News From the Community Rights Movement

May 27, 2025

“Can You Handle the Truth?” New Book Features Voices of Dissent and Radical Solutions

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is proud to announce the publication of “Can You Handle the Truth? Essays of Hard Truths Aimed at Right-relationships with the Earth and Each Other.”

Read More | Press Releases, Publications

May 26, 2025

CELDF now on Substack: Truth, Reckoning, and Right Relationship

Announcing Truth and Reckoning on Substack, a project of the CELDF. We will be featuring long-form articles, audio, and video podcasts on resistance + resilience in collaboration with people across the United States, working to protect natural ecosystems and human communities from the impacts of corporate greed.

CELDF’s Newest Publication – Can You Handle the Truth? Introductory Pre-order Prices for the E-book and Paperback

Can You Handle the Truth? – Essays of Hard Truths Aimed at Right Relationship with Earth and Each Other

From Standing Rock to the Endangered Species Act: Why the Environmental Movement Can’t Afford More “Victories” That Will Utterly Undo Us

The Endangered Species Act is almost 52 years old now and it is largely ineffectual at actually protecting endangered species. According to a 2016 study published by the Ecological Society of America, “less than 2 percent of all species that have ever been listed (formally protected by the [Endangered Species Act] as endangered or threatened) have recovered to the point where they qualified for delisting.”

Counter Punch: CELDF and the Rights of Nature

There is a critical need for a movement to recognize nature as a legal entity with rights. Just as human rights are enshrined in law to protect individuals, the rights of the natural world also need to be legally acknowledged.

Read More | Rights of Nature

May 12, 2025

“A Slap in the Face” — Rights of Nature Advocates Silenced at the United Nations

Dozens of activists for the rights of nature who traveled to the United Nations to participate in a high-level meeting were unexpectedly barred from speaking on April 22nd, Earth Day, due to a supposed “security breach.”

Read More | Press Releases, Rights of Nature

May 6, 2025

Lake Erie is Talking but We Aren’t Listening

Regional environmental leader Tish O’Dell spoke to Cleveland State students about the legal system’s failure to protect nature and the urgent need for cultural change.

Read More | Events, Multimedia, News, Rights of Nature

Apr 26, 2025

Rolling Stone: The Environment Is Under Attack. The Rights of Nature Movement Can Save It

Grant Township’s 2014 Rights of Nature law became the first such piece of legislation to be enforced by a state, with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) citing it in rescinding a fracking waste injection permit.

Read More | Rights of Nature

Apr 23, 2025

“A Bright Spot Amidst the Chaos” – From New York to Minnesota, the Rights of Nature are Growing

Today, April 22nd (Earth Day), advocates for the New York bill have been invited to the United Nations to address a high-level meeting on harmony with nature.

Read More | Press Releases, Rights of Nature

Apr 22, 2025

Salon: Take back the night – Establishing a “right to darkness” could save our night skies

Voluntary standards for light pollution, like voluntary standards for much else where profit and community or ecosystem well-being might be at odds, have a habit of failing to meet the need, of being inconsistently applied, and of simply being ignored.

Interview on the Great Lakes and NY State Waters Bill of Rights: Does Nature Have Rights?

This interview was conducted by the Environmental Coffeehouse welcoming Ben Price, CELDF Education Director & Tish O’Dell, Consulting Director of Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) who are working with Max Wilbert, Publicist for CELDF on the NYS Assembly Bill AO5156A, the Great Lakes and State Waters Bill of Rights, which is currently IN the… Read more »

Read More | Multimedia, Rights of Nature

Apr 9, 2025

Project Censored: Conversations on Environmental Justice, Abolition, and the Future We Build

In the first part of the program, author and Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund’s education director Ben Price joins the program to talk about his new book, Wouldn’t You Say, A Collection of Essays on Environment and Community. In the book and in our conversation, Ben explains that what we’re seeing today is not a perversion… Read more »

Read More | Multimedia, Publications, Rights of Nature

Mar 20, 2025

Common Dreams: New Bill to Recognize Legal Rights of All Water Bodies in New York State

“Great Lakes and State Waters Bill of Rights” introduced in New York State Assembly BUFFALO – What if bodies of water were guaranteed the kinds of legal rights that would criminalize their destruction? What if communities had the authority to enact laws that prevented pollution, extraction, and waste-dumping? This would be the case under a new… Read more »

Read More | Press Releases, Rights of Nature

Dec 23, 2024

New Book Reflects on 30 Years of Activism for Community and Nature’s Rights

Author, Ben Price, was interviewed on the Project Censored Show by Eleanor Goldfield about his new book, Wouldn’t You Say, A Collection of Essays on Environment and Community. In the book and in their conversation, Ben explains that what we’re seeing today is not a perversion of the promise of America, it’s actually a proof of… Read more »

Read More | Press Releases, Publications

Dec 11, 2024

2024 Year-end Newsletter: Living in Nature

We hope you enjoy the articles, factoids, features, and spotlights of the people who make CELDF the powerhouse that it is through our 2024 End-of-Year Newsletter.

CELDF’s 2024 “Vote for the People!” Update Report

Summer is fading away. School is back in full swing. Electoral politics are in full volume. And, 2024 is fast approaching its end. CELDF’s 2024 “Vote for the People!” Update Report is meant to be a reminder of what it will take for deep systems change, who the real change-makers are, and the value and effectiveness that… Read more »

Order Your Copy Today of CELDF’s New Publication – Wouldn’t You Say?

The essays in Wouldn’t You Say? ask challenging questions about modern society, our relationship to each other, and to the natural world. Order Your Copy Today!

Read More | News from the Grassroots, Publications

Sep 17, 2024

Tribal Sovereignty, White Man’s Reservations, and the Need for Tribal-Municipal Solidarity To Protect Our Collective Future

Feature photo by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash Opposing harmful industrial projects – like mines, aerial pesticide spraying, factory farms, or toxic waste disposal facilities – is scary and difficult work. Feeling this fear and confronting the difficulty of the work, it is tempting to cling to false, but comforting beliefs that the communities we belong to… Read more »

The Killing of Lake Erie and Discovering Right Relationship Ten Years Later

On August 2, 2014, Toledo residents awoke to government alerts to not drink, bathe, use or touch the water coming out of their taps. The water could make adult humans very sick and even worse for babies, children, and anyone with compromised immune systems. Fish, animals, and plants weren’t even considered. What was clear though,… Read more »

CELDF Response to “Can granting legal ‘personhood’ to nature stem biodiversity loss?” by Viktoria Kahui

The prospect of liability introduced by conferral of personhood status monetizes the relationship between humans and the rest of nature.

May 28, 2024

Should Rivers & Trees Have Rights?

On May 20, 2024, Rockland Sierra Club, Lower Hudson Group and ROAR (Religious Orders Along the River) hosted this conversation titled: SHOULD RIVERS AND TREES HAVE LEGAL RIGHTS? A new movement is growing around the rights of nature, arguing that rivers, lakes, and forests should have legal rights for themselves, not for their value to… Read more »

Amicus Brief in support of Athens Plastic Bag Ban

Feature photo by Brian Yurasits FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 7, 2024 Contact: Tish O’Dell tish@celdf.org 440-552-6774 Terry Lodge, Attorney CELDF tjlodge50@yahoo.com 419-205-7084 Athens Local Businesses Support Rights of Nature and the City’s Plastic Bag Ban in Amicus Curiae OHIO, Athens County – CELDF has filed an amicus brief in Athens County, Ohio Common Pleas Court… Read more »

Wouldn’t You Say? – Paid Speech Isn’t Freedom of Speech

Feature photo by Christine Roy Like Junk Mail, Junk Speech is Trash Talk Freedom of speech isn’t what it used to be. Toward the end of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st, its definition was changed in two unprecedented rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court. Today, what’s called free speech has… Read more »

May 7, 2024

The Great Salt Lake is Disappearing… So Utah Bans Rights of Nature.

The Great Salt Lake. Image by Erin Testone. A growing number of American jurisdictions are outlawing Right of Nature as we embark on the greatest rates of extinctions in our planetary history. In this essay, Will Falk, encourages Rights of Nature advocates to recognize that we cannot wait for courts and governments to enforce Rights… Read more »

Apr 29, 2024

CELDF Co-sponsoring Justin Nobel’s Musical Book Tour: Petroleum-238

Book cover design by Sabrina Bedford, cover photo by Julie Dermansky Thursday, May 16 from 2-3:30 pm at moCa Cleveland in Cleveland, OH CELDF and moCa Cleveland invite you to this Cleveland stop on author and journalist Justin Nobel’s Book Tour of his just-published book Petroleum-238 on the dangers to all of us and nature from the… Read more »

Read More | Events, Extraction & Pollution, Rights of Nature

Mar 27, 2024

AM I AN ACTIVIST?

Testimony of a Community Organizer CELDF’s Consulting Director, Tish O’Dell, submitted her testimony, “Am I an Activist?” to the 2024 Spring Activism Peace Chronicle publication. Tish has been involved in community rights and Rights of Nature work starting in her own community of Broadview Heights, Ohio, which led to the adoption of Ohio’s first Home… Read more »

Feb 2, 2024

Changing Culture, Changing Law through Art – Andrea Bowers and CELDF: Exist, Flourish, Evolve

Developed through an ongoing partnership with CELDF Exist, Flourish, Evolve is a new, multi-site, multimedia campaign that builds awareness and action around the dangers facing Lake Erie and the Great Lakes ecosystem.

Read More | Press Releases, Rights of Nature

Jan 17, 2024

International Rights of Nature Tribunal rules impacts caused by current forestry model as ecocide

Press release · 11th Local Rights of Nature Tribunal Biobío, Concepción, Chile International Rights of Nature Tribunal rules impacts caused by current forestry model as ecocide The International Rights of Nature Tribunal held its 11th Local Tribunal in the Biobío region in Chile on Friday, January 12, focusing its attention on the violations of the Rights of… Read more »

Read More | News, Press Releases, Rights of Nature

Jan 16, 2024

Raising Awareness through art – Andrea Bowers: Exist, Flourish, Evolve

The “Exist, Flourish, Evolve” art show will be held at The Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art and will focus on Rights of Nature and the Great Lakes in particular.

Happy Holidays from CELDF – Time is of the Essence!

THANK YOU for being part of CELDF’s work for People and Nature.

Read More | Multimedia, Newsletters, Resources

Dec 8, 2023

Reckoning with the truth to get in right relationship with the Great Lakes

Law and culture. Culture and law. Which comes first, and how are they related? CELDF and partners hosted Truth, Reckoning, and Right Relationship with the Great Lakes in the fall of 2023 to wrestle with these questions. This impactful compilation video of that full-day gathering reflects a range of truths from doctors, lawyers, indigenous activists,… Read more »

2023 Year-end Newsletter: Living with Nature

FREE Gifts with tax-deductible year-end donations of $100 or more.

Sneak Peek! — 2023 Year-end Newsletter: Living with Nature

Your efforts to be resilient and resist a system that wants to dominate Nature are critical to the changes we need.

Read More | Rights of Nature

Nov 14, 2023

Wouldn’t you say? – Three Beliefs That Doom Western Society

We are neither separate from nor superior to, but rather part of and utterly dependent upon the non-human world around us, inside and out. Wouldn’t you say?

CELDF is seeking a Donor Relations Coordinator | Job Opening

We need you to help us partner with others in fostering a culture and governing system that is all about community-based governing authority in the name of right relationship with Nature. We invite you to apply today!

Truth, Reckoning & Right Relationship

On October 16, 2023 CELDF hosted Part 1 of Truth, Reckoning & Right Relationship for the Great Lakes, Nature, and each other at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Set on the shoreline of Lake Erie, over 70 invited guests were witness to Part 1: Truth and Reckoning of a two-part… Read more »

CELDF’s Kai Huschke presents: Legalized Chemical Warfare – Community Resistance and Resilience to Protect the Future

In 2017 voters of Lincoln County adopted a community rights law banning aerial spray of pesticides by the corporate timber industry. CELDF was involved in assisting in the drafting of the law along with supporting the effort to get it adopted. In 2019 the courts, at the behest of the timber industry, overturned that law leaving public health and… Read more »

Sep 18, 2023

Industrial Society Needs Cultural Transformation to Embrace Rights of Nature

That Begins with the Stories we Tell . . . CELDF’s Education Director, Ben G. Price, is a pioneer in establishing the legal Rights of Nature. He organized the first community on Earth to enact a Rights of Nature law (Tamaqua, PA, 2006). In 2019 he shared what he had learned from nearly two decades… Read more »

Read More | Publications, Rights of Nature

Sep 1, 2023

Beaver Creek Press Release

100% of the water from the Seal Rock Water District (SRWD) comes from Beaver Creek.

Sep 1, 2023

CELDF is seeking a Multimedia Specialist|Job Opening

CELDF is in need of a multimedia specialist who can generate content in a variety of formats and of varying levels of complexity.

Trust the Children, Not the System

Featured photo: The plaintiffs in Held v. State of Montana walking and chatting outside the courthouse. (Photo: Robin Loznak) It will take an extended commitment to community organizing to expand the Held ruling into tangible relief as a vital state constitutional protection for nature. The 16 child plaintiffs in Held v. State of Montana, the Children’s… Read more »

Aug 17, 2023

Wouldn’t You Say? – When Democracy is Privatized

The centuries-long Enclosure (privatization) Movement in the U. S. is nearing completion.

Aug 16, 2023

Catch this live interview with CELDF’s Kai Huschke, on August 17th at 7pm PDT

CELDF’s Executive Director Kai Huschke will be on “Corporations and Democracy”, a program of public radio station KZYX. He will be discussing the growing attacks on the citizen initiatives process, the expanse of corporate power in our everyday lives, and CELDF’s upcoming California talks – American Delusion. Catch the interview live at 7pm PDT on KZYX. ** If you didn’t catch… Read more »

Unmuting Rights of Nature

“In our history, humans were owned at one point. That is the position Nature is currently in.”

Read More | Rights of Nature

Jul 31, 2023

Local Governments Are Blocking Ballot Initiatives at the Behest of Corporations

Feature photo by Paul Vernon AFP via Getty Images In 1979, the children’s educational television series Schoolhouse Rock! broadcast a now-classic episode titled “Three Ring Government” about the three branches of the U.S. government — executive, legislative and judicial. “No one part can be more powerful than the other,” proclaimed the narrator, who explains that our system of government… Read more »

Jul 25, 2023

Wouldn’t You Say? – Ignorance as License

Anti-intellectualism is as American as hot dogs.

Jul 24, 2023

Conversations on Culture, Corporate Power, and the Constitution coming to California in August!

Date/Time/Location: August 21st, 7pm, TBD Los Angeles + August 23rd, 7pm

New Moon Mycology Summit 2023

August 9-13, 2023 in Wheelock, VT On August 10th, CELDF’s Michelle Sanborn will be presenting at the New Moon Mycology Summit on the Rights of Nature. The New Moon Mycology Summit is a gathering for communal learning around environmental + social justice through the lens of fungi. With 50+ presenters from various fields, this multi-day outdoor… Read more »

How Do We Speak for the Trees When Our Human Right to Free Speech is Cut Down?

In our legal system, one is either a legal subject (humans and corporations) or a legal object (nature)

Jul 7, 2023

15 Questions that Are More Useful than “What New Regulation Should We Fight For?”

Difficult as it may be, we’d all be better off focusing on how to change the legal system itself instead of pleading for stricter regulations.

2024 Year-end Newsletter: Living in Nature

Order Your Copy Today of CELDF's New Publication - Wouldn't You Say?

CELDF's Proposed Rights of Nature Principles

“Can You Handle the Truth?” New Book Features Voices of Dissent and Radical Solutions

CELDF now on Substack: Truth, Reckoning, and Right Relationship

CELDF’s Newest Publication – Can You Handle the Truth? Introductory Pre-order Prices for the E-book and Paperback

From Standing Rock to the Endangered Species Act: Why the Environmental Movement Can’t Afford More “Victories” That Will Utterly Undo Us

Counter Punch: CELDF and the Rights of Nature

“A Slap in the Face” — Rights of Nature Advocates Silenced at the United Nations

Lake Erie is Talking but We Aren’t Listening

Rolling Stone: The Environment Is Under Attack. The Rights of Nature Movement Can Save It

“A Bright Spot Amidst the Chaos” – From New York to Minnesota, the Rights of Nature are Growing

Salon: Take back the night – Establishing a “right to darkness” could save our night skies

Interview on the Great Lakes and NY State Waters Bill of Rights: Does Nature Have Rights?

Project Censored: Conversations on Environmental Justice, Abolition, and the Future We Build

Common Dreams: New Bill to Recognize Legal Rights of All Water Bodies in New York State

New Book Reflects on 30 Years of Activism for Community and Nature’s Rights

2024 Year-end Newsletter: Living in Nature

CELDF’s 2024 “Vote for the People!” Update Report

Order Your Copy Today of CELDF’s New Publication – Wouldn’t You Say?

Tribal Sovereignty, White Man’s Reservations, and the Need for Tribal-Municipal Solidarity To Protect Our Collective Future

The Killing of Lake Erie and Discovering Right Relationship Ten Years Later

CELDF Response to “Can granting legal ‘personhood’ to nature stem biodiversity loss?” by Viktoria Kahui

Should Rivers & Trees Have Rights?

Amicus Brief in support of Athens Plastic Bag Ban

Wouldn’t You Say? – Paid Speech Isn’t Freedom of Speech

The Great Salt Lake is Disappearing… So Utah Bans Rights of Nature.

CELDF Co-sponsoring Justin Nobel’s Musical Book Tour: Petroleum-238

AM I AN ACTIVIST?

Changing Culture, Changing Law through Art – Andrea Bowers and CELDF: Exist, Flourish, Evolve

International Rights of Nature Tribunal rules impacts caused by current forestry model as ecocide

Raising Awareness through art – Andrea Bowers: Exist, Flourish, Evolve

Happy Holidays from CELDF – Time is of the Essence!

Reckoning with the truth to get in right relationship with the Great Lakes

2023 Year-end Newsletter: Living with Nature

Sneak Peek! — 2023 Year-end Newsletter: Living with Nature

Wouldn’t you say? – Three Beliefs That Doom Western Society

CELDF is seeking a Donor Relations Coordinator | Job Opening

Truth, Reckoning & Right Relationship

CELDF’s Kai Huschke presents: Legalized Chemical Warfare – Community Resistance and Resilience to Protect the Future

Industrial Society Needs Cultural Transformation to Embrace Rights of Nature

Beaver Creek Press Release

CELDF is seeking a Multimedia Specialist|Job Opening

Trust the Children, Not the System

Wouldn’t You Say? – When Democracy is Privatized

Catch this live interview with CELDF’s Kai Huschke, on August 17th at 7pm PDT

Unmuting Rights of Nature

Local Governments Are Blocking Ballot Initiatives at the Behest of Corporations

Wouldn’t You Say? – Ignorance as License

Conversations on Culture, Corporate Power, and the Constitution coming to California in August!

New Moon Mycology Summit 2023

How Do We Speak for the Trees When Our Human Right to Free Speech is Cut Down?

15 Questions that Are More Useful than “What New Regulation Should We Fight For?”

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