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 refer to as “ecosystems” allows the migration of imprudent and commercially biased dogmas into environmental and political policies. Like our “Fast Facts Friday” whiteboard videos, “Wouldn’t you say?” treats key legal, political and ethical concepts with an eye to brevity and accessibility. We hope they’ll be helpful to you and all of our CELDF community.
Blogs
Wouldn’t you say? – Three Beliefs That Doom Western Society
We are neither separate from nor superior to, but rather part of and utterly dependent upon the non-human world around us, inside and out. Wouldn’t…
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Wouldn’t You Say? – When Democracy is Privatized
The centuries-long Enclosure (privatization) Movement in the U. S. is nearing completion.
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Wouldn’t You Say? – Ignorance as License
Anti-intellectualism is as American as hot dogs.
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Wouldn’t You Say? – The Law Did not Save Grant Township’s Water, the People of Grant Did
If the persistence of the people of Grant Township in pursuit of justice took ten years for them to prevail, it is because they insisted…
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Wouldn’t You Say? – The Invisible Empire in Plain Sight
The American dream has turned out to be a nightmare. Wouldn’t you say?
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Wouldn’t You Say? – The Challenge of Movement Building
“It seems like legal rights for community and for nature would almost be unnecessary if our attitude toward the world were based on reciprocity, responsibility,…
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Wouldn’t You Say? – From Rights of Nature to Right Relationship
We are used to extracting not only metallic ores and fossil fuels, but ourselves and our communities from the natural world, and yet we don’t…
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Wouldn’t You Say? – Saving the Economy Means Not Saving Nature
At the risk of expediting the die-off of most life on the planet, including most humans, judges continue to turn a blind eye toward the…
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Blogs
Wouldn’t You Say? – What Do We Mean by “Community Rights?”
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…
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Blogs
Wouldn’t You Say? – What are the Rights of Nature?
The law locks up the man or woman, Who steals the goose from off the common, But leaves the greater villain loose, Who steals the…
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Blogs
Wouldn’t You Say? – Nature is What’s Real
You wouldn’t think, in a rational society, that anyone would have to be told this, but reality doesn’t care what anybody believes is true; it…
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Wouldn’t You Say? – Municipal Maze
Refuse to be complacent. Refuse to be complicit. Refuse to be irrelevant.
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Wouldn’t You Say? – Community Self-Government
Do you know what’s not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution? For one thing, government by the people.
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Wouldn’t You Say? – Property
The Right to Property is Inalienable, Right? Some rights are defined as inalienable, meaning that they can’t be taken away from you. Heck, you can’t…
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Blogs
Wouldn’t You Say? – Personhood
The Right of Free Speech Includes the Right to Clean Air to Speak With Look, if corporate property can be called a legal person, and…
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