Search Results for: rights of nature

Contact: Max Wilbert
CELDF Community Resistance and Resilience Director
Max@CELDF.org
206-948-7790

For Immediate Release

 

Live streaming event on July 21st

How can our movements survive the rise of authoritarian regimes? How shall we respond when our people are jailed, our organizations banned, our speech penalized, and our activist spaces burned to the ground? 

These are not idle questions in places like the Philippines and the Appalachian South. The former is one of the world’s most dangerous places for environmentalists and human rights defenders, while the latter is one of the most challenging places for anti-racist activists to organize.

On July 21st, a special live streaming event will bring together grassroots activists from these places to share their experiences of repression and resistance. 

The event, called “Solidarity Against Tyranny,” begins at 6pm Pacific Daylight Time (aka 9pm Eastern Daylight Time, or 9am on July 22nd, Philippine Time) and is free to attend.

It is being organized by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) in partnership with Highlander Research and Education Center and Blue Earth Defense, and in cooperation with Alyansa Tigil Mina, Ethniko Bandido Infoshop, and the Initiatives for Dialogue and Empowerment through Alternative Legal Services (IDEALS).

“In our sites of struggles in the Philippines, repression against anti-mining activists and front-line communities mainly come in the form of red-tagging, and violent dispersals of organized peaceful protests and barricades, along with the filing of SLAPP suits against protesters by mining companies,” says Jaybee Garganera, National Coordinator for the Alyansa Tigil Mina (Alliance Against Mining) and one of the speakers for the event. “In particular, libel cases are filed against vocal community leaders in order to cow them into silence. In some cases, advocates against mining are killed or harassed with death threats.”

These repressive tactics have not gone unnoticed in the United States. President Donald Trump is an admirer of former Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte, and now the U.S. is experiencing an increasing internal breakdown of basic civil liberties, due process, and separation of powers.

“America is being crumbled into a thoroughly broken state to serve the interests of its oligarchs,” asserted Terry Lodge, Legal Director at CELDF and another panelist at the event. “Silencing opponents of the Gazan holocaust tops the list, followed by eradication of the growing unity among Palestine supporters, opponents of mass deportations, foes of permanent American wars, and those in the way of rampant environmental destruction. Unifying against the hellbent corporate state is the only way to stop the exploitation.”

Denzel Caldwell, Program Manager for Economics and Governance at the Highlander Research & Education Center in Tennessee, agrees.

“This empire and its non-state co-conspirators are seeking to complete the colonial project that began in 1776 when European settlers occupied Turtle Island and enslaved African peoples for profit,” Caldwell says. “Our movements represent the legacy of those who understood this order to be an existential threat to humanity and the global ecosystem. It is through our world-building efforts that we must convince and demonstrate to our communities that another world is possible; one where humanity and the larger ecosystem can co-exist in abundance, not exploitation.”

Another speaker will be Cris De Vera, founder of a mutual aid and community autonomy center known as Ethniko Bandido Infoshop in the northern Filipino city of Pasig. De Vera will present about his organization’s work conducting mutual aid, providing disaster relief, and offering free grassroots services as a way to avoid reliance on increasingly corrupt, unreliable, and hostile institutions and power structures. 

“We believe in creating a culture of sharing as a way to minimize our dependency on the State, corporations, NGOs, and any other institutions,” he says. “Sharing is a form of resistance.”

The final speaker will be Mario E. Maderazo, an environmental and human rights lawyer based in the Philippines who specializes in documenting extrajudicial killings and opposing human rights abuses .

Topics covered in the event will include:

• • What Trump learned from former Filipino dictator Rodrigo Duterte and is now applying in the United States
  • Which tactics Filipino resisters have faced as part of crackdowns on activists, press, students, and civil society
  • Similarities and differences with the experience of anti-racist organizers at the Highlander Center in Tennessee, pro-Palestine movements, and environmentalists in the U.S.
  • How to organize more effectively, protect ourselves and our movements with security protocols, and build solidarity against tyranny

 

“This is a hands-on lesson for organizers, activists, resistance movements, and revolutionaries,” says Kai Huschke, Executive Director of CELDF.

Many local people refer to the Philippines as “the archipelago” as a decolonized alternative to the Spanish name. The Philippines was colonized by the Spanish for 333 years, until they lost a war with the United States. The U.S. occupied the country for a further 43 years, until the Japanese invaded during World War II. During the U.S. occupation, Filipinos waged a national liberation struggle. During this time, between 250,000 and 1 million Filipino civilians died, thousands of them in concentration camps, while back in the United States, principled activists opposed the war.

Over recent decades, comprador governments in the Philippines have worked closely with the United States while waging war on the poor and on resistance movements under the auspices of “the War on Drugs” and NTF-ECAC (The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict).

To attend, register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_jYOdEObrQDKCJ6mbrxYdjw#/registration

###

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

CELDF is a nationwide community of organizers, lawyers, and partners who educate, agitate, and organize to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s reciprocal relationship with Earth. For over 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate exploitation, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-govern through systems grounded in ecological balance and collective power. 

Today, CELDF continues to promote and collaboratively define Rights of Nature principles through proposed legislation like the Great Lakes Bill of Rights, introduced into the New York State Assembly by Member Patrick Burke, and a number of pending local bills, its Truth, Reckoning, and Right-Relationship program, and now expanding its efforts into community resistance and resilience efforts. 

More information about CELDF, including photos pre-approved for media use, can be found in our press kit.

Contacts:

Tish O’Dell, CELDF Consulting Director Tish@CELDF.org 440-552-6774

Bill Lyons, Columbus Community Bill of Rights wmlyons@gmail.com 614-551-6194

For Immediate Release

Columbus Residents Strike Back Against “Liquidation of the Right to Local Self-Determination” 

COLUMBUS, OH – What can a community do when the democratic process itself has been outlawed?

That’s the question facing residents of Ohio. In 2019, the State legislature prohibited communities from enacting “rights of nature” laws after Toledo residents overwhelmingly voted for a law, the Lake Erie Bill of Rights. The budget bill passed on July 17th of that year established that “nature… does not have standing to participate in or bring an action in any court.”

In 2020, the State doubled down, passing a so-called “preemption law” in response to the city of Athens and Cuyahoga County (where Cleveland is located) passing laws banning single-use plastic bags.

Some Columbus residents, like Bill Lyons of the Ohio Community Rights Network, say that enough is enough.

“The shredding of Ohioans Constitutional home-rule and local self-governing rights has gone on too long,” says Lyons, “it is time for the people of Columbus to reclaim these rights so that we can truly create the just city we envision for ourselves, the natural environment, and future generations.”

Lyons and other local citizens  are seeking to overturn this undemocratic process within their city. On May 15th, they submitted a proposed city charter amendment initiative petition to the city, seeking to ask voters on the November 2027 ballot if they will reject state preemption and reaffirm the right to make decisions locally.

The proposed amendment states that “the principle and practice of home rule and local self-government in Ohio, as established in 1912, has been increasingly infringed upon and eroded by state legislature overreach via the practice of state preemption,” including  by preventing residents from legislating on important community issues such as “minimum wage protections, gun laws, oil and gas bans, rent control protections, knife laws, plastic bag bans, rights of nature, flavored tobacco bans, pesticide use, red-light camera use, telecommunication installations, natural gas hookup bans, puppy mill bans, paid leave, and many others.”

Since 2012, over three dozen rights of nature and community rights initiatives for inclusion on city and county ballots in Ohio have faced varying levels of obstruction from the state. Fifteen measures have been kept off the ballot. Of those that did make it onto ballots, six were passed into law by voters, and one by city council vote.

According to Grace Leng of Rank The Vote Ohio, this is a fundamental violation of democracy and self-determination.

“Ohio cities’ constitutional right to home rule is vital for local self-government,” Leng says. “State preemption undermines the community’s ability to address local needs and puts decisions in the hands of politicians detached from we the people.”

Another supporter of the effort is Columbus resident Greg Pace, who says that this fight echoes one that took place over a hundred years ago.

“It was a long and contentious fight by the people to add into the Ohio constitution in 1912 the right to modify the laws of the state through citizen initiatives,” Pace says. “Those rights have been systematically liquidated over the past century by the state legislature. Home rule in Ohio has taken a similar turn, as the legislature reactively shuts down local laws that big-moneyed lobbying interests dislike. In today’s political climate, it is more important than ever for our democratic way of life, to affirm our rights and protect our community turf, health and especially our safety.”

Detractors of the bill have argued that home rule opens up the possibility for communities to legislate regressive retractions of rights. But the proposed amendment in Columbus sidesteps those concerns since local laws passed under the bill cannot legally “alter or restrict the existing fundamental rights of natural persons, their local communities, or nature [or] weaken protections for natural persons, their local communities, or nature provided by state, federal, or international law.”

In other words, Columbus will be able to pass laws that strengthen the rights and protections already recognized for living entities, but not laws that weaken them.

“The state should be able to set baseline protections for things like minimum wage and environmental protection,” says Lyons. “But for the state to outlaw communities from implementing higher levels of protection for health, safety and welfare through what’s called ‘ceiling preemption’ is unjust, immoral, and should be illegal.”

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), an organization that specializes in working with communities to draft bills, has been assisting organizers in Columbus since 2015 with ordinances and charter amendments to protect the community’s water, air, soil and residents from the toxic effects of fracking. All four of this group’s previous attempts have been kept off the ballot for one reason or another, with preemption being a factor in several of the denials.

Tish O’Dell, Consulting Director at CELDF, has been involved with every one of their attempts. “I am so impressed with the tenacity and evolution of this group of residents,” she says. “Columbus is the state capital and largest city in Ohio, so collecting the required amount of signatures to get an initiative on the ballot is hard. And yet, they keep coming back.”

To learn how you can help with this campaign locally, please contact Columbus Community Bill of Rights at their website or Bill Lyons directly at wmlyons@gmail.com.

To learn more about all the previous efforts in Columbus and other Ohio communities, you can read the book “Death By Democracy – Protecting Water and Life: Frontline Stories from Ohioans fighting Corporate and State Power.”

###

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund – celdf.org

CELDF is a nationwide community of organizers, lawyers, and partners who educate, agitate, and organize to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s reciprocal relationship with Earth. For over 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate exploitation, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-govern through systems grounded in ecological balance and collective local power.

More information about CELDF, including photos pre-approved for media use, can be found in our press kit.

Contact: Tish O’Dell, CELDF Consulting Director

Tish@CELDF.org

440-552-6774

For Immediate Release

A collection of essays that confront the root causes of the interconnected ecological and social crisis

MERCERSBURG, PA – 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.”

It includes pieces written by Kai Huschke, Tish O’Dell, Terry Lodge, Michelle Beatty, Max Wilbert, Will Falk, Chad Nicholson, and Ben G. Price.

“The essays and articles collected in this book demonstrate how — again and again — corporate power in this country has successfully ignored obedience to the Laws of Nature while demanding legal adherence to the Laws of Profit, a profit accrued with total contempt for the Laws of Nature,” writes Robert Shetterly, activist and artist behind the portrait series Americans Who Tell the Truth, in his foreword. “It gives us guidance of how to think and what to do as we accept our responsibility to the world. It gives us no false hope. It presumes that if we want to survive, we want to know what we’re up against.”

The essays in “Can You Handle the Truth?” tackle a wide range of challenging topics with many based on current events over the past decade, including:

• Police violence against Black community members like Mike Brown
• How the government ignores indigenous sovereignty and community self-determination
• Pollution and coverups in East Palestine, OH after a train disaster
• Censorship of the inconvenient film Planet of the Humans
• Courts’ role in suppressing dissent via the “Our Children’s Trust” legal case
• How the U.S. Constitution prioritizes property and wealth over people and planet
• The failure of traditional legal approaches and regulations to protect the environment
• The destructive impacts of consumerism and capitalism

Despite the crises we face, the book offers a message of hope through resistance and resilience. The Rights of Nature Movement is presented as a powerful alternative to the current system, one that prioritizes the well-being of the planet and all its inhabitants. The book also highlights the importance of adopting a new value system towards the natural world, draws connections between the struggles of native communities and non-native communities in resource extraction areas, and argues that capitalism and growth are ecological dead ends.

“This book doesn’t pull any punches,” said CELDF’s Consulting Director Tish O’Dell, who helped assemble the compilation. “The essays force us to confront the hard realities of our current system and imagine a radically different future. But we believe these truths are necessary to catalyze the transformative change our communities and ecosystems so desperately need.”

CELDF pioneered and remains at the forefront of the Rights of Nature Movement, supporting communities in their struggles against corporate exploitation and government overreach. The organization continues this work even as states like Utah, Florida, and Ohio move to ban the recognition of nature’s rights.

“‘Can You Handle the Truth’ is a clarion call to action,” added CELDF Executive Director Kai Huschke. “It challenges us to develop new values, new systems, and new ways of relating to the natural world. We hope this book will inspire readers to join us in building a more just, sustainable, and democratic future.”

Despite the banning of rights of nature in several states, CELDF remains committed to its mission to protect the rights of nature and promote local democracy. ‘Can You Handle the Truth?’ is ultimately a call to reexamine foundational principles and beliefs in the interest of future generations, and to co-create right-relationship with non-human life by way of grassroots solutions instead of reliance on a regulatory regime that regulates activists instead of polluters and slash-and-burn profiteers.

The authors of the essays in the collection are now available for radio and broadcast interviews, book talks, and podcast appearances.

“Can You Handle the Truth” is available for a special pre-order price in print and as an e-book for a limited time.

Pre-Order Now

###

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

CELDF is a nationwide community of organizers, lawyers, and partners who educate, agitate, and organize to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s reciprocal relationship with Earth. For over 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate exploitation, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-govern through systems grounded in ecological balance and collective power.

Today, CELDF continues to promote and collaboratively define Rights of Nature principles through proposed legislation like the Great Lakes Bill of Rights, introduced into the New York State Assembly by Member Patrick Burke, and a number of pending local bills, its Truth, Reckoning, and Right-Relationship program, and now expanding its efforts into community resistance and resilience efforts.

More information about CELDF, including photos pre-approved for media use, can be found in our press kit.