Helping community groups and municipalities write and adopt laws that assert community rights, including the right to local self-government, the rights of nature, and the subordination of corporate privilege to the rights of the community. Read more...
We hear from people like you every day who are facing gas and coal extraction, sewage sludge, factory farms, massive water withdrawals, landfills, and more. What's your issue? Read more...
Learn why the law stops us from protecting our communities, the environment, and our rights, and how you can organize in your community to change those rules. Read more...
Our mission is to build sustainable communities by assisting people to assert their right to local self-government, and expand and recognize the rights of people, communities, and nature. Explore our web site, learn at Democracy School, consider a different strategy based in fundamental rights...then get in touch!
08/26/2010 - Mount Shasta’s Measure A, removed from November’s ballot earlier this month, has generated an appeal of that decision by proponents and a response from the county – and the Siskiyou County Superior Court is now tasked with discerning whether the measure’s proponents followed elections procedure, whether or not County Clerk Colleen Setzer was the elections official for the city of Mount Shasta, and whether or not the court believes that the measure is constitutional.
08/23/2010 - On Friday, August 20, the Mt. Shasta Community Rights Project filed an elections complaint to restore Measure A to the 2010 general election ballot. Siskiyou County Clerk Colleen Setzer is denying Mt. Shasta voters the right to vote on “Measure A”, which was stripped from the city’s ballot earlier this week.
The Measure, which would prohibit outside corporations from bulk water extraction and corporate cloud seeding, is the first ordinance of its kind in California because it is designed to assert the rights of residents over the rights of corporations.
08/17/2010 - Today, Pittsburgh Councilman Doug Shields announced that he is introducing an ordinance drafted by CELDF which would ban corporations from natural gas drilling within the city. Shields stated: “Many people think that this is only about gas drilling. It’s not – it’s about our authority as a municipal community to say “no” to corporations that will cause damage to our community. It’s about our right to community, local self-government.”
08/17/2010 - Ben Price, who helped draft the bill as projects director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in Franklin County, said the city's right to protect residents from the hazards of drilling should trump any state claim of authority over drilling matters.
