News From the Community Rights Movement

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Apr 27, 2010

Mt. Shasta Community Water Rights Ordinance to Be put to Vote

Mt. Shasta Community Water Rights Ordinance to Be put to Vote

The Mount Shasta City Council voted unanimously Monday evening to order a special report on the Mt. Shasta Community Water Rights and Self-Governance Ordinance, which would prevent corporations from cloud seeding and bulk water extraction within Mount Shasta city limits.

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Apr 6, 2010

Press Release: Packer Township to enforce environmental standards the State says are too strong

Press Release: Packer Township to enforce environmental standards the State says are too strong

Municipality rejects State preemption

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Mar 31, 2010

The Bottom Line or Public Health: Tactics Corporations Use to Influence Health and Health Policy, and What We Can Do to Counter Them

The Bottom Line or Public Health: Tactics Corporations Use to Influence Health and Health Policy, and What We Can Do to Counter Them

CELDF’s Mari Margil authored a chapter entitled “A New Democracy in Action.”

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Feb 28, 2010

State Bar to Propose Reforms

State Bar to Propose Reforms

The Pennsylvania Bar Association joined the fray last week by announcing the formation of a review commission to offer recommendations on what sort of constitutional changes should be taken up.

Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots

Feb 28, 2010

Constitutional changes not imminent prospect

Constitutional changes not imminent prospect

The Pennsylvania Bar Association joined the fray last week by announcing the formation of a review commission to offer recommendations on what sort of constitutional changes should be taken up.

Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots

Feb 20, 2010

Press Release: Laying the Groundwork for a People’s Constitutional Convention Pennsylvania Community Rights Network Launched

Press Release: Laying the Groundwork for a People’s Constitutional Convention Pennsylvania Community Rights Network Launched

To organize a people’s convention of delegates, representing municipal communities, who will propose constitutional changes to secure the inalienable right to local, community self-government free of state and corporate preemption.

Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots

Jan 23, 2010

Blaine Township, PA takes on King Coal

Blaine Township, PA takes on King Coal

Small town takes on giant coal companies by applying local democracy to deny corporate “personhood.”

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Feb 28, 2009

Shapleigh, Maine, Residents Vote in Rights-Based Ordinance to Protect Their Water

Shapleigh, Maine, Residents Vote in Rights-Based Ordinance to Protect Their Water

At a special Town Meeting in February 2009, residents of Shapleigh, ME, voted to adopt an ordinance developed by CELDF to protect their water from corporate water withdrawals.

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Dec 3, 2008

Ben Price of CELDF and Shannon Biggs of Global Exchange present Rights-Based Ordinance to the People Against Chemical Trespass, Santa Cruz, CA

Ben Price of CELDF and Shannon Biggs of Global Exchange present Rights-Based Ordinance to the People Against Chemical Trespass, Santa Cruz, CA

We as citizens of our communities can assert our rights and adopt a law that forbids corporations and government agencies from poisoning our towns with their pesticides! Watch and listen how other communities succeeded in doing so.

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Sep 28, 2008

The New York Times: Ecuador Constitution Grants Rights to Nature

The New York Times: Ecuador Constitution Grants Rights to Nature

Ecuador makes history with the people’s adoption of a new Constitution recognizing the Rights of Nature to exist and flourish.

Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots

Sep 28, 2008

Press Release: Ecuador Approves New Constitution: Voters Approve Rights of Nature

Press Release: Ecuador Approves New Constitution: Voters Approve Rights of Nature

By an overwhelming margin, the people of Ecuador today voted for a new constitution that is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, or ecosystem rights.

Read More | Community Wires, Press Releases & Blogs, Success Story

Sep 2, 2008

Los Angeles Times: Ecology in Ecuador

Los Angeles Times: Ecology in Ecuador

Ecuador citizens are poised to vote on the adoption of the world’s first Constitution recognizing the Rights of Nature.

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Jul 29, 2007

Yes! Magazine: Communities Take Power: The Citizens of Barnstead, New Hampshire, Used Local Law to Keep Corporate Giants Out of Their Water

Yes! Magazine: Communities Take Power: The Citizens of Barnstead, New Hampshire, Used Local Law to Keep Corporate Giants Out of Their Water

Barnstead, NH, residents use community rights to make governing decisions and protect their water from corporations.

Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots, Success Story

Apr 6, 2006

Barnstead & Nottingham, NH, Live Up To Their State Constitution

Barnstead & Nottingham, NH, Live Up To Their State Constitution

The story of how two communities changed their thinking and their strategies, and became the first to adopt rights-based ordinances banning water privatization.

Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots

Mar 9, 2005

A Movement Diverted: How Corporations Neutralized Anti-Chain Store Campaigns Of the 1920s and 1930s

A Movement Diverted: How Corporations Neutralized Anti-Chain Store Campaigns Of the 1920s and 1930s

Early in the 20th Century, giant corporations like Woolworth’s, Sears Roebuck, J.C. Penney, Ligget, and A&P began forcing their chain stores into communities across the nation. The chains were unwelcome. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, people in towns from coast to coast banded together to stop this corporate invasion, only to be beaten back by corporations and the federal government.

Read More | Press Releases & Blogs

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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