News from the Grassroots Archives

Jul 7, 2023

15 Questions that Are More Useful than “What New Regulation Should We Fight For?”

Difficult as it may be, we’d all be better off focusing on how to change the legal system itself instead of pleading for stricter regulations.

Jul 3, 2023

Wouldn’t You Say? – The Law Did not Save Grant Township’s Water, the People of Grant Did

If the persistence of the people of Grant Township in pursuit of justice took ten years for them to prevail, it is because they insisted on the primacy of justice over law that serves the interests of an opulent minority.

May 4, 2023

Got Community Resistance?

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.”

May 1, 2023

Toledo voters approved a bill of rights for Lake Erie. A group wants the same for the Ohio River

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 »

Apr 14, 2023

The Myth of American Democracy: The Ruling Class Crusade Against Community & Nature

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 Grassroots

Mar 29, 2023

An Earth Day Presentation – No More Enviro-Mentalism: Earth Emancipation Now!

April 18th at 3:00 PM CELDF’s Ben Price will be speaking at Youngstown University in Ohio for Earth Day. Dr. Ray’s Energy and Environment Speaker Series, Ohio Environmental Council, and Citizens’ Climate Lobby Mahoning Valley Chapter present an Earth Day 2023 event on Tuesday April 18th at 3 PM in YSU Kilcawley Center – “No More Enviro-Mentalism:… Read more »

Read More | Events, News from the Grassroots

Feb 7, 2023

CELDF is seeking a Grant Writer | Job Opening

The person in this position will play an integral role in expanding CELDF’s support for its mission to advance democratic and environmental rights. This is a part-time remote contract position, with the possibility of an expanded role over time.

Read More | Blogs, News, News from the Grassroots, Resources

Dec 20, 2022

Wouldn’t You Say? – Materialism is Substance Abuse, Literally

Let’s be generous and call the COP–15 agreement a plan for conserving 1% of Earth’s biodiversity. That means that negotiators agreed to sacrifice 99% of Earth’s remaining biodiversity on the altar of human consumption for profit.

Dec 10, 2022

Do No Harm: Protecting the Rights of Mangroves in Ecuador From Injury

Mangroves, according to the Ramsar definition, are considered wetlands – an area that CELDF is also helping to evolve coming out of the Declaration of the Rights of Wetlands.

Nov 30, 2022

Cleveland State trustees vote unanimously to strip John Marshall’s name from the college of law

Feature Photo by Gabriel Kramer / Ideastream Public Media Taru Taylor, a guest blogger with CELDF, helped spearhead efforts to rename law schools named after Former Chief Justice John Marshall, a key architect of the United State’s constitutional system who owned 200 slaves. CELDF along with many others signed onto the calls for law schools… Read more »

Read More | News from the Grassroots, Success Story

Nov 17, 2022

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.”

Nov 10, 2022

Join the OHCRN: Virtual film screening and discussion of “The Seeds of Vandana Shiva”

View the film on your own or with others (organize a viewing party!) from Friday November 18 to Sunday November 20. The OHCRN will host a Zoom webinar discussion on Sunday November 20 at 2:00 pm ET. The panel will include the filmmaker, Jim Becket.

Nov 8, 2022

Wouldn’t You Say? – What Do We Mean by “Community Rights?”

Lakota advocate and water protector Debra White Plume (Wioweya Najin Wina), upon being introduced to the history of municipal subjugation in the United States during a Democracy School hosted by residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, remarked that “municipalities are the white man’s reservations. The only difference is, we know we’re on reservations.”

Oct 31, 2022

Celebrating Victories in Europe and South America, the Rights of Nature Movement Plots Strategy in a Time of ‘Crises’

A global alliance formed in 2010 to advance an unorthodox legal theory that ecosystems and wild animals have rights, similar to humans. Now, says one leader, those ideas are “legitimate subjects of debate.”

Read More | News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature

Oct 28, 2022

CELDF Allies with the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature in Siena, Italy

The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN) gathered in Siena Italy at the 13th century monastery, Certosa di Pontignano, from October 15-18, and CELDF was there.

Read More | Events, News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature

Sep 29, 2022

The rights of nature movement cannot be stopped

By Pamela Haines September 27, 2022 From the Navajo Nation to a small town in Pennsylvania to Ecuador, then across the world, the idea of enshrining the rights of nature is only growing.

Read More | News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature

Sep 28, 2022

Happy Anniversary Rights of Pachamama Ecuador!

We at CELDF want to recognize and celebrate the 14-year anniversary of this historic date when the country of Ecuador codified Rights of Pachamama into their national Constitution.

Read More | News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature

Sep 15, 2022

Water Speaks to Ohio Department of Natural Resources

YES, the waters have a voice in this project….or at least they should.

Sep 13, 2022

Chile’s Rejection

How could Chileans, after rising up in October 2019 to demand a new constitution, then voting by an overwhelming majority to initiate the constituent process, reject the proposed draft? Why would they align with right-wing forces seeking to preserve the Pinochet constitution? This astonishing result surely demands a multi-causal explanation.

Sep 12, 2022

Wouldn’t You Say? – Nature is What’s Real

You wouldn’t think, in a rational society, that anyone would have to be told this, but reality doesn’t care what anybody believes is true; it just is. And what isn’t, isn’t.

Read More | Blogs, Issues, News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature

Sep 7, 2022

It’s Inevitable – More to Come in Chile

Despite the claims of the corporate-minded, rejection of the new constitution by the voters of Chile is not a repute of what the new constitution contained but one that shows the desperation of the powerful elite to hold on to their planetary destroying levels of greed and the lengths they will go to deny the inevitable.

Read More | News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature

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

Aug 21, 2022

Wouldn’t You Say? – Municipal Maze

Refuse to be complacent. Refuse to be complicit. Refuse to be irrelevant.

Aug 8, 2022

Local group joins effort to protect Ohio River Watershed

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 Grassroots

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 6, 2022

Truthout: Nature Isn’t a “Vault” Full of Material Value. It Is a Treasure to Be Valued.

CELDF’s Ben Price wrote this article, featured in Truthout, about a mining corporation’s scam plan, pushed as an environmentally friendly investment opportunity.

Read More | News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature

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 »

Mar 22, 2022

OHCRN 2022 Empowering Community Film Festival: Santiago Rising

Filmed during the weeks after protests began, Santiago Rising meets social movements, protesters, and ordinary people in their struggle for equality and human rights. The film charts the build-up to the historic vote, in October 2020, that saw Chileans vote for a new constitution to replace the one imposed during the brutal Pinochet dictatorship. Santiago Rising emphasizes… Read more »

Read More | Events, Issues, News, News from the Grassroots

Mar 22, 2022

Podcast with GrassRoot Ohio: Death by Democracy- Episode 2 – w/ Tish O’Dell

Carolyn Harding with Tish O’Dell, a powerful voice for justice in Ohio, the US, and Globally. Tish has been a Community Organizer for CELDF (Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund) since 2012 assisting residents to organize rights-based initiatives in their communities in order to help them “make real” the just and sustainable communities they envision for… Read more »

Mar 15, 2022

LEBOR like bill in New York seeks Rights of Nature for Great Lakes

New York State Assemblyman Patrick Burke, a 37-year-old Democrat from the Buffalo area, has introduced legislation “that will create a Great Lakes Bill of Rights with the goal of securing legal rights for the entire ecosystem and giving people and nature a role in the decision-making process regarding current and future projects that impact the… Read more »

Read More | News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature

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.

Mar 10, 2022

Andrea Bowers: Can the world mend in this body?

The Lake Erie Bill of Rights and CELDF are influencing Bower’s work on Rights of Nature.

Read More | News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature

Mar 1, 2022

Change That Matters by Jim Hightower | Creators Syndicate

Jim Hightower mentions CELDF in his publication on the growing Rights of Nature movement and the importance of protecting the health and survivability of ecosystems worldwide.

Glen’s Parallax Perspectives – Interview with Kai Huschke

Glen Anderson interviewed two experts — Kai Huschke and Elliott Moffett — who have savvy insights and practical experience working to protect environments and establish legal rights for nature.

Portrait of a water guardian – WT Interview with Tish O’Dell

What is the force that propels a woman forward in taking a courageous stand for water and the environment water creates?
Here is what Tish O’Dell told WATERTODAY Ohio.

Transnational Institute of Social Ecology 2021 Conference

Bookchin recognized that social ecology will advance the cause of social and environmental justice by activating communities on many fronts. Uniting parallel efforts can actualize social ecology’s goals.

Read More | Events, News from the Grassroots

Oct 7, 2021

Columbus Free Press: Beware the Brine

Members of OHCRN have called on Ohio’s Attorney General, Dave Yost, to open an investigation into the violation of Ohio law and the criminal actions of state officials and industry who were and are well aware that this brine is highly radioactive, yet still approve and allow it to be spread in Ohio communities.

Read More | Chemical Trespass, News from the Grassroots

Sep 23, 2021

Corporation Asks Nottingham, N.H. For Legal Fees After Suing Over Climate Ordinance

The Freedom From Chemical Trespass Rights-Based Ordinance asserted residents’ rights to a healthy climate and banned corporate activities that would interfere with those rights, punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 per day.

Sep 14, 2021

Newsletter: Pacific Northwest Updates

Invisible Hand, the rebirth of the WACRN, and updates from the West Coast.

Read More | Blogs, Community Wires, News, News from the Grassroots

Sep 13, 2021

Newsletter: Building a Movement in Pennsylvania

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 Grassroots

Sep 13, 2021

Corporation Demands $40,281.50 From Town For Passing Climate Ordinance

As climate change brings suffering across the globe, in New Hampshire Judge Martin Honigberg has sided with a local corporate actor who seeks financial retribution against the Town of Nottingham for the popular adoption of an ordinance recognizing a right of townspeople to a “climate system capable of sustaining human societies.” On September 1, 2021 the sole corporate actor, Brent Tweed, of G&F Goods, LLC submitted a $40,281.50 bill to the court for attorney fees.

Aug 24, 2021

Conversation: United Church of Christ Becomes First Mainline Church Body to Declare Earth has Rights

The General Synod of the United Church of Christ has become the first mainline Protestant body to publicly proclaim that nature has rights.

Jul 10, 2021

Legal Talk Network: Lawyer 2 Lawyer Podcast

Tune in to Legal Talk Networks Lawyer 2 Lawyer podcast featuring CELDF attorney, Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin. Listen as they discuss law and Nature and take a look at what rights we have to access Nature.

Read More | Issues, News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature

Jun 16, 2021

National TV: ‘The People vs. Agent Orange’ to Air on PBS Independent Lens June 28th

Tune in on Monday June 28, 2021 for the national airing of the award-winning film “The People vs. Agent Orange” on PBS’ Independent Lens!

Read More | Chemical Trespass, Events, Issues, News, News from the Grassroots

May 28, 2021

Podcast (Climate One): “Should Nature Have Rights?”

On May 28, 2021, CELDF’s Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin joined Rebecca Tsosie (constitutional and Indigenous law scholar of Yaqui descent and regents professor of law at the University of Arizona) and Carol Van Strum (Lincoln County Community Rights) on the nationally syndicated Climate One podcast.

Read More | News, News from the Grassroots

May 22, 2021

Common Dreams: Remembering Christopher D. Stone

Christopher Stone, the environmental scholar who championed fundamental rights of nature died at 83 on May 14, 2021. Stone was a legal scholar who argued in 1972 that trees, rivers, oceans and Nature itself possess fundamental legal rights, an argument that entered the bedrock of the modern environmental movement.

Read More | News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature

Apr 9, 2021

Columbus Free Press: Lawsuit To Protect Direct Democracy In Columbus During The Pandemic Dismissed By Court

A lawsuit seeking a temporary suspension of Columbus’ one-year petitioning time limit due to the pandemic was dismissed by the U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio on April 14, 2021. The lawsuit was filed in June 2020 by our group, Columbus Community Bill of Rights (CCBOR), arguing that the city’s time limit during the COVID-19 pandemic was unconstitutional and placed a severe burden on ballot access for our initiative, which sought to ban harms from the fracking industry within Columbus and it’s watershed area.

Read More | Democratic Rights, Issues, News, News from the Grassroots

Feb 4, 2021

Common Dreams: Biden’s Executive Order on Climate Crisis Exposes Need for Constitutional Change

Demands to abolish the Electoral College and restructure the U.S. Supreme Court can be pegged to substantive constitutional change. It’s the role of movements to demand and make changes to the “applicable law,” and its interpretation.

Read More | News, News from the Grassroots

Feb 1, 2021

New Book! ‘The World We Need: Highlights, Stories and Lessons From America’s Unsung Environmental Movement’

The World We Need offers a vivid look at the people protecting America’s communities against environmental degradation and racism. Their strategies for saving lives, protecting land, and creating opportunities provide a model for activists everywhere.

Announcing CELDF's Proposed Rights of Nature Principles

Sneak Peek! -- End of Year Newsletter 2022: We are Nature

Book: ‘Death by Democracy’

15 Questions that Are More Useful than “What New Regulation Should We Fight For?”

Wouldn’t You Say? – The Law Did not Save Grant Township’s Water, the People of Grant Did

Got Community Resistance?

Toledo voters approved a bill of rights for Lake Erie. A group wants the same for the Ohio River

The Myth of American Democracy: The Ruling Class Crusade Against Community & Nature

An Earth Day Presentation – No More Enviro-Mentalism: Earth Emancipation Now!

CELDF is seeking a Grant Writer | Job Opening

Wouldn’t You Say? – Materialism is Substance Abuse, Literally

Do No Harm: Protecting the Rights of Mangroves in Ecuador From Injury

Cleveland State trustees vote unanimously to strip John Marshall’s name from the college of law

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

Join the OHCRN: Virtual film screening and discussion of “The Seeds of Vandana Shiva”

Wouldn’t You Say? – What Do We Mean by “Community Rights?”

Celebrating Victories in Europe and South America, the Rights of Nature Movement Plots Strategy in a Time of ‘Crises’

CELDF Allies with the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature in Siena, Italy

The rights of nature movement cannot be stopped

Happy Anniversary Rights of Pachamama Ecuador!

Water Speaks to Ohio Department of Natural Resources

Chile’s Rejection

Wouldn’t You Say? – Nature is What’s Real

It’s Inevitable – More to Come in Chile

Why CELDF will be watching more than sports this Sunday

Wouldn’t You Say? – Municipal Maze

Local group joins effort to protect Ohio River Watershed

Wouldn’t You Say? – Community Self-Government

Wouldn’t You Say? – Property

Truthout: Nature Isn’t a “Vault” Full of Material Value. It Is a Treasure to Be Valued.

Wouldn’t You Say? – Personhood

OHCRN 2022 Empowering Community Film Festival: Santiago Rising

Podcast with GrassRoot Ohio: Death by Democracy- Episode 2 – w/ Tish O’Dell

LEBOR like bill in New York seeks Rights of Nature for Great Lakes

“New Normal” Needs a New Constitutional Amendment

Andrea Bowers: Can the world mend in this body?

Change That Matters by Jim Hightower | Creators Syndicate

Glen’s Parallax Perspectives – Interview with Kai Huschke

Portrait of a water guardian – WT Interview with Tish O’Dell

Transnational Institute of Social Ecology 2021 Conference

Columbus Free Press: Beware the Brine

Corporation Asks Nottingham, N.H. For Legal Fees After Suing Over Climate Ordinance

Newsletter: Pacific Northwest Updates

Newsletter: Building a Movement in Pennsylvania

Corporation Demands $40,281.50 From Town For Passing Climate Ordinance

Conversation: United Church of Christ Becomes First Mainline Church Body to Declare Earth has Rights

Legal Talk Network: Lawyer 2 Lawyer Podcast

National TV: ‘The People vs. Agent Orange’ to Air on PBS Independent Lens June 28th

Podcast (Climate One): “Should Nature Have Rights?”

Common Dreams: Remembering Christopher D. Stone

Columbus Free Press: Lawsuit To Protect Direct Democracy In Columbus During The Pandemic Dismissed By Court

Common Dreams: Biden’s Executive Order on Climate Crisis Exposes Need for Constitutional Change

New Book! ‘The World We Need: Highlights, Stories and Lessons From America’s Unsung Environmental Movement’

Support just, fair, and sustainable communities