These Fast Facts are quick introductions to big ideas and concepts tackled by the Community Rights Movement! Check out our Fast Facts and find resources to more information to further your knowledge on the topics! See also Common Sense – our primer publication on local self-governance.
Rights of Nature
What does it mean for Nature to have Rights?
Community Rights
Community Rights work is a paradigm shift. It moves away from unsustainable practices that harm communities by moving towards local self-government. Community Rights include environmental, worker, and democratic rights as well as Rights of Nature.
Preemption
What’s the difference between floor and ceiling preemption? We take a look at “state interference with local democracy.”
Dillon’s Rule
The prevailing legal doctrine which states that municipalities only have the powers given to them explicitly by the state.
Box of Allowable Activism
How does a community lose it’s voice? See the four legal doctrines that keep us boxed in and prevent actual change from happening.
The Regulatory Fallacy
The permitting process, and the regulations supposedly enforced by regulatory agencies, are intended to create a sense of protection and objective oversight. By their very definition, regulatory agencies regulate the amount of harm that takes place. When they issue permits, they give cover to the applicant against liability to the community for the legalized harm.
Corporate Constitutional “Rights”
Corporate claimed “rights” are defined as the legal notion that corporate property has at least some of the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by persons. Despite not being natural persons, the Supreme Court has quietly afforded several protections under the constitution to corporations over several decades.
Eminent Domain
The power of a state providence or national government to take private property for public use. State legislators, members of congress, regulatory agencies, and the courts claim their hands are tied – but ours are not!
Chemical Trespass
People, communities, and Nature have a right to be healthy and thrive – to be free of chemical trespass.
Defund the Police
CELDF and partner attorneys are working towards structural municipal police change. Part of the process is breaking down difficult concepts and having difficult conversations.
Sewage Sludge
Sewage sludge (or biosolids, to use the technical name) is composed of human waste and toxic chemical compounds. Communities and nature have a right to exist without contamination from this substance.
Constitutional Amendment
Ever wonder what it would look like if we had the ability to stop the unwanted harms communities face? Establishing that next level of protections and creating a just system is in our hands.
Pipelines
Their violations go beyond destroyed earth. They pit neighbor against neighbor. They follow you home. They pay for overtime. They carry poison both inside and out.
Dormant Commerce Clause
Did you know that environmental laws regarding things like birds and forests can fall under the Commerce Clause? Or that the Dormant Commerce Clause stops states from refusing toxic waste brought in from elsewhere?