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Mar 15, 2023

Watch the video: “Water is Us”

Watch the video: “Water is Us”

“Water Is Us” was moderated by ORCRN’s board member and CELDF organizer Kai Huschke. Joining him was: On February 22nd the ORCRN’s Webinar Wednesday meandered through a variety of water topics, from current conditions of water access and water quality to how the law sees water, to the growth of rights of nature to protect and preserve water, to… Read more »

Read More | Community Rights, Events, Extraction & Pollution, Multimedia, Resource Links, Rights of Nature, Water Privitization

Aug 4, 2021

Rights of Nature Principles

Rights of Nature Principles

CELDF has been involved in establishing legal Rights for Nature in Western law for over two decades, from the beginning of this movement’s contemporary phase. We recognize that institutionalizing the Rights of Nature requires a cultural paradigm shift that challenges and changes our legal, social, and moral behavior. For life on Earth to survive, and… Read more »

Read More | Issues, Resource Links, Rights of Nature

Jul 29, 2021

Youth Declaration on the Rights of Nature and Future Generations

Youth Declaration on the Rights of Nature and Future Generations

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 Nature

Jul 7, 2020

Common Dreams: Corporations Are Suing Cities Across the USA

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 23, 2020

A Guide to Protesting and How to Support the Black Lives Matter Movement

A Guide to Protesting and How to Support the Black Lives Matter Movement

A quick guide on how to participate in ongoing BLM protests and support the Movement in an effective way.

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Apr 13, 2020

Podcast Interview: Grant Township Update on Political Misfits

Podcast Interview: Grant Township Update on Political Misfits

Pennsylvania organizer, Chad Nicholson, discusses the Rights of Nature victory in Grant Township despite the ongoing rollback of environmental protections across the country.

Read More | News from the Grassroots, Resource Links

Apr 2, 2020

Rolling Stone: Nature Scores a Big Win Against Fracking in a Small Pennsylvania Town

Rolling Stone: Nature Scores a Big Win Against Fracking in a Small Pennsylvania Town

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 Story

Mar 21, 2020

Dear Mike DeWine: A Letter on Ohioan’s Constitutional Rights and Public Health

Dear Mike DeWine: A Letter on Ohioan’s Constitutional Rights and Public Health

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 Links

Feb 6, 2020

Rights of Nature: Ohio Organizer Tish O’Dell on Top of Mind with Julie Rose

Rights of Nature: Ohio Organizer Tish O’Dell on Top of Mind with Julie Rose

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 Nature

Feb 5, 2020

VIDEO: ‘The Transformation from Reformist to Revolutionary’

VIDEO: ‘The Transformation from Reformist to Revolutionary’

This 6 minute short explains how, across numerous social issues—from housing, worker rights, environmental protection to gentrification—“the people in the community lack the legal authority to determine their own future, a basic tenet of democracy.”

Read More | Blogs, Community Rights, Multimedia, News from the Grassroots, Resource Links, Resources

Aug 31, 2015

Corporations and Natural Rights By Charles A. Beard

Corporations and Natural Rights By Charles A. Beard

Chapter I, from “Jefferson, Corporations and the Constitution” originally published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, 1936

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Aug 30, 2015

Tom Paine on Corporate Charters

Tom Paine on Corporate Charters

I answer not to falsehood or abuse, but proceed to the defects of the English Government. I begin with charters and corporations.

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Aug 28, 2015

The Strings that Control the Public Mind

The Strings that Control the Public Mind

How Public Relations Sold Sewage Disposal as Agricultural Recycling

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Aug 30, 1930

Centralization and Popular Control, From: The Growth and Decadence of Constitutional Government, by J. Allen Smith, 1930

Centralization and Popular Control, From: The Growth and Decadence of Constitutional Government, by J. Allen Smith, 1930

The attitude of the well-to-do classes toward local self-government was profoundly influenced by the extension of the suffrage…the removal of property qualifications tended to divest the old ruling class of its control in local affairs.

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Jan 1, 1925

Excerpt from “The Confessions of a Reformer,” written in 1925 by Richard C. Howe

Excerpt from “The Confessions of a Reformer,” written in 1925 by Richard C. Howe

My text-book government had to be discarded; my worship of the Constitution scrapped. The state that I had believed in with religious fervor was gone. Like the anthropomorphic God of my childhood, it had never existed. But crashing beliefs cleared the air. I saw that democracy had not failed; it had never been tried.

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