Important Updates
A new system of law based on respect for Nature and the…
Issues, News, Resources, Rights of Nature
Human and ecosystem viability come when we figure out how to orient…
News, Rights of Nature
Protecting Water and Life: Frontline Stories from Ohioans fighting corporate and state…
Publications
May 19, 2023
“When we became trees, we left behind I and we became We.”
Read More | Community Wires, Rights of NatureMay 4, 2023
Dean Barlese, an elder of the Pyramid Lake Paiute-Shoshone, who told us “We’ve got to stand up for our ancestors, they gave their lives, they shed their blood fighting for this land.”
Read More | Community Rights, Community Wires, Democratic Rights, News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureMay 1, 2023
Feature photo by Bill Rinehart/WVXU “An advocacy group wants Cincinnati to recognize the right of the Ohio River to thrive. Members of Citizens for the Rights of the Ohio River Watershed are circulating a petition to get an amendment to Cincinnati’s charter on the ballot. Susan VonderHaar says CROW members want to give the river a seat… Read more »
Read More | Chemical Trespass, Community Rights, Community Wires, Corporate Agriculture, Democratic Rights, Extraction & Pollution, Issues, News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureApr 14, 2023
Wednesday, April 19th at 6:30 PM (Central Time) CELDF’s Tish O’Dell will be a panelist on for the upcoming discussion, The Myth of American Democracy: The Ruling Class Crusade Against Community & Nature hosted by Athens Community Rights Coalition at Ohio University.
Read More | Community Wires, Events, News, News from the GrassrootsNov 17, 2022
“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.”
Read More | Chemical Trespass, Community Wires, News from the Grassroots, Press ReleasesSep 15, 2022
YES, the waters have a voice in this project….or at least they should.
Read More | Community Wires, News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureAug 8, 2022
Calls to reconsider humanity’s relationship with nature are not new, but perhaps they are more urgent now than ever before.
Read More | Community Wires, News, News from the GrassrootsJun 15, 2022
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 »
Read More | Community Wires, NewsMay 19, 2022
Our communities deserve more than just the right to Clean Water; our entire ecosystem, our Mother Earth depends on us to end the poisoning. It seems to me we need to recognize the Rights of Nature, and make it illegal to poison Earth and her inhabitants.
Read More | Chemical Trespass, Community Wires, Corporate Agriculture, Issues, Rights of NatureApr 18, 2022
April 20th is a big day in Harrisburg for the rights of communities to defend their water from industrial pollution. For years Grant Township, in Indiana County, PA, has been resisting the placement of injection wells on their land. In 2015 Township residents adopted a Home Rule Charter containing a “Community Bill of Rights.” This… Read more »
Read More | Community Wires, NewsSep 17, 2021
Ohio communities over the past decade have worked hard to protect ecosystems and their communities from various harmful projects. They did the work of asserting democratic rights to alter and reform their government. They collected signatures, argued in court, battled in lopsided campaigns and even won a few only to have the courts overturn their… Read more »
Read More | Blogs, Chemical Trespass, Community Wires, NewsSep 15, 2021
Residents are blowing the whistle on large-scale industrial solar arrays that require the cutting of old-growth forests in favor of destructive greenwashing.
Read More | Blogs, Community Wires, NewsSep 14, 2021
Invisible Hand, the rebirth of the WACRN, and updates from the West Coast.
Read More | Blogs, Community Wires, News, News from the GrassrootsSep 13, 2021
Community Rights organizing began in Pennsylvania over two decades ago. Since then, dozens of local laws have been adopted that ban everything from factory farms, to the spreading of sewage sludge, to oil and gas fracking and pipelines.
Read More | Blogs, Community Wires, News, News from the GrassrootsSep 10, 2021
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.
Read More | Blogs, Community Wires, Corporate 'Rights', Extraction & Pollution, News, Rights of NatureSep 8, 2021
The Defunding Violence Ordinance has been circulating in activist communities across the country. It continues to be a living document that both informs and is informed by grassroots efforts to defund and depower the institution of policing.
Read More | Blogs, Community Wires, Defunding Violence, NewsAug 24, 2021
The General Synod of the United Church of Christ has become the first mainline Protestant body to publicly proclaim that nature has rights.
Read More | Community Wires, News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature, Success StoryJul 29, 2021
Earth Law Center and the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN) Youth Hub led two sessions on “Youth and the Rights of Nature Movement: shifting the paradigm for all future generations” at the first IUCN Global Youth Summit April 7-9. As a result of the Rights of Nature sessions, a Declaration was drafted.… Read more »
Read More | Community Wires, Issues, News, Resource Links, Rights of NatureJul 29, 2021
Glen Ford spent more than four decades delivering the news from a Black perspective on a national scale.
Read More | Community Wires, NewsJun 27, 2021
Lincoln County voters passed Measure 21-177, banning aerial pesticide spraying in the county in May of 2017. Representatives of the timber industry promptly sued to overturn the ban.
Read More | Chemical Trespass, Community Wires, NewsJan 5, 2021
Join us Tuesday 12 January, at 12:30 p.m EST for the third episode of this conference series, entitled “Nature rights: an extension of Human rights?”.
Read More | Community Wires, Events, News from the Grassroots, Resources, Rights of NatureDec 17, 2020
This essay discusses our courts of law as epitomes of institutional racism and the role played by Former Chief Justice John Marshall. This guest blog is part of a continuing effort to re-name law schools after Former Chief Justice Marshall, who owned over 200 slaves. Dealing with institutional racist past and trying to right some of the wrongs.
Read More | Community Wires, News, Press Releases & BlogsDec 6, 2020
Seen through her guileless eyes, the humble truth of our kinship and solidarity beneath the real—though disproportionately unequal—oppressions of empire, became clear.
Read More | Community WiresDec 2, 2020
Save the Date! Join the Oregon Community Rights Network in this upcoming event on corporate constitutional rights.
Read More | Community Wires, EventsNov 6, 2020
Reekumani Greendeer was a fierce advocate for Nature. We will honor his memory through continued efforts for the Rights of Nature.
Read More | Community WiresOct 21, 2020
Lisa Burroughs for Ashtabula County Water Watch interviews CELDF’s Tish O’Dell on the Rights of Nature Movement in an October 2020 edition of North Coast Voice Magazine.
Read More | Community Rights, Community Wires, Issues, News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureOct 5, 2020
A new documentary, “THE PEOPLE vs. AGENT ORANGE”, follows the primary component of the notorious chemical Agent Orange. The film follows resistance in the United States, France, and Vietnam, and features Carol Van Strum, an active participant in Community Rights and Rights of Nature organizing in Oregon. Join the premiere virtually for Oregon audiences at the Eugene Environmental Film Festival, October 2-11. It will be available on PBS in April 2021.
Read More | Community Wires, Press Releases & BlogsSep 17, 2020
Webinar: Webinar: Nature’s Rebellion Against the Corporate State! Register for Module Three- Decolonizing Nature – A Movement’s Voice in the Rebellion. Sign up for the final module in this three part webinar focused on Lake Erie and Rights of Nature.
Read More | Community WiresSep 3, 2020
Webinar: Webinar: Nature’s Rebellion Against the Corporate State! Register for Module Two- A Lakes Voice in the Rebellion. Sign up for the second module in this three part webinar focused on Lake Erie and Rights of Nature.
Read More | Community WiresAug 27, 2020
Webinar: Webinar: Nature’s Rebellion Against the Corporate State! Register for Module One – A Community’s Voice in the Rebellion. Sign up for the first module in this three part webinar focused on Lake Erie and Rights of Nature.
Read More | Community WiresAug 27, 2020
From Executive Producer Mark Ruffalo comes the world’s first documentary film on the Rights of Nature Movement. Attend the virtual world premiere followed by a panel discussion around the Rights of Nature Movement.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsAug 12, 2020
Read the pro se argument defending the Lake Erie Bill of Rights presented by Toledo resident, Mike Ferner, on behalf of Lake Erie and the Toledoans who passed the law.
Read More | Community WiresJul 20, 2020
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.
Read More | Community Wires, Corporate 'Rights', Democratic Rights, Rights of NatureJul 14, 2020
The Network has been initiated by residents who worked to protect Buckingham County, Virginia from a proposed large-scale fracked gas compressor station for the now-defeated Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
Read More | Community Wires, Press Releases & BlogsJun 9, 2020
Nottingham, New Hampshire residents appeal Supreme Court to defend their Freedom from Chemical Trespass Ordinance. Adopted in 2019, this ordinance secures the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human societies, bans all corporate activities that infringe that right, and grants residents the right to defend the law in court.
Read More | Community Wires, News, Press ReleasesApr 22, 2020
For 50 years, environmentalists have celebrated the illusion that the law is on their side. Earth Day’s laws have systematically failed to guard against mass species die-offs, the climate crisis, deadly air pollution, the corporatization of freshwater, and the largest loss of biodiversity in human history.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsApr 20, 2020
This year CELDF will be hosting an online Q&A with organizers who have been engaging communities across the country in paradigm-shifting work for decades.
Read More | Community Wires, Events, News from the GrassrootsApr 9, 2020
Pacific Northwest organizer, Kai Huschke, details how COVID-19 has opens timely conversation about the Rights of Nature as a legal framework for protecting Nature.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots, Resource LinksApr 6, 2020
In this interview, Kai speaks on the current state of community rights, gives an explanation of the events taking place in Grant Township, and talks about how we must take this time during Covid-19 to progress forward in the movement.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureApr 2, 2020
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) revoked a permit for a toxic frack waste injection well in Grant Township. The DEP cited the Township’s Home Rule Charter, which includes a “Community Bill of Rights,” in their decision. Through the Charter that residents adopted in 2015, they banned injections wells as a violation of the rights of the community and the ecosystems that sustain them. CELDF assisted in drafting and defending the law.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots, Resource Links, Success StoryMar 21, 2020
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.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots, Resource LinksMar 17, 2020
Bryan Twitchell shares a guest blog about the Wet’suwet’en First Nation’s ongoing resistance to the Coastal GasLink pipeline in British Columbia, Canada.
Read More | Blogs, Community Wires, NewsMar 6, 2020
As the Pennsylvania DEP attempts to block Grant Township’s defense of their ban on fracking injection wells, the court rules that the case can move forward. Grant argues they have the right to local governing authority to protect against corporate harm.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots, Success StoryFeb 28, 2020
In Toledo, OH, a federal judge joined a long list of enablers complicit in the destruction of the natural world by invalidating the democratically enacted Lake Erie Bill of Rights charter amendment.
Read More | Community Wires, News, Press ReleasesFeb 26, 2020
Toledo organizer Markie Miller drafted this letter to Lake Erie the night before the federal hearing. In honor of this moment in history, we share her letter here.
Read More | Blogs, Community Wires, NewsFeb 6, 2020
Check out this interview with CELDF’s Hawaii and Northwest organizer, Kai Huschke, on CELDF’s partnerships with communities across the U.S. who have spearheaded the Rights of Nature movement.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots, Resource Links, Rights of NatureFeb 6, 2020
If corporations have individual rights under US law – like freedom of speech – why not a grant a lake or forest or river the same status? Ohio organizer Tish O’Dell talks about Toledo’s groundbreaking law – the Lake Erie Bill of Rights – and the Rights of Nature Movement!
Read More | Community Rights, Community Wires, News from the Grassroots, Resource Links, Rights of NatureFeb 3, 2020
Read the first-hand accounts from attendees at the historic Lake Erie Bill of Rights hearing that took place in Toledo, Ohio last week.
Read More | Community Wires, Press Releases, Press Releases & BlogsFeb 3, 2020
Toledoans are tired of waiting for action out of Columbus. State and federal authorities — who are supposed to protect the lake, and the people who rely on it for drinking water, recreation and more — should step up to their responsibilities.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsJan 27, 2020
Organizations, activists, government officials, and hundreds of others from around the world support the Lake Erie Bill of Rights as oral arguments in federal court are held tomorrow.
Read More | Community Wires, Press Releases & Blogs