What a year it’s been. I’m writing this note at 30,000 feet over southern Oregon on my way to speak at the annual Bioneers Conference in southern California, which draws over 3,000 attendees each year. Before departing, I was on the phone with an individual organizing an Envision Seattle group (organized along the lines of our Envision Spokane project in eastern Washington), talking about driving a local Bill of Rights into the Seattle City Charter. And that call came on the heels of finishing an appellate legal brief defending one of our communities’ qualification of a ballot initiative banning natural gas hydrofracking in their community.

It’s been a busy year for rights-based organizing throughout what some are calling the Marcellus Shale Region and movie director Josh Fox has dubbed “Gasland.” Pittsburgh made headlines in November of 2010 by adopting a Community Bill of Rights that bans corporate extraction of natural gas. While that may seem hard to top, wait until you hear what came next.

The challenges that have faced communities in New England this year are varied. It has been great to have Chad on board with the New England organizing since August, 2010, collaborating with Gail on several events - the Spring 2011 Community Rights Forums held in New Hampshire and Maine and our first booth at the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardners Association’s Common Ground Fair - to name a couple. We’ve also had six Democracy Schools: in New Boston, Amherst, Sugar Hill and Wentworth, New Hampshire; Waterville, Maine; and Burlington, Vermont, with our illustrious colleague, Ben Price.

In November, residents of Spokane, Washington will be voting on a Community Bill of Rights. Listed on the ballot as Proposition 1, these amendments to the city’s home rule charter, if approved, will....for the first time...put the interests of workers, our neighborhoods, and the Spokane River over and above entrenched corporate interests.