Tish O'Dell, Author at CELDF

Aug 6, 2024

The Killing of Lake Erie and Discovering Right Relationship Ten Years Later

On August 2, 2014, Toledo residents awoke to government alerts to not drink, bathe, use or touch the water coming out of their taps. The water could make adult humans very sick and even worse for babies, children, and anyone with compromised immune systems. Fish, animals, and plants weren’t even considered. What was clear though,… Read more »

How Do We Speak for the Trees When Our Human Right to Free Speech is Cut Down?

In our legal system, one is either a legal subject (humans and corporations) or a legal object (nature)

Apr 17, 2023

Ohio River Rights Campaign Launched by Cincinnati Residents

“We began to understand through this process that we are not only connected to the Ohio River, but that we are part of the ecosystem,” stated Jim Schenk of CROW.

Press Release: Back to the Future — Ohioans Still Poisoned After All These Years

“The spreading of toxic and radioactive well waste brine on Ohio roads and other surfaces threatens all Ohioans,” stated FaCT Brine Education Committee Chair, Ron Prosek. “You could be living or traveling anywhere in Ohio and potentially be exposed to this dangerous material. This is one of the most reckless practices that the State of Ohio has ever allowed.”

Sep 1, 2022

Why CELDF will be watching more than sports this Sunday

As Chilean voters are poised to go to the polls this coming Sunday, September 4, to hopefully become the second country in the world to include recognition of the Rights of Nature (RON) in their national constitution, it is obvious just by reading a few headlines in any given week that more countries need to embrace and follow Chile’s lead.

Read More | News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature

Jun 15, 2022

A Living Tribute to Philip Jurus

In February 2019, just days before the Toledo special election on the Lake Erie Bill of Rights in Toledo Ohio, Philip Jurus heard an interview on NPR about the upcoming vote. The interview moved him to write to me and share a poem he had written about Lake Erie and her distressed condition back in… Read more »

Some things never change, but we better start!

“Claiming to fight for clean water because the human community depends on clean water to bring in more tourism or that we need to destroy an entire ecosystem for lithium so that humans can continue as they have, misses the point of why we need to change. The other species in the river don’t benefit from more tourism and the plants and the animals on top of the lithium deposit and the aquifer beneath it won’t benefit either.”

Lessons from Ecuador

What will it take to advance the Rights of Nature in the United States?

Truthout: The American Petroleum Institute Is Working to Kill Voting on Local Measures

Over the past five years, organizers in seven Ohio communities (three cities, four counties) have qualified ballot measures to recognize enforceable rights of ecosystems and human rights to water. All take the historic and bold step of elevating these basic rights above the legal privileges currently enjoyed by private corporations in the United States.

Aug 9, 2020

WANTED: Local Officials Willing to Fight the Corporate State to Protect People and the Environment During a Pandemic

The system is constructed to disempower communities, to the detriment of people and the planet. That is why we need to fight back and why we need local elected officials with courage to fight with us… not against us! A guest blog by Ohio organizer Tish O’Dell.

Dear Mike DeWine: A Letter on Ohioan’s Constitutional Rights and Public Health

Ohio Organizer Tish O’Dell responds to Gov. Mike DeWine’s concerns for public health and constitutional rights during the COVID-19 crisis. Let’s hope he upholds his own words when it’s time to recover and rebuild.

Book: ‘Death by Democracy’

CELDF's Proposed Rights of Nature Principles

2023 Year-end Newsletter: Living with Nature

Tish O'Dell