Search Results for: rights of nature

Nov 6, 2023

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!

Read More | News, Resources

Oct 25, 2023

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 »

Read More | Events, Rights of Nature

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.

Read More | News

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

Read More | Events

Jul 13, 2023

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 »

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Jul 10, 2023

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)

Read More | Blogs, Chemical Trespass, Community Rights, Corporate 'Rights', Corporate Agriculture, Democratic Rights, Extraction & Pollution, Rights of 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.

Read More | Blogs, Chemical Trespass, Community Rights, Corporate Agriculture, Democratic Rights, Extraction & Pollution, News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature, Water Privitization

Jun 19, 2023

Free Speech Advocate Moves to Lift Gag Order Regarding Radioactive Brine Used on Roadways

“SLAPP suits are just another tool used by industry and corporations to silence and intimidate those who speak out against them and their activities,” stated Wyatt Sugrue, Chicago attorney.

Read More | Chemical Trespass, Community Rights, Democratic Rights, Press Releases, Rights of Nature

Jun 14, 2023

Wouldn’t You Say?

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 »

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May 19, 2023

When We Became Trees – A Short Story by Blake Lavia

“When we became trees, we left behind I and we became We.”

Read More | Community Wires, Rights of Nature

May 10, 2023

Unrepentant and Vindicated: Proposed Frack-Waste Injection Well in Grant Township to be Plugged and Abandoned

To date, not a single drop of frack waste has been injected within the Township due to hard work, resistance, and resilience.

Read More | Community Rights, Extraction & Pollution, Press Releases, Rights of Nature

May 4, 2023

Got Community Resistance?

Dean Barlese, an elder of the Pyramid Lake Paiute-Shoshone, who told us “We’ve got to stand up for our ancestors, they gave their lives, they shed their blood fighting for this land.”

Read More | Community Rights, Community Wires, Democratic Rights, News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature

May 3, 2023

From Lake to Lagoon: Exploring Sustainability in Cleveland & Venice

CELDF’s Tish O’Dell will be present at this free public event as part of the community programming for the exhibition Everlasting Plastics, curated by the Cleveland gallery SPACES for the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennial.

Read More | Events

Mar 24, 2023

The Trains Don’t Always Run on Time:
Yet the System Keeps Rolling, and We’re Just Collateral Damage

A more honest report on the East Palestine disaster and details how the system itself is to blame and why these horrific and deadly events keep happening and our communities and nature keep bearing the brunt.

Read More | Blogs, Chemical Trespass, Community Rights, Corporate 'Rights', Democratic Rights, Extraction & Pollution, Rights of Nature

Mar 22, 2023

In Times of Increasing Uncertainty, We Already Have What We Need

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 Nature

Mar 15, 2023

Watch the video: “Water is Us”

“Water Is Us” was moderated by ORCRN’s board member and CELDF organizer Kai Huschke. Joining him was: On February 22nd the ORCRN’s Webinar Wednesday meandered through a variety of water topics, from current conditions of water access and water quality to how the law sees water, to the growth of rights of nature to protect and preserve water, to… Read more »

Read More | Community Rights, Events, Extraction & Pollution, Multimedia, Resource Links, Rights of Nature, Water Privitization

Mar 10, 2023

Conservation Today: Kai Huschke and the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Kai Huschke, with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, talks to us about the hierarchy of community rights, states rights, and corporate rights.

Read More | Community Rights, Corporate 'Rights', Democratic Rights, Events, Extraction & Pollution, Multimedia, Rights of Nature

Feb 2, 2023

“Water is Us” – This Time on Webinar Wednesday…

“Water Is Us” will be moderated by ORCRN board member and CELDF organizer Kai Huschke. Please send your request for the Zoom link to: info@orcrn.org

Read More | Events

Jan 16, 2023

Guest Blog: Badges and Incidents of Slavery

The challenge: How to overcome the white dominance/Black subordination relationship. How to decolonize.

Read More | Blogs, Democratic Rights

Nov 17, 2022

Press Release: Back to the Future — Ohioans Still Poisoned After All These Years

“The spreading of toxic and radioactive well waste brine on Ohio roads and other surfaces threatens all Ohioans,” stated FaCT Brine Education Committee Chair, Ron Prosek.  “You could be living or traveling anywhere in Ohio and potentially be exposed to this dangerous material.  This is one of the most reckless practices that the State of Ohio has ever allowed.”

Read More | Chemical Trespass, Community Wires, News from the Grassroots, Press Releases

Sep 30, 2022

CELDF presenting with “turn” on October 11th at 9 AM PT/12 PM EDT

CELDF organizers Tish O’Dell, Michelle Sanborn, and Chad Nicholson will present a panel discussion, October 11th at 12 PM EDT, on “Tapped Out: Is Water a Commodity to be Owned or a Living Being with Rights to Exist, Flourish and Thrive?”

Read More | Events, News

Sep 7, 2022

It’s Inevitable – More to Come in Chile

Despite the claims of the corporate-minded, rejection of the new constitution by the voters of Chile is not a repute of what the new constitution contained but one that shows the desperation of the powerful elite to hold on to their planetary destroying levels of greed and the lengths they will go to deny the inevitable. 

Read More | News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature

Jul 5, 2022

Available Now: English Translation & Webinar of the Landmark Decision in Ecuador to Protect Los Cedros Forest over Mining Profits

We at CELDF were excited to be able to read the full decision of the Constitutional Court of Ecuador upholding the rights of the Los Cedros Forest over a mining project and we are sharing that decision with you in both English and Spanish. We want to thank the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature… Read more »

Read More | News, Resources, Rights of Nature

Jun 15, 2022

A Living Tribute to Philip Jurus

In February 2019, just days before the Toledo special election on the Lake Erie Bill of Rights in Toledo Ohio, Philip Jurus heard an interview on NPR about the upcoming vote. The interview moved him to write to me and share a poem he had written about Lake Erie and her distressed condition back in… Read more »

Read More | Community Wires, News

Jun 14, 2022

The Elephant in the Zoo(m): Should Non-Humans and Natural Resources be Considered “Persons” Under the Law?

NYWBA’s Animal Law and WBASNY’s Environmental Law Committees presents a webinar on June 20, 2022 at 6:00 – 7:30 PM (Eastern Time) On May 18, 2022, the New York Court of Appeals heard the habeus corpus petition involving “Happy the Elephant” and considered whether she is a person under the law. Recent legal efforts in… Read more »

Read More | Events, Rights of Nature

Jun 13, 2022

We are pleased to announce the program for the upcoming International Society of Public Law 2022 Online ICON•S Conference!

Dismantling the US Property Doctrine in the Name of Planet and People | JULY 5 | 9:15 PM (European Time Zone) CELDF’s Kai Huschke will be presenting in Poland for the International Society of Public Law (Panel #79). This conference is available to members only. You can join here. See the full program here. Environmental degradation is… Read more »

Read More | Uncategorized

Jun 8, 2022

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN! Webinar June 30th at 7:00 PM (EDT) – Putting Our Heads in the Clouds: Landmark Decision in Ecuador Points to Protection over Exploitation

This past November, Ecuador’s Constitutional Court ruled in favor of the Los Cedros Cloud Forest ecosystem and local communities’ rights over the rights of a foreign mining corporation. Truly a seminal case for legal rights of nature, the court addressed the regulatory permitting process, the precautionary principle, biodiversity, community input into the decision-making process, and… Read more »

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May 11, 2022

Building Our Children’s Trust Needs to Start With Reality

While we’re being told by scientific authority that decisive action to reduce carbon emissions is mandatory within the 2020’s, the legal theory underlying Juliana is risky and time-consuming. Worse, “victory” in Juliana would mean contradictory and self-defeating technological fixes which are misleadingly cast as proven ways to salvage life on the planet. In these potentially closing moments of human existence, the inhabitants, human and otherwise, deserve a whole lot better.

Read More | Blogs, News

May 4, 2022

It’s Not All Bad

Over the last 15 years, grassroots work that establishes rights for human and natural communities has expanded in ways that no one could have foreseen. And while we will celebrate the legal and the political victories, the truth is that none of this would have happened without people…

Read More | Blogs, News

Apr 20, 2022

Some things never change, but we better start!

“Claiming to fight for clean water because the human community depends on clean water to bring in more tourism or that we need to destroy an entire ecosystem for lithium so that humans can continue as they have, misses the point of why we need to change. The other species in the river don’t benefit from more tourism and the plants and the animals on top of the lithium deposit and the aquifer beneath it won’t benefit either.”

Read More | Blogs, News

Apr 18, 2022

Grant Township is fighting back | PennLive letters

April 20th is a big day in Harrisburg for the rights of communities to defend their water from industrial pollution. For years Grant Township, in Indiana County, PA, has been resisting the placement of injection wells on their land. In 2015 Township residents adopted a Home Rule Charter containing a “Community Bill of Rights.” This… Read more »

Read More | Community Wires, News

Apr 15, 2022

INVISIBLE HAND film viewing and discussion, June 12th

If corporations have rights, why not Nature? Join the Virginia Community Rights Network (VACRN) and its partner organizations for the virtual viewing and discussion of the award-winning film Invisible Hand. Watch the 90-minute movie during the 24-hour window. Then join us for a zoom discussion. Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) organizers Tish O’Dell and Ben… Read more »

Read More | Events, News

Apr 13, 2022

Earth Emancipation Now!

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.

Read More | Blogs, News

Apr 12, 2022

Sample

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 »

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Apr 12, 2022

Earth Day Film Presentation at the Taos Center for the Arts in New Mexico on April 23rd 10 AM

A showing of the documentary “The Invisible Hand” at the Taos Center for the Arts in New Mexico will take place, with its producer, Melissa A. Troutman, who will speak about rights of nature along with live-streamed members of CELDF for a Q&A. The Rio Grande is in great danger and needs our bodies and… Read more »

Read More | Events, News

Apr 11, 2022

DAMAGES Podcast: The Backlash

Episode DescriptionIn 2019, after a decade-long campaign, voters in Toledo Ohio voted to approve the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, effectively giving the lake personhood. It drew an incredible amount of attention. This wasn’t San Francisco hippies or Brooklyn hipsters talking about rights of nature, this was middle-aged moms in the Rust Belt, and that… Read more »

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

Feb 7, 2022

Diversity and Inclusion Statement

Community Rights are either inclusive, diverse, and equitable, or they’re non-existent. We recognize that our core mission of advancing community rights, including the rights of nature, will be impossible to achieve until every member of the human community is encountered with respect, offered the same opportunities as others, and liberated from every process of exclusion,… Read more »

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Feb 1, 2022

Guest Blog: The Journey of a Film

It’s an uphill battle against some of the most powerful lobbies on earth. The threats against our health posed by heedless profit-seeking are heavily empowered.

Read More | Blogs

Jan 13, 2022

Book: ‘Death by Democracy’

Protecting Water and Life: Frontline Stories from Ohioans fighting corporate and state power This book features frontline stories from a movement fighting corporate and state power in Ohio. Edited by Tish O’Dell and Simon Davis-Cohen. For over eight years, organizers with the Ohio Community Rights Network (OHCRN) have worked hard with CELDF to propose and… Read more »

Read More | Publications

Jan 6, 2022

Grant Township

‘Unrepentant’: Grant Township Refuses to Bend to the Fracking Industry [Document library featured below] Thanks to a group of fearless local residents, Grant Township (Indiana County, Pennsylvania) has successfully denied a frack waste injection well. The fight began in 2013, leading to the passage of a 2014 ordinance, and the eventual democratic enactment of a… Read more »

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Jan 5, 2022

Glen’s Parallax Perspectives – Interview with Kai Huschke

Glen Anderson interviewed two experts — Kai Huschke and Elliott Moffett — who have savvy insights and practical experience working to protect environments and establish legal rights for nature.

Read More | News from the Grassroots

Dec 15, 2021

Portrait of a water guardian – WT Interview with Tish O’Dell

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.

Read More | News from the Grassroots

Nov 25, 2021

Newsletter: Washington Update

The WACRN is now working to operationalize the network to be that change agent it set out to be nearly 10 years ago.

Read More | Blogs

Nov 23, 2021

Metallic Mining and Freedom from Toxic Trespass

The Virginia Community Rights Network has finalized text for an Ordinance Requiring an Assessment of the Compatibility of Metallic Mining with the Right to Freedom from Toxic Trespass.

Read More | Blogs

Nov 5, 2021

Q&A with SUNDANCE, Executive Director of Cleveland A.I.M.

How do we unite to create a more just and sustainable vision for the future. What are the possible next steps?

Read More | Events, Uncategorized

Oct 11, 2021

Honor The Treaties in Your Community

The destruction, privatization and incorporation of settler municipalities on these landscapes and waterways has violated the treaties. It’s time for municipalities to actually recognize and become governed by their local treaties.

Read More | Blogs

Oct 9, 2021

BOOK FOREWORD: Empowering Municipal Sustainability

They say that knowledge is power, but it’s not true. Knowledge fuels our actions and our actions are power.

Read More | Community Rights, Democratic Rights, Rights of Nature

Oct 4, 2021

A Tribute to Gail Mills

Gail Mills of Nottingham, NH, passed away this month, having paid forward a legacy of community activism that inspired local activists across the country. 

Read More | Blogs, News

Sep 15, 2021

Invisible Hand Film Showing and Conversation

Join us on September 29, at 6:30 pm CET, for a virtual screening of the award-winning film Invisible Hand, a documentary exploring the global Rights of Nature movement, followed by a conversation with key actors and organizers of the movement from both America and Europe. 48 hours before the event, you will receive a link and… Read more »

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Sep 15, 2021

Newsletter: New England Update

Residents are blowing the whistle on large-scale industrial solar arrays that require the cutting of old-growth forests in favor of destructive greenwashing.

Read More | Blogs, Community Wires, News