COMMUNITY ISSUES

At CELDF, we’ve often felt the tension between focusing around “single issues” vs. the structure as a whole. The issues matter — but so too does dealing with the structure that underlies, causes, or influences each of the single issues we see in our communities. The system is addressed elsewhere in this categorization structure; here, we look at how community issues can be approached differently than what the dominant system has designed, whether it be about food, education, housing, or policing. There is also information and guidance regarding our reliance on energy and what the future could hold if we frame the energy question differently than how the dominant system has.

Food production/access/distribution – In most of the United States, grocery stores have about 3 days worth of food. That means if the supply chain stops, your ability to feed yourself is in serious jeopardy. Even beyond fragility, the industrial food supply chain is polluting, unhealthy, and unsustainable. The problems with the dominant food system are complex, deadly, and disconnected from the local. Food is not only vital, it has the power to build community like nothing else. The need for localizing food is essential for true community resistance + resilience.
Healthcare – We have largely given our health over to so-called experts and institutions with more allegiance to profit than to prevention. Healthcare access is also determined by wealth. Building alternatives to the industrial medical system where the individual matters and community is central is essential. What are the approaches for caring for our health that don’t drive us into debt and sicken the environment that we are not separate from but a part of?
Education – States like Texas hold tremendous sway over what goes into school textbooks. Corporations endow major universities to train a compliant workforce and assert power over what students get exposed to. Teaching to the test has replaced critical thinking. Even the federal government has weaponized what is deemed appropriate learning material. Whether through formal institutions or alternative means, control over how you and members of your community are educated is not something that can just be left to others to decide.
Energy: Sustainable Energy – For most people in wealthy nations, the thought of not having energy is akin to not having oxygen. Power heats our homes, propels our cars, keeps our food refrigerated, and produces the stuff we buy. But due to the climate crisis, more and more people see the need to stop burning fossil fuels. The leading alternatives are wind, solar, and nuclear power. What we wonder, and perhaps you as well, is how can we live with less? Is what is being proposed actually sustainable? How democratic is the new energy future? How can we move beyond the endless drive for “more?”
Policing: Security and Safety – The color and designs of police department shields, the ones you see on the doors of police cars, varies from community to community. But one of the things you will see nearly everywhere is the phrase “Protect and Serve”. Communities who have been subjected to police violence wonder: who is being protected? Who is being served? Understanding how police forces came to be, how they function, and what alternatives exist to the status quo broadens the question of what justice looks like. Safety and security is a human need. So how can this need be met? How can communities protect themselves and keep each other safe in a way that meets the actual needs of the people vs. the powerful few?
Planning and Development – The term “highest and best use” is the legal and social rationalization for development for development sake. In places where this has been allowed you hear people talk about overdevelopment and loss of quality of life. Until community needs, rather than market forces, are the driving agent of the pace and purpose of development, our ecological, quality of life, and cost of living crises will only accelerate. It’s people, in the places they live, who will be tasked with changing the current dynamic for the sake of themselves, future generations, and the natural environment that provides for all those communities.
Environmental and Rights of Nature – The wake up call from Mother Nature has been ringing for decades. Yet despite this, humans have yet to cohesively and comprehensively change direction. Without an embodiment of living from, living in, living with, and living as nature, the human species and tens of thousands of others have a shaky future — at best. A powerful step towards setting things on the right path is the global push for rights of nature. CELDF wrote and organized for the passage of the first rights of nature law in any westernized legal system in the world back in 2006. Over the last 20 years, a lot has changed with rights of nature – much for the good, some for the bad. We’re here to assist communities, organizers, and groups who want to pursue rights of nature approaches.