Corporate 'Rights' Archives

May 8, 2024

Wouldn’t You Say? – Paid Speech Isn’t Freedom of Speech

Feature photo by Christine Roy Like Junk Mail, Junk Speech is Trash Talk Freedom of speech isn’t what it used to be. Toward the end of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st, its definition was changed in two unprecedented rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court. Today, what’s called free speech has… Read more »

Sep 1, 2023

Beaver Creek Press Release

100% of the water from the Seal Rock Water District (SRWD) comes from Beaver Creek.

Aug 22, 2023

Trust the Children, Not the System

Featured photo: The plaintiffs in Held v. State of Montana walking and chatting outside the courthouse. (Photo: Robin Loznak) It will take an extended commitment to community organizing to expand the Held ruling into tangible relief as a vital state constitutional protection for nature. The 16 child plaintiffs in Held v. State of Montana, the Children’s… Read more »

Aug 17, 2023

Wouldn’t You Say? – When Democracy is Privatized

The centuries-long Enclosure (privatization) Movement in the U. S. is nearing completion.

Jul 25, 2023

Wouldn’t You Say? – Ignorance as License

Anti-intellectualism is as American as hot dogs.

Jul 10, 2023

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)

Mar 24, 2023

The Trains Don’t Always Run on Time:<br>Yet the System Keeps Rolling, and We’re Just Collateral Damage

The Trains Don’t Always Run on Time:
Yet the System Keeps Rolling, and We’re Just Collateral Damage

A more honest report on the East Palestine disaster and details how the system itself is to blame and why these horrific and deadly events keep happening and our communities and nature keep bearing the brunt.

Mar 10, 2023

Conservation Today: Kai Huschke and the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Kai Huschke, with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, talks to us about the hierarchy of community rights, states rights, and corporate rights.

Dec 20, 2022

Grant’s Fight is Our Fight

As we head into the new year, please join us in continuing to stand with Grant Township. And let’s not only support them with words or dollars, but also follow their lead and bravely build on their efforts in the communities where we live.

Aug 5, 2022

Wouldn’t You Say? – Community Self-Government

Do you know what’s not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution? For one thing, government by the people.

Jul 19, 2022

Wouldn’t You Say? – Property

The Right to Property is Inalienable, Right?
Some rights are defined as inalienable, meaning that they can’t be taken away from you. Heck, you can’t even sell them, trade them, or give them away.

Jul 1, 2022

Wouldn’t You Say? – Personhood

The Right of Free Speech Includes the Right to Clean Air to Speak With Look, if corporate property can be called a legal person, and if that person has a right to speak freely, but no mouth, and if corporate-cozy judges can make us all pretend for real that spending money is the way corporate… Read more »

May 4, 2022

A Court Hearing for Grant Township: Eight Years Later, and Still No Injection Well

As many are aware, CELDF has stood with the people and ecosystems of Grant Township (Indiana County, PA, population 700) in their courageous efforts to keep a frack waste injection well out of the community.

Mar 16, 2022

Lucrative Losses & Poisonous Profits Symposium: An Overview of the Domestic and Global Exploitation of Nature and the Way Forward

CELDF’s Tish O’Dell is speaking on Panel #4, “Contamination of Water.” This Panel will take place on Friday, March 25 from 11:40 AM – 12:45 PM.

Terry Lodge, activist attorney with CELDF, is speaking on Panel #2, “Contamination of Land.” This panel will take place on Thursday, March 24 from 11:50 AM – 12:55 PM

American University Washington College of Law’s Program on Environmental and Energy Law and Sustainable Development Law & Policy Brief, in association with the Animal Law Society, Energy Law & Policy Society, Environmental Law Society, and Native American Law Students Association are excited to host this year’s annual Symposium, “Lucrative Losses & Poisonous Profits: An Overview of the Domestic and Global Exploitation of Nature and the Way Forward” over Zoom from 10 AM – 1 PM on March 24 and 25, 2022. Over the course of four panels—activists, professors, legal and policy experts, climate scientists, and professors will discuss the international and domestic contamination and overuse of water and land from modern environmental law, indigenous, and rights of nature perspectives. The panelists will explore the devastating impacts of some of nature’s biggest threats, including pollution, deforestation, and industrial fishing.

Mar 10, 2022

“New Normal” Needs a New Constitutional Amendment

“New Normal” Needs a New Constitutional Amendment discussion from the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference PIELC.

Sep 10, 2021

Newsletter: Asheville Climate Bill of Rights Begins Signature Gathering

A new ordinance seeks to place a Climate Bill of Rights on the 2022 ballot, which explicitly challenges North Carolina’s infamous state preemption scheme and privileges afforded private corporations.

Jun 1, 2021

Newsletter: Confronting Law Schools

Law schools must reckon with the harm they have caused in perpetuating this oppressive system of law! Toward this end, CELDF has been honored to endorse a campaign to rename the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, named after former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. The justice, known for empowering corporations and the U.S. Supreme… Read more »

May 21, 2021

Newsletter: Featured Online Film Screenings

The new award-winning documentary THE PEOPLE VS. AGENT ORANGE is now screening in theaters near you! CELDF is proud to sponsor limited nationwide screenings ahead of the national premiere on PBS, forthcoming in summer 2021. CELDF is sponsoring screenings in California, Florida, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, and… Read more »

Feb 2, 2021

Protect the Protectors: Stop Line 3

Tribal nations, community and environmental groups in Minnesota have fought to stop the Line 3 Enbridge pipeline in Northern Minnesota. The pipeline violates several treaties with the Ojibwe people that establish their right to hunt, fish, and gather along the proposed route. The pipeline would cross 200 bodies of water, including the Mississippi River twice.

Jan 8, 2021

Newsletter: Momentum for Constitutional Change in Pennsylvania

In 2020, members of the Pennsylvania Community Rights Network engaged in a statewide support campaign for a state constitutional amendment to place the rights of people over the interests of private corporations – empowering communities to heighten state protections for civil, human and ecosystem rights.

Dec 15, 2020

BREAKING: Gas Company Files Federal Lawsuit To Overturn Small Pennsylvania Township’s Rights of Nature Law…Again

Gas company PGE sues Grant Township over democratically enacted law. The PA Department of Environmental Protection also sued Grant in 2017, making this filing the third lawsuit against the Township (pop. 700) for trying to protect its drinking water.

Dec 11, 2020

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.

Sep 6, 2020

Earth Defenders Warn Against Democrats Undermining ‘Rights of Nature’ Movement With Watered-Down Approach

Rights of Nature advocates caution against handing over Rights of Nature oversight to the Democratic Party.

Jul 20, 2020

THESIS: Anticapitalism and Environmentalism in the American Rights of Nature Movement

Canadian honors student, Camylle Lanteigne, unpacks the connection between anticapitalism and ecocentrism in the Rights of Nature Movement. Her research focuses on CELDF’s philosophy as a framework for her arguments.

Jul 8, 2020

Staying Home with Josh Fox: Preemption and Property Rights

Ben Price discusses Rights of Nature and how the concepts of preemption, claimed corporate rights, and property rights challenge local democracy and ecosystem rights.

Jul 7, 2020

Common Dreams: Corporations Are Suing Cities Across the USA

A new Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund report details a standard operating procedure of how corporate interests, and the politicians who serve them, retain power.

Read More | Corporate 'Rights', Resource Links

Jun 29, 2020

Thom Hartmann Program: State Law Benefits Corporations Against You – You Lose

Chad Nicholson joins Thom Hartmann to discuss how the 1% are effectively, suing the 99% for their own benefit, citing the findings of our June 2020 Report.

Read More | Corporate 'Rights', News from the Grassroots

Book: ‘Death by Democracy’

CELDF's Proposed Rights of Nature Principles

2023 Year-end Newsletter: Living with Nature

Corporate ‘Rights’

Wouldn’t You Say? – Paid Speech Isn’t Freedom of Speech

Beaver Creek Press Release

Trust the Children, Not the System

Wouldn’t You Say? – When Democracy is Privatized

Wouldn’t You Say? – Ignorance as License

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

The Trains Don’t Always Run on Time:
Yet the System Keeps Rolling, and We’re Just Collateral Damage

Conservation Today: Kai Huschke and the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Grant’s Fight is Our Fight

Wouldn’t You Say? – Community Self-Government

Wouldn’t You Say? – Property

Wouldn’t You Say? – Personhood

A Court Hearing for Grant Township: Eight Years Later, and Still No Injection Well

Lucrative Losses & Poisonous Profits Symposium: An Overview of the Domestic and Global Exploitation of Nature and the Way Forward

“New Normal” Needs a New Constitutional Amendment

Newsletter: Asheville Climate Bill of Rights Begins Signature Gathering

Newsletter: Confronting Law Schools

Newsletter: Featured Online Film Screenings

Protect the Protectors: Stop Line 3

Newsletter: Momentum for Constitutional Change in Pennsylvania

BREAKING: Gas Company Files Federal Lawsuit To Overturn Small Pennsylvania Township’s Rights of Nature Law…Again

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

Earth Defenders Warn Against Democrats Undermining ‘Rights of Nature’ Movement With Watered-Down Approach

THESIS: Anticapitalism and Environmentalism in the American Rights of Nature Movement

Staying Home with Josh Fox: Preemption and Property Rights

Common Dreams: Corporations Are Suing Cities Across the USA

Thom Hartmann Program: State Law Benefits Corporations Against You – You Lose

Support just, fair, and sustainable communities

Book: ‘Death by Democracy’

CELDF's Proposed Rights of Nature Principles

2023 Year-end Newsletter: Living with Nature

Wouldn’t You Say? – Paid Speech Isn’t Freedom of Speech

Beaver Creek Press Release

Trust the Children, Not the System

Wouldn’t You Say? – When Democracy is Privatized

Wouldn’t You Say? – Ignorance as License

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

The Trains Don’t Always Run on Time:Yet the System Keeps Rolling, and We’re Just Collateral Damage

Conservation Today: Kai Huschke and the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Grant’s Fight is Our Fight

Wouldn’t You Say? – Community Self-Government

Wouldn’t You Say? – Property

Wouldn’t You Say? – Personhood

A Court Hearing for Grant Township: Eight Years Later, and Still No Injection Well

Lucrative Losses & Poisonous Profits Symposium: An Overview of the Domestic and Global Exploitation of Nature and the Way Forward

“New Normal” Needs a New Constitutional Amendment

Newsletter: Asheville Climate Bill of Rights Begins Signature Gathering

Newsletter: Confronting Law Schools

Newsletter: Featured Online Film Screenings

Protect the Protectors: Stop Line 3

Newsletter: Momentum for Constitutional Change in Pennsylvania

BREAKING: Gas Company Files Federal Lawsuit To Overturn Small Pennsylvania Township’s Rights of Nature Law…Again

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

Earth Defenders Warn Against Democrats Undermining ‘Rights of Nature’ Movement With Watered-Down Approach

THESIS: Anticapitalism and Environmentalism in the American Rights of Nature Movement

Staying Home with Josh Fox: Preemption and Property Rights

Common Dreams: Corporations Are Suing Cities Across the USA

Thom Hartmann Program: State Law Benefits Corporations Against You – You Lose

Support just, fair, and sustainable communities

The Trains Don’t Always Run on Time:
Yet the System Keeps Rolling, and We’re Just Collateral Damage