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Newsletters
Jan 7, 2017
From North Dakota to Washington, D.C., people are gathering to protect water, air, and soil, and to make a stand for justice and equality. What’s next?
Read More | Press Releases & BlogsJan 6, 2017
Highland Township Supervisors in Highland, PA, abandon their efforts to illegitimately remove the Water Authority board. Highland residents are fighting to protect themselves from an injection well, while their Supervisors ally with the fracking industry.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsJan 5, 2017
Community Rights Lane County is the recipient of the Eugene Springfield Solidarity Network (ESSN) 2016 Community Service Award for their “faithful and dedicated service in the fight against injustice.” Congratulations!
Read More | Community Wires, Press Releases & Blogs, Success StoryJan 5, 2017
City Council in Lafayette, CO, advances a Climate Bill of Rights and Protections ordinance that legalizes nonviolent direct action to protect against oil and gas drilling.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsJan 4, 2017
Highland Township, PA, supervisors concede they don’t have the authority to remove the Township’s Water Authority Board after receiving a cease and desist letter. Supervisors have been harassing the Board as the community fights an injection well.
Read More | Community Wires, Press Releases & BlogsJan 3, 2017
CELDF’s Thomas Linzey discusses how people are able to protect and preserve the places they call home – especially when governments fail to do so.
Read More | News from the GrassrootsDec 29, 2016
Lafayette, CO, residents introduce a law codifying the right to a healthy climate, and protecting and enforcing that right through non-violent direct action.
Read More | Community Wires, Press Releases & BlogsDec 29, 2016
Community Bills of Rights are a tool to protect rights at the local level, such as Barnstead, NH’s prohibition on religious identification requirements, and Grant Township, PA’s, ban fracking activities to protect clean air and water.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsDec 27, 2016
The Paris Agreement will not stop climate change – most experts agree on that. What will? Only we, in our communities, can achieve the changes necessary to protect our communities and the planet.
Read More | Press Releases & BlogsDec 26, 2016
Coos County, OR, residents aim to transform their community through Community Rights, democratizing energy development and creating sustainability. They’re willing to challenge unjust laws to do so.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsDec 22, 2016
An Oberlin, OH, resident urges resistance to unjust laws forcing the Nexus pipeline into the City. It is a call for courage and to follow in the footsteps of prior rights-based movements, such as the Abolitionists, Suffragists, and Civil Rights Movement.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsDec 20, 2016
There is a corporate state crack down on communities governing themselves and taking action to protect future generations. The crack down is evidence that these communities’ strategies are working, and striking at the power wielded against people and nature.
Read More | Community Wires, Press Releases & BlogsDec 13, 2016
A review of Tree Media’s documentary on CELDF’s work in communities across the country: We the People 2.0 – The Second American Revolution.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsDec 11, 2016
Regardless of our political affiliations, the Supreme Court claims enormous power over our lives. How does this body of government have the authority to restrict rights of “we the people,” while expanding rights of corporations and property?
Read More | Press Releases & BlogsDec 9, 2016
The story of Waterville, OH, residents, taking their health and safety into their own hands, and banning Spectra Energy’s Nexus pipeline as a violation of rights.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots, Success StoryDec 6, 2016
A huge crowd of residents from Bowling Green and beyond gather to show their overwhelming support of City Council members to vote against an easement for the Nexus pipeline. Council did so unanimously.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots, Success StoryDec 6, 2016
The British are fighting to protect their communities from fracking, as we are in the U.S. We share a common history: the claimed rights of property exceed the rights of human and natural communities. People are fighting to change it.
Read More | Press Releases & BlogsDec 2, 2016
Ryan Talbott, an environmental lawyer, joins the Board of Directors of CELDF.
Read More | Press Releases & BlogsDec 1, 2016
What an amazing year – from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Hampshire, to Washington and Oregon, people are growing Community Rights and protecting their communities from corporate harms. Your support makes our work possible!
Read More | Press Releases & BlogsDec 1, 2016
It’s not just water that’s privatized and stripped from local control. Youngstown, OH’s education system has been seized from the public and put into private hands. What happens in Youngstown will happen to us. What are we going to do about it?
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsNov 29, 2016
We live in a corporatized police state. Violence to protect property and suppress people is condoned by the power elite. Rather than pleading for the system to reform itself, we must dismantle it and build anew.
Read More | Press Releases & BlogsNov 27, 2016
About 100 people attended a Bowling Green, OH, City Council meeting. Residents urged council members to refuse easement access to Spectra Energy for a pipeline to cut through the City, including members of OHCRN.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsNov 19, 2016
Upset with the Electoral College and disturbed by the implications of who was elected President? Let’s look a little deeper and see what’s really going on – and how our “democratic” system is doing exactly what it was engineered to do.
Read More | Press Releases & BlogsNov 18, 2016
The Nexus Pipeline threatens Medina County, OH, residents. Medina residents gather to watch We the People 2.0, a documentary about communities across the U.S. facing similar battles, and using Community Rights to fight back.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsNov 12, 2016
Trump ideology is poised to take over all three branches of government. And yet the fundamental and powerful principal of government’s purpose – to protect the health, safety, and welfare of we, the people – remains, and is realized through the right to local community self-government.
Read More | Press Releases & BlogsNov 8, 2016
Highland Township, PA, voters step up their fight to protect themselves from a frack wastewater injection well, adopting a rights-based Home Rule Charter banning the well, 55% to 45%.
Read More | Community Wires, Press Releases & Blogs, Success StoryNov 8, 2016
The might of the oil and gas industry and its allies were out in force, outspending residents enormously in today’s election to defeat the people’s Community Bill of Rights banning fracking. While the measure was defeated, the people are not.
Read More | Community Wires, Press Releases & BlogsNov 8, 2016
Waterville, OH, residents make clear the Nexus pipeline and compressor station will not cut through their community, overwhelmingly adopting a Community Bill of Rights Charter Amendment banning fracking related activities.
Read More | Community Wires, Press Releases & Blogs, Success StoryNov 7, 2016
As Highland Township, PA, residents prefer to vote on their rights-based Home Rule Charter to protect themselves against a frack wastewater injection well, Seneca Resources funds anti-Charter flyers to sway voters.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsNov 6, 2016
As the predictable self-destruction of this culture of deceit and greed proceeds and accelerates, CELDF’s recommendations for change will become less “far-fetched” and “absurd.” They will at last seem inevitable and unavoidable.
Read More | Press Releases & BlogsNov 4, 2016
In Colorado and Ohio, the oil and gas industry maneuvers to keep citizen initiatives threatening fracking off the ballot. In Colorado, the industry has advanced a measure to make future initiatives even more difficult for residents to move forward.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsOct 30, 2016
Simon Davis-Cohen reveals escalating efforts to quash We the People from exercising our right to initiative. From fracking and water protection, to minimum wage and police reform, the corporate state is cracking down.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsOct 25, 2016
While the Nexus pipeline has been re-routed, it’s simply sacrificing another community in Medina County, Ohio. Residents meet to learn what’s happening and what they can do about it.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsOct 23, 2016
In a letter-to-the-editor, Waterville resident urges support for the community’s rights-based initiative banning the Nexus pipeline and compressor station, and exercising their right to democratic self-government.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsOct 21, 2016
In Ohio and elsewhere, when democracy threatens the oil and gas industry, those occupying our legal and governing structures take liberty in interpreting the law on industry’s behalf. The result: democratic suppression and an open door to frack.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsOct 21, 2016
A Waterville, OH, residents speaks up on a compressor station: “If our political leaders will not protect our children, then we the people must pass our own law to protect Waterville.” Residents are voting on a Community Bill of Rights in November.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsOct 19, 2016
CELDF’s Tish O’Dell speaks up on American’s Workforce Radio regarding using Community Rights to create the environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable communities we envisions. Begins 44 minutes in.
Read More | Community WiresOct 16, 2016
Athens County, OH, residents issue a call to action for next steps in their work to protect against fracking activities. The Athens County Community Bill of Rights group held a fundraiser with guest speaker Tish O’Dell, from CELDF.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsOct 13, 2016
As growing numbers of communities adopt Community Bills of Rights recognizing the Rights of Nature, countries, the United Nations, and NGOs advance Rights of Nature as well. The human right to a healthy environment cannot be separated from rights of ecosystems.
Read More | News from the GrassrootsOct 13, 2016
An Elk County, PA, judge rules in favor of the Highland County Government Study Commission to intervene in a lawsuit filed by their own Supervisors to keep a Charter measure off the November ballot.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsOct 13, 2016
Highland Township Government Study Commission wins their motion to intervene in a lawsuit brought on by Township Supervisors determined to keep the Commission’s Charter off the November ballot. Residents are fighting a frack waste injection well, using their right to local self-government.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsOct 9, 2016
Youngstown, OH, voters will vote for a sixth time on a Community Bill of Rights banning fracking activities within the City. Residents promise to bring the measure forward again if it does not pass, because of the threat to local water sources and climate change.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsOct 7, 2016
Lincoln County, OR, residents qualify their Community Bill of Rights ordinance banning toxic aerial spraying for the May 2017 ballot.
Read More | Community Wires, Press Releases & BlogsOct 7, 2016
What is sustainable? Purported “green” and “renewables” are anything but – particularly when they’re run by a small number of corporations. Truly sustainable means truly renewable, and it means the people affected by energy governing decisions are the ones who make them.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsOct 7, 2016
As the corporate state continues to support fracking activities, the Ponka Nation vows to protect the land and people from harm using Rights of Nature and banning fracking waste injection wells.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsOct 5, 2016
Oil and gas industry threatens criminal lawsuits against local elected officials taking a stand to protect their communities’ health, safety, and welfare. In Grant Township, PA, Township Supervisors are undeterred, vowing to continue their fight to protect their water from frack waste.
Read More | Community Wires, Press Releases & BlogsOct 4, 2016
Recognizing the Rights of Nature in law is a growing strategy used by indigenous and non-indigenous communities across the U.S. and internationally to protect communities from environmental harm. The Ho-Chunk Nation is the first tribal nation to vote on amending their constitution with the Rights of Nature.
Read More | News from the Grassroots, Success StoryOct 4, 2016
As communities seek to protect themselves from toxic drilling, Pennsylvania industry group mulls statute to deter such ordinances.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsOct 3, 2016
Residents in Wilmington, PA, gathered to hear a panel discussion on fracking threats. Panelists included Grant Township Supervisor Stacy Long, describing tactics used by the gas industry to intimidate residents into accepting an injection well. Residents refuse to submit and are fighting back.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the GrassrootsSep 30, 2016
Lane County, OR, residents advancing Community Rights initiatives banning aerial pesticide spraying and GMOs face further efforts to block their measures from the ballot.
Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots