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
Dec 15, 2021
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.
Dec 14, 2021
The plaintiffs were able to introduce scientific studies that supported their claims that current government regulations would harm the forest ecosystem and sacred species.
Read More | Press ReleasesDec 14, 2021
Industrial gold mining has been shown to devastate local communities, including through the depletion of water tables and poisoning of water systems.
Read More | Press ReleasesNov 19, 2021
Justice continues to be denied in Oregon. Community rights efforts in Lane and Lincoln counties have, quite wrongly, found themselves mired in the Oregon court system on issues that should’ve been considered and resolved by the people of their respective counties.
Read More | BlogsNov 16, 2021
Community Rights Lane County educates and mobilizes citizens about their rights to local community self-governance. They believe decisions affecting communities must be made by community residents – the people directly impacted by these decisions and laws that authorize harmful corporate activities.
Read More | BlogsOct 11, 2021
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 GrassrootsOct 8, 2021
How Rights of Nature laws are transforming governance to address environmental crises through more ecologically sustainable approaches to development.
Read More | News, Publications, Rights of NatureOct 7, 2021
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 GrassrootsSep 23, 2021
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.
Read More | Community Rights, Extraction & Pollution, Issues, News from the Grassroots, Water PrivitizationSep 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 13, 2021
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.
Read More | Community Rights, News, News from the Grassroots, Press ReleasesSep 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 9, 2021
As we organize to make change while environmental and racial injustice run rampant, and as drought and a poisonous status quo threaten the conditions for life, identifying where to invest time and energy can be as complex as getting to know another human being. Nothing about forming relationships follows a straight line.
Read More | Blogs, Democratic Rights, NewsSep 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 StoryAug 17, 2021
The courts of the empire may rely on self-referential legalisms to declare that the original indigenous inhabitants never had legal claim to ownership of the land, or that the U.S. Constitution did not, at the time, recognize enslaved people as capable of owning anything, including their own lives and labor; hence nothing recognized as legal property was taken from them and no compensation is owed. Typical judicial gaslighting.
Read More | Blogs, NewsAug 10, 2021
Efforts by both female protagonists in ‘The People vs. Agent Orange’ film have been suppressed since the award winning documentary was released.
Read More | Chemical Trespass, News, Press ReleasesJul 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, NewsJul 26, 2021
Put another way, critical race theory illuminates our historical record despite centuries-long efforts to whitewash it. White nationalists present “alternative facts” conducing to a zero-sum society of white winners and nonwhite losers.
Read More | Blogs, Defunding Violence, NewsJul 15, 2021
The Court of Appeals of the State of Oregon issued a one-page decision in late June upholding a trial court decision overriding the will of voters and siding with corporate timber. The court has allowed for the continued use of aerially sprayed pesticides.
Read More | News, Press ReleasesJul 10, 2021
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 NatureJul 8, 2021
Petitioners in Reading, Pennsylvania have officially kicked off a campaign to amend the Reading City Charter to outlaw “toxic trespass,” the poisoning of people and the environment within the city. The ballot initiative is in response to unaddressed toxic waste and environmental racism in the post-industrial city.
Read More | Chemical Trespass, News, Press ReleasesJul 4, 2021
This guest submission was originally given as a graduation address on police reform. The author argues, our informed consent is what legitimizes government. And so it’s up to us to command all of our public servants, including cops. We the People must nullify the despotic doctrine so-called qualified immunity. The buck stops with every single citizen from their eighteenth birthday.
Read More | Blogs, Defunding Violence, Democratic Rights, News, UncategorizedJun 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, NewsJun 21, 2021
Under a 2002 law, introducing radioactive elements into Ohio drinking water is a felony offense.
Companies are violating this by spreading oil and gas waste ‘brine’ — proven by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to contain radioactive concentrations that exceed federal and state standards — in critical watersheds. So are state actors, residents assert.
Jun 16, 2021
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 GrassrootsJun 10, 2021
As global carbon dioxide concentrations hit their highest level in 4 million years, a New Hampshire Judge has rewarded a local corporate actor in Nottingham for opposing a democratically adopted ordinance, the Freedom from Chemical Trespass Ordinance, that recognized a right of townspeople to a “climate system capable of sustaining human societies.”
Read More | Chemical Trespass, News, Press ReleasesJun 9, 2021
Clara Township residents voted overwhelmingly to create a Home Rule Government Study Commission made up of seven elected Township residents.
Read More | News, Press ReleasesJun 3, 2021
Toledo residents in a lawsuit to enforce the Lake Erie Bill of Rights (LEBOR) filed a memorandum of opposition to the State of Ohio’s motion for summary judgment in their case. Last August, after the trial court granted the State of Ohio’s motion to dismiss, the plaintiffs presented oral arguments in the Ohio Sixth District Court of Appeals to enforce LEBOR.
Read More | Corporate Agriculture, Democratic Rights, News, Press Releases, Rights of NatureJun 1, 2021
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 »
Read More | Blogs, Community Rights, Corporate 'Rights', Democratic Rights, NewsMay 31, 2021
CELDF is honored to work in solidarity with a new French-speaking network to advance the Rights of Nature in Europe. The network includes Loire Parliament, Valentransition, A.R.B.R.E.S., id-eau, Notre Affaire à Tous and others. “We are now working to grow the network with other similar organizations and communities active in the defense of the ecosystems… Read more »
Read More | Blogs, Community Rights, News, Rights of NatureMay 28, 2021
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 GrassrootsMay 24, 2021
It will take many minds to birth a new legal and political paradigm. Engaging students and educators is critical. Toward that end, CELDF’s Chad Nicholson recently helped teach a short Rights of Nature seminar. Markie Miller presented at the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference and at the University of Toledo. Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin is heading up… Read more »
Read More | Blogs, Community Rights, News, Rights of NatureMay 22, 2021
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 NatureMay 21, 2021
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 »
Read More | Blogs, Chemical Trespass, Corporate 'Rights', Democratic Rights, Extraction & Pollution, NewsMay 21, 2021
In a small living room in one of the most economically neglected neighborhoods in the State of Washington emerged the work of Envision Spokane. A handful of local activists and residents asked themselves the question “why?” Why, after so many years of advocacy work on behalf of neighborhoods, renters, the houseless, small businesses, the uninsured,… Read more »
Read More | Blogs, News, Worker ExploitationMay 20, 2021
The new award-winning documentary “The People vs. Agent Orange” is now screening in theaters near you! The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund 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,… Read more »
Read More | Blogs, Chemical Trespass, Community Rights, Events, Issues, News, Uncategorized
