Contact: Tish O’Dell, CELDF Consulting Director
440-552-6774
For Immediate Release
A collection of essays that confront the root causes of the interconnected ecological and social crisis
MERCERSBURG, PA – The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is proud to announce the publication of “Can You Handle the Truth? Essays of Hard Truths Aimed at Right- Relationships with the Earth and Each Other.”
It includes pieces written by Kai Huschke, Tish O’Dell, Terry Lodge, Michelle Beatty, Max Wilbert, Will Falk, Chad Nicholson, and Ben G. Price.
“The essays and articles collected in this book demonstrate how — again and again — corporate power in this country has successfully ignored obedience to the Laws of Nature while demanding legal adherence to the Laws of Profit, a profit accrued with total contempt for the Laws of Nature,” writes Robert Shetterly, activist and artist behind the portrait series Americans Who Tell the Truth, in his foreword. “It gives us guidance of how to think and what to do as we accept our responsibility to the world. It gives us no false hope. It presumes that if we want to survive, we want to know what we’re up against.”
The essays in “Can You Handle the Truth?” tackle a wide range of challenging topics with many based on current events over the past decade, including:
- Police violence against Black community members like Mike Brown
- How the government ignores indigenous sovereignty and community self-determination
- Pollution and coverups in East Palestine, OH after a train disaster
- Censorship of the inconvenient film Planet of the Humans
- Courts’ role in suppressing dissent via the “Our Children’s Trust” legal case
- How the U.S. Constitution prioritizes property and wealth over people and planet
- The failure of traditional legal approaches and regulations to protect the environment
- The destructive impacts of consumerism and capitalism
Despite the crises we face, the book offers a message of hope through resistance and resilience. The Rights of Nature Movement is presented as a powerful alternative to the current system, one that prioritizes the well-being of the planet and all its inhabitants. The book also highlights the importance of adopting a new value system towards the natural world, draws connections between the struggles of native communities and non-native communities in resource extraction areas, and argues that capitalism and growth are ecological dead ends.
“This book doesn’t pull any punches,” said CELDF’s Consulting Director Tish O’Dell, who helped assemble the compilation. “The essays force us to confront the hard realities of our current system and imagine a radically different future. But we believe these truths are necessary to catalyze the transformative change our communities and ecosystems so desperately need.”
CELDF pioneered and remains at the forefront of the Rights of Nature Movement, supporting communities in their struggles against corporate exploitation and government overreach. The organization continues this work even as states like Utah, Florida, and Ohio move to ban the recognition of nature’s rights.
“‘Can You Handle the Truth’ is a clarion call to action,” added CELDF Executive Director Kai Huschke. “It challenges us to develop new values, new systems, and new ways of relating to the natural world. We hope this book will inspire readers to join us in building a more just, sustainable, and democratic future.”
Despite the banning of rights of nature in several states, CELDF remains committed to its mission to protect the rights of nature and promote local democracy. ‘Can You Handle the Truth?’ is ultimately a call to reexamine foundational principles and beliefs in the interest of future generations, and to co-create right-relationship with non-human life by way of grassroots solutions instead of reliance on a regulatory regime that regulates activists instead of polluters and slash-and-burn profiteers.
The authors of the essays in the collection are now available for radio and broadcast interviews, book talks, and podcast appearances.
“Can You Handle the Truth” is available for a special pre-order price in print and as an e-book for a limited time.
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About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
CELDF is a nationwide community of organizers, lawyers, and partners who educate, agitate, and organize to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s reciprocal relationship with Earth. For over 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate exploitation, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-govern through systems grounded in ecological balance and collective power.
Today, CELDF continues to promote and collaboratively define Rights of Nature principles through proposed legislation like the Great Lakes Bill of Rights, introduced into the New York State Assembly by Member Patrick Burke, and a number of pending local bills, its Truth, Reckoning, and Right-Relationship program, and now expanding its efforts into community resistance and resilience efforts.
More information about CELDF, including photos pre-approved for media use, can be found in our press kit.