Search Results for: democracy school

Feb 25, 2018

Blog: Black History Month, White Supremacy, and Community Rights

CELDF’s Tish O’Dell shares discoveries of her own white privilege when fracking came into her community – and how Dr. Martin Luther King and Black Lives Matter inform her work with communities today

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May 4, 2017

Blog: Whose Town is It?

Members of the New Hampshire legislature took advantage of a spring blizzard, attempting to undermine direct democracy.

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May 3, 2017

Blog: The US Constitution Is So 1789. It’s Time for a Serious Overhaul.

The 1% drive for a constitutional convention, advancing their own corporate interests. But we don’t need a convention. We need a whole new constitution.

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Dec 2, 2016

Ryan Talbott Joins CELDF Board of Directors

Ryan Talbott, an environmental lawyer, joins the Board of Directors of CELDF.

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Dec 2, 2015

CELDF Celebrates 20 Years!

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund turns 20 years old! What began as a mission to help communities fight permits has evolved into a Community Rights Movement for people and nature.

Read More | Press Releases & Blogs, Success Story

Aug 31, 2015

Tamaqua Borough, Pennsylvania

The story of one Pennsylvania community gaining community rights.

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Aug 12, 2015

Peters Township Overview

On November 23, 2010 Ellen Mavrich contacted CELDF asking for advice about adopting a community rights ordinance similar to the one enacted by Pittsburgh City Council, in consultation with CELDF, on November 16th. This is their story.

Read More | Community Wires

Aug 4, 2015

Contact

If your community needs help, please contact us now. Main Office Community Environmental Legal Defense FundP.O. Box 360Mercersburg, PA 17236 (717) 498-0054 info@celdf.org Press Contact Michelle Beatty michelle@celdf.org Account Management Get in Touch

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Aug 4, 2015

Community Rights

What are Community Rights? Where did they come from? Why do we need them? In a series of Community Rights Papers, we will explore the roots of Community Rights in our history, and how they’ve emerged as rights movements – including our own American Revolution.

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Aug 4, 2015

Sewage Sludge

Sewage sludge is a dangerous solid waste product that is spread on farm fields – and CELDF has assisted the first communities in the U.S. to ban it. Learn about the perils of sewage sludge, how communities are organizing to stop it, and what you can do in your community.

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Aug 4, 2015

Fracking

Fracking is spreading across the U.S. – and CELDF has assisted the first communities in the U.S. to ban it. Learn here about the harms caused by fracking, how communities are organizing to stop them, and what you can do in your community.

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Jul 31, 2015

Home

Our Mission Our mission is to build sustainable communities by assisting people to assert their right to local self-government and the rights of nature. We help communities create a more democratic future. For over 25 years, we have assisted communities to develop first-in-the-nation, groundbreaking laws for worker rights, houseless rights, democratic rights, and the Rights… Read more »

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Jul 20, 2015

The Rights of Nature & Self-Governance – San Andres Archipelago, Colombia

The Raizal people of the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia, and Santa Catalina off the coast of Colombia work with CELDF to recognize the Rights of Nature and to achieve their right to self-determination. CELDF travels to the Archipelago this month. Learn more here.

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Nov 5, 2014

2014 Election Update: Record Number of Community Rights Initiatives on Ballot

Community Bills of Rights advance on Election Day 2014, with a record number of initiatives on the ballot, and a growing number of communities determined to drive those rights forward.

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Feb 24, 2014

CELDF’s February Update

Here’s an update on some of our latest work.

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Jan 31, 2014

CELDF’s January 2014 Update

Thank you for supporting us in 2013! With your contributions, we will expand our work in 2014, meeting the growing numbers of requests for help from communities across the United States. If you have not yet donated, please click on the purple DONATE button on our website.

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Oct 30, 2013

The Piscataquis Observer: Letter to the Editor – Sangerville a leader in self-governance

Sangerville, ME, resident stands behind their first-in-the-nation Community Bill of Rights infrastructure ordinance, adopted by residents in September.

Read More | Community Wires, News from the Grassroots

Oct 17, 2013

October 2013 CELDF Update

Updates from Oregon to Austraila in this month’s CELDF’s newsletter.

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Sep 18, 2013

Press Release: Sangerville, ME, Adopts Community Bill of Rights Ordinance to Reject Transportation & Distribution Corridors

Voters in Sangerville, ME, adopt a Community Bill of Rights ordinance to protect their municipality from a private transportation corridor.

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May 8, 2013

Read the Dirt: Does Food Sovereignty Exist in the United States? Food and the Community Rights Movement

Trisha Mandes speaks to the deficiencies of U.S. food activism and proposes an adaptive way forward. Trisha has worked with community-based food projects in Oregon and Pennsylvania and is now pursuing a Masters Degree in Public Health Nutrition and Sustainable Development at the University of Eastern Finland.

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Aug 16, 2011

Envision Spokane Successfully Qualifies Initiative to the Ballot

Envision Spokane’s Brad Read on the “Community Bill of Rights” Initiative.

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Nov 7, 2010

Blaine Township

Blaine Township is a small rural township some 45 miles west of Pittsburgh, in Washington County, Pennsylvania. Western Pennsylvania has been mining coal for 250 years, but no mining has occurred in Blaine and its residents and township supervisors aim to keep it that way.

Read More | Community Wires

Oct 10, 2010

Taking back our rights to fish

The chain that ensures an orderly society; rights have to be rooted in responsibilities.

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Aug 5, 2010

CELDF on the Radio

“Democracy Matters” New Podcast for August 5, 2010

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Jul 15, 2010

CELDF on the Radio

“Democracy Matters” New Podcast for July 15

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Jun 17, 2010

Press Release: Local Law declares “corporate rights” cannot compete with the rights of living people.

Monroe enacts local law asserting that the right of people to govern in their community is superior to legal claims that corporations are “persons” with constitutional rights.

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Feb 20, 2010

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

Apr 6, 2006

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

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.

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