Announcing CELDF's Proposed Rights of Nature Principles
A new system of law based on respect for Nature and the…
Issues, News, Resources, Rights of Nature
Important Updates
A new system of law based on respect for Nature and the…
Issues, News, Resources, Rights of Nature
Human and ecosystem viability come when we figure out how to orient…
News, Rights of Nature
Protecting Water and Life: Frontline Stories from Ohioans fighting corporate and state…
Publications
Jan 25, 2023
The Yamhill County Raging Grannies are sponsoring and online virtual Democracy School. Democracy School is made up of 4 sessions. Please plan to attend each of them. The dates of the sessions are as follows: $40 registration fee Direct questions to Joni Zimmerman at raginggranniesyc@gmail.com.
Read More | Events, UncategorizedSep 17, 2020
Register today for this virtual Democracy School in the Colorado area!
Read More | UncategorizedAug 4, 2015
Democracy school – Igniting a Rights Movement for Communities and Nature – is our flagship education program and a key piece of our community organizing. Our educational initiative explores the limits of conventional regulatory organizing and offers a new organizing model that helps citizens confront the usurpation by corporations of the rights of communities, people,… Read more »
Read More |Mar 19, 2014
Democracy School in Selingsrove, PA, in February 2014, revealed for particpants the structure of law we live under that keeps us from getting what we want in our communities – and offered what we can do about it.
Read More | UncategorizedDec 22, 2010
http://youtu.be/Eb2sMhhc1gM
Read More | UncategorizedFeb 3, 2020
Financial and environmental crises call for more democracy – not less. Yet we see these crises used by U.S. and state governments to suspend democracy. It’s time to stop it.
Read More | Press Releases & BlogsDec 11, 2016
Regardless of our political affiliations, the Supreme Court claims enormous power over our lives. How does this body of government have the authority to restrict rights of “we the people,” while expanding rights of corporations and property?
Read More | Press Releases & BlogsNov 8, 2022
Lakota advocate and water protector Debra White Plume (Wioweya Najin Wina), upon being introduced to the history of municipal subjugation in the United States during a Democracy School hosted by residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, remarked that “municipalities are the white man’s reservations. The only difference is, we know we’re on reservations.”
Read More | Blogs, Community Rights, Democratic Rights, News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureAug 4, 2015
Through this website, our Democracy Schools and other trainings, and our organizing and legal work, CELDF is sharing the stories of how government and corporate interests are together protecting and perpetuating a legal and governing system that advances the interests of the few over the many. We are also sharing how a new movement is forming, to change this system, and how you can become involved.
Read More |Sep 1, 2014
In 2007, after a series of Democracy Schools held in Spokane, Washington, a group of citizens led by local school teacher Brad Read built a coalition to support a Community Bill of Rights for City residents.
Read More | Community WiresSep 25, 2013
Ohio communities ban fracking, CELDF in Australia and new Democracy schools starting up.
Read More | UncategorizedDec 21, 2010
When is a Repeal not a Repeal – A look at Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and other acts of Congress, and a sneak peak at Democracy School … Listen to CELDF on the Radio – “Democracy Matters” Podcast
Read More | UncategorizedDec 5, 2010
Apr 17, 2023
“We began to understand through this process that we are not only connected to the Ohio River, but that we are part of the ecosystem,” stated Jim Schenk of CROW.
Read More | Press ReleasesFeb 28, 2023
Rights of Nature Panel Discussion: Tuesday, March 21, 2023 from 6:30pm – 8:30pm PST
Read More | Events, Rights of NatureDec 15, 2021
What is the force that propels a woman forward in taking a courageous stand for water and the environment water creates?
Here is what Tish O’Dell told WATERTODAY Ohio.
Sep 14, 2021
Invisible Hand, the rebirth of the WACRN, and updates from the West Coast.
Read More | Blogs, Community Wires, News, News from the GrassrootsMay 30, 2021
Why do we rarely win against corporations targeting our communities? How did we get to this place? SIMPLE.Corporations – and their allies – have been busy manufacturing a structure of law over the last 150 years that insulates them from community control. What will it take to change the current reality to deal with the issues… Read more »
Read More | EventsFeb 28, 2021
A new democratic structure will empower collaboration and expansion CELDF just celebrated its 25th birthday. Now, we’re investing in the next 25 years. For decades, our staff have spearheaded issues few others would touch. CELDF was years ahead of the curve on Rights of Nature and a structural demand for local community self-determination to counteract… Read more »
Read More | Blogs, Democratic Rights, News, Success StoryJan 1, 2021
There is a lot we can do from home. Here are a few ideas. Organize an Online Democracy School CELDF now offers a virtual version of its Democracy School. The four modules educate the public about rights-based organizing, inform participants about how the system under which we currently live undermines traditional activism, and introduce strategies… Read more »
Read More | UncategorizedSep 1, 2017
In October 2017, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), with its International Center for the Rights of Nature, partnered with Tulane Law School to host the Rights of Nature Symposium: Driving Rights of Nature into Law – Opportunities, Risks, and Obstacles. The Symposium brought together key leaders in the Rights of Nature movement –… Read more »
Read More |May 2, 2016
CELDF is partnering with grassroots and statewide groups to confront the many barriers that are being erected by corporations and government to restrict our democratic rights, and our ability to protect people, workers, communities and the environment.
Read More |Aug 4, 2015
The CELDF staff are composed of dedicated individuals whose mission is the protection of communities and Nature and the advancement of community rights. CELDF Staff and Legal Team Stacey Schmader Co-Founder and Chief Financial Officer Stacey is a co-founder of CELDF. She leads Human Resources and is responsible for planning, organization, and direction of the… Read more »
Read More |Aug 4, 2015
Unsustainable agriculture is devastating communities’ land, health, and economies – and CELDF is helping them to stop it. Read here about the harms caused by unsustainable agriculture, how communities are organizing to stop them, and what you can do in your community.
Read More |Aug 4, 2015
CELDF has assisted the first communities in the U.S. to prohibit factory farming and other industrial agricultural practices. Learn here about the perils of factory farming, how communities are organizing to stop them, and what you can do in your own community.
Read More |Aug 4, 2015
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is a non-profit, public interest law firm providing free and affordable legal services to communities facing threats to their local environment, local agriculture, the local economy, and quality of life.
Read More |Aug 4, 2015
CELDF is helping spearhead a decolonial movement at the local, state, national and international level to establish rights for humans and nature over the systems that control them. A People’s Movement In spite of the legendary belief that the United States Constitution established a government of, by and for the people, it is the people… Read more »
Read More |Jul 31, 2023
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 »
Read More | Blogs, Community Rights, Democratic Rights, Rights of NatureJul 10, 2023
In our legal system, one is either a legal subject (humans and corporations) or a legal object (nature)
Read More | Blogs, Chemical Trespass, Community Rights, Corporate 'Rights', Corporate Agriculture, Democratic Rights, Extraction & Pollution, Rights of NatureJun 14, 2023
Welcome to CELDF’s commentary series that focuses on key concepts in our work to advance Community Rights and the Rights of Nature. Superficially, these may appear to be separate movements for legal rights but, as we have come to understand, everything’s connected and the artificial separation of human communities from the natural communities that we… Read more »
Read More |Mar 22, 2023
We must start trusting in ourselves and in our community members to be able to meet our needs, solve our problems and create truly participatory community-based forms of government and public spaces.
Read More | Blogs, Community Rights, Democratic Rights, Rights of NatureMar 8, 2023
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is a non-profit, public interest law firm providing free and affordable legal services to communities facing threats to their local environment, local agriculture, the local economy, and quality of life.
Read More |Jan 16, 2023
The challenge: How to overcome the white dominance/Black subordination relationship. How to decolonize.
Read More | Blogs, Democratic RightsAug 21, 2022
Refuse to be complacent. Refuse to be complicit. Refuse to be irrelevant.
Read More | Blogs, Community Rights, Democratic Rights, News, News from the GrassrootsApr 13, 2022
Earth Emancipation Now!
Synopsis: The American Empire was built on the model of European colonialism and the enclosure of the Commons. The Federalists, who crafted the U.S. Constitution, emulated Old World Empires by privatizing government and transforming the whole natural world into property. They erected an aristocracy of wealth by vesting in property itself the authority to govern. Our common environment is legally enslaved to the whims of its owners and they, by virtue of that ownership, govern us. There is no alternative to save planet Earth but to emancipate Nature from legal enslavement as property.
Apr 12, 2022
We help communities create & defend their rights. We assist communities to develop first-in-the-nation, groundbreaking laws for worker rights, houseless rights, democratic rights, and the Rights of Nature. We also provide free and low-cost legal services, grassroots organizing, and education support, to communities and governments facing injustice. Contact us now. EARTH DAY-ZED AND CONFUSED essays,… Read more »
Read More |Dec 26, 2020
Virginia joins the growing network of state Community Rights Networks.
Read More | Blogs, Community Rights, News, Rights of NatureDec 6, 2020
Seen through her guileless eyes, the humble truth of our kinship and solidarity beneath the real—though disproportionately unequal—oppressions of empire, became clear.
Read More | Community WiresSep 28, 2020
The collective effort to dismantle oppressive and racist systems relies on decentralizing power. Only when we understand the importance of community control can we envision fair and just systems we must build.
Read More | Blogs, Press Releases & BlogsMar 27, 2018
CELDF, OHCRN, and Ohio communities grieve the loss of Dick McGinn, and celebrate his life and contributions. He was a passionate leader in growing Community Rights in Ohio.
Read More | Community Wires, Press Releases & BlogsMar 14, 2018
Communities can’t adopt the gun laws they believe would best protect their health, safety, and welfare. Here’s why – and what communities can do about it.
Read More | Press Releases & Blogs