by Thomas Linzey and Richard Grossman, plus the FROST video from PBS' NOW program (as seen at Democracy School) can be viewed at:
Thomas Linzey
Richard Grossman
NOW Segment
People Against Chemical Trespass, Santa Cruz, CA Presentation in Support of the Ordinance by
Selected News Item
Court Nixes Challenge To
Anti-Corporate Farming Ordinances - January 30, 2007
"Wild Law" Recognizes
Legal Rights for Nature
Tyrone Township Might Challenge
Corporate Exercise of Eminent Domain
Tamaqua Council Adopts Cutting
Edge Ordinance, September 19, 2006
Tamaqua Mulls Ecosystem Rights,
Secession, August 2, 2006
"The Tail Is Wagging The
Dog" - Times-News Editorial, July 8, 2006
"Licking says corporations
don't have 'people' rights"
Court Upholds Township
Anti-Corporate Farming Ordinance
Legal Defense Fund Featured in Orion Magazine
Sins of the Fathers: How
Corporations Use the Constitution and Environmental Law to Plunder Communities
and Nature
Natural Rights: Building a Real
Environmental Movement
St. Thomas Township Challenges
Corporate "Constitutional Rights"
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Plan To Attend!
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Democracy School Get More Information:
The Daniel Pennock Democracy School is a stimulating and illuminating course that teaches citizens and activists how to reframe exhausting and often discouraging single issue work (such as opposing toxic dumps, quarries, factory farms, etc.) in a way that we can confront corporate control on a powerful single front: people’s constitutional rights.
Democracy School explores the limits of conventional regulatory organizing and offers a new organizing model that helps citizens confront the usurpation by corporations of the rights of communities, people, and the earth. Lectures cover the history of people's movements and corporate power, and the dramatic recent organizing in Pennsylvania by communities confronting agribusiness, sewage sludge, and quarry corporations. Included with enrollment in the Democracy School is a 300 plus-page notebook of background reading material, and a copy of Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy. For a historical review of the Pennsylvania work through the end of 2003, see a feature article that appeared in Orion Magazine. Created by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) and Richard Grossman, co-founder of the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD), Democracy Schools were launched with five weekend sessions at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in 2003. Since then, the number of schools has grown rapidly. In 2006, there are over a dozen locations across the country offering Democracy Schools, so peruse our list and find a school near you!
Weekend classes continue to be offered at Wilson College in historic Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.
The Schools are built around carefully designed readings, clear presentations and group discussions.
- Each School reveals how it came to be that the law enables corporate managers to dictate their values, and impose their projects on communities.
- Includes an intense, comprehensive history of the judicial bestowal of constitutional rights of persons on corporations.
- Learn the secret of how People’s Movements have cut to the essence and won their struggles to be “found” in the constitution.
- Experience the Pennsylvania Story – an ongoing struggle to take the power to govern out of the Corporate Boardrooms and put it back in our communities where it belongs.
- For people of all ages, interests and occupations
- Classes consist of small groups of 15-20 people like you
 Now that you've looked over the website, read about Rights-Based Organizing, maybe even considered attending a Democracy School, what's next?
NOW IT'S TIME FOR ACTION!
Information is important, and we have lots of it. But information has little value if it's not put into action. That's the biggest message we have to offer: If you've been waiting for someone to stand up, take charge and lead the way in your community, you can bet there are others waiting too. How long will you wait, until it becomes clear that the one you have been waiting for...is you!
HOW CAN YOU GET STARTED?
CALL ONE OF OUR COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS! LET'S SEE IF YOU and YOUR COMMUNITY ARE READY to STOP TRYING TO SLOW DOWN THE RATE of DESTRUCTION or "MITIGATE" the LEGALIZED ASSAULTS on YOUR COMMUNITY.
ARE YOU READY TO USE YOUR LOCAL GOVERNMENT as a TOOL of SELF-GOVERNMENT to ASSERT COMMUNITY RIGHTS?
LET US KNOW!
CELDF COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS
PENNSYLVANIA
Ben Price, Projects Director............717-254-3233
VIRGINIA
Shireen Parsons............540-449-9144
NEW ENGLAND
Gail Darrell............603-269-8542
CALIFORNIA
Shannon Biggs............415-575-5540
WASHINGTON
Thomas Linzey............509-328-1475
"Input" without authority is hokum!
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