A Pennsylvania Judge Holds That Corporations Are Not “Persons” Under the Pennsylvania Constitution.

State College residents are facing a gas pipeline running through their community. Resident Katherine Watt urges City Council to recognize this issue is about community rights to protect their own health, safety, and welfare, as asserted in their Home Rule Charter amendment establishing a Community Bill of Rights.

Alexander Lotorto reviews Matt Damon's movie Promised Land, in part praising its bringing attention to the issue of shale gas drilling and fracking, while critiquing its depiction of PA women and rural townspeople. Read more here.

Craig Barnes of Our Times interviews Thomas Linzey, examining our regulatory system, how it regulates the rate of destruction and our activism, and how we can do things differently through challenging the structure and asserting community rights.

View the trailer for “Rooted Lands – Tierras Arraigadas,” chronicling Mora County, NM residents’ grassroots efforts leading to the first Community Rights Ordinance in the county, and how it is drawing communities together from across the state to stop gas and oil drilling and assert community rights and the rights of nature.

CELDF's Associate Director Mari Margil speaks to the structure of law we live under that prevents us from asserting our rights to local self-governance and creating sustainable communities, and what communities across the country are doing to challenge and change that structure.

Sidsel Overgaard of KUNM New Mexico's Community Powered Public Radio reports on Las Vegas, New Mexico's historic action to pass a Community Bill of Rights ordinance to protect their water and prohibit shale gas drilling and fracking.

Grassroots organizing. Local communities reinserting themselves into the decision making process that impacts their communities. “We the People” reclaiming our role in democracy. Those elements serve as the most effective tools at our disposal today to fight the environmental battles of the 21st century says Thomas Linzey, Executive Director and co-founder of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. “There cannot be sustainability unless people who are impacted by certain decisions are actually making the decisions about what impacts their communities,” Linzey said in a recent interview with Wisdom Voices.

Our Times host Craig Barnes interviews CELDF's Executive Director Thomas Linzey on the Community Rights Movement emerging out of CELDF's grassroots work across the country with local municipalities to subordinate corporate rights to the rights of communities to self-governance.

Sidsel Overgaard of KUNM, New Mexico's Community Powered Public Radio, interviews CELDF's Thomas Linzey about elevating community rights and rights of nature above corporate "rights" to protect local communities and ecosystems.

CELDF's Executive Director Thomas Linzey is interviewed by Faren Dancer of KTRC 1260 AM "Unicopia Green Radio" on corporate "rights", and how communities are using their local municipal government to elevate community rights above those claimed by corporations.

Which president told Congress: “I recommend a law prohibiting all corporations from contributing to the campaign expenses of any party…let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly?” If you recognize this Presidential quote, it probably means you’re a history buff (or you watch too much Jeopardy). The correct answer: Who was Theodore Roosevelt? While the speech has become a notable quotable, it’s often forgotten that it followed public outrage surrounding Roosevelt’s acceptance of huge corporate contributions that locked-in his election in 1904.

Rose Alguilar, host of Your Call in San Francisco, CA on KALW 97.1FM, interviews CELDF's Executive Director Thomas Linzey and Global Exchange's Director of Community Organizing Shannon Biggs about how communities can organize to change local laws to protect themselves from corporate interests and create the communities they envision.

William Evans, host of KDNK Community Radio program Shifting Gears in Carbondale, CO, interviews CELDF's Associate Director Mari Margil on the structure of law we live under that limits us from asserting our rights to health and the rights of nature--and how we can assert those rights through a grassroots movement.

William Evans, host of KDNK Community Radio program Shifting Gears in Carbondale, CO, interviews CELDF's Executive Director Thomas Linzey on using municipal law-making to stop unwanted corporate projects and create the sustainable communities people envision.

William Evans, host of KDNK Community Radio program Shifting Gears in Carbondale, CO, interviews CELDF's Executive Director Thomas Linzey on using municipal law-making to stop unwanted corporate projects and create the sustainable communities people envision.

When it comes to taking action against a corporation that has violated your rights, it seems as though it is going to be an uphill battle. The corporations are equipped with an army of attorneys, have very deep pockets and seem to have mastered the art of manipulation, especially when it comes to dealing with beaurocracy. However, there is hope. Citizens can actually take matters into their own hands at the local level, where justice can be served. Enter the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. The CELDF works with communities across the country – from New England to California, from Pennsylvania and Virginia, to Spokane, Washington....In this segment of The Organic View Radio Show, host, June Stoyer talks to Ben Price about how citizens can take action at the local level!

The recent “occupy” movements across the country – including a now bundled-up contingent in the center of Spokane – continue to raise one of the major political questions of our times: “How do people fix a clearly broken system?”

The stone is cast and the amendment to ban drilling will appear on the Peters Township ballot. The stage is set and as maybe predicted based on past behavior, the informal fallacy argumentum ad baculum (appeal to the stick) will be launched by those opposed to the drilling ban.

With a corporate challenge to its local law, you might think South Fayette finds itself in the middle of a battle over democratic local self-governance. But by avoiding the core question of who has rights in South Fayette Township (the people, or corporations?), and by attempting to regulate the location of fracking in a way the State seems to say is legal, rather than banning it on the grounds that fracking is a violation of fundamental rights that belong to everyone, the municipality set up its residents for a fall nine months ago, and hundreds of other municipalities are following the same legal advice: to color inside the lines; work within the system; and don’t rock the boat.

CELDF Comment: ex-PA Governor and gas fracking industry consultant Tom Ridge: "Critics of the industry...you have to ignore those folks,” Mr. Ridge said. “Accidents will happen. If you’re going to make the perfect the enemy of the good, that’s the wrong mindset.” ...and Matt Pitzarella, spokesman for Range Resources, one of the largest players in the industry...believes there is a “highly organized, highly motivated base of opposition” to gas drilling. Organizations like the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund visit small towns and work with local officials to draft ordinances designed to keep gas companies out, he said.

Thomas Linzey, Executive Director of CELDF, participates in a panel discussion on the history and development of the rights of nature, hosted by The Pachamama Alliance.

Join us! CELDF’s Gail Darrell will be on KMUD radio in Humboldt County, California this Sunday, April 3rd from 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm PT.

On February 28th, 7:30 – 9:30 p.m. in the Marwick Boyd Auditorium at Clarion University, Shireen Parsons will participate in the public forum discussion regarding fracking, or hydraulic drilling, in the Marcellus shale.

Claims that drilling corporations, shielded by a state law lobbied for by drilling corporations, possess the right to do what they want, when they want and where they want is an assault on people’s rights to protect their communities. Human beings alone should have constitutional rights, not corporations.

"Drilling into the Marcellus Shale and its effect on our environment is something that we, as a community, need to start talking with each other about," said group member Ellen Mavrich. "The risk involved for our residents must be understood and all options must be carefully considered. Ultimately, the citizens of Peters Township should decide what happens in Peters Township."

CELDF note: Here's a commentary from one of our Democracy School graduates. Maybe it's time for you to host a School in your community... "Among the many notions I took away from that class, the two that have stayed with me is that corporations once had to serve the public’s interest. If it failed to do that, its charter could be revoked. The other one is the idea that nature, in some way, has rights, that can codified, at least locally, and now I learn, throughout a country."

When the state acts to deny the rights of the people, it is the state and not the people who stand on the "wrong ground." Self-government is being denied when the Oil and Gas Act of Pennsylvania, written under the influence of the oil and gas industries, develops "preemptive" laws. The people have the right and the duty to protect themselves, their communities, their families and the livability of their environment for future generations. Rights are higher law than state regulations. If we have no control over our local community governance then we really do not live in the democracy we think we do.

Councilman Doug Shields, who is the lead sponsor of the bill, has been working closely with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund on that front. The group helped to write the legislation and CELDF Projects Director Ben Price says they will be there to help. “We’ve certainly volunteered to offer our services,” says Price, “It could be assistance, consultation with whatever legal council is secured by the city.”

CELDF note: Joe Osborne's essay title suggests he's going to explain how fracking is a threat to people and nature because it poisons the air...not just the water in communities where drilling is imposed. One might expect that the gist of such an essay would be that the drilling should be prohibited, since toxins in the air we all breath should be an unacceptable price to pay for an energy source that's no better than dirty coal, when all the pollutants are factored together from extraction to use. But that's not what the essay is about.

Bill Belitskus, co-chair of Northwestern Pennsylvania Community Rights Network, has appealed to DuBois City Council to draft an ordinance prohibiting oil and gas extraction in residential areas. Belitskus presented information on draft ordinances to be considered in Fayette and Allegheny counties focused on protecting citizens from unfavorable or inappropriate development.

In response to high interest by landowners, lease-owners, their neighbors and the people who live downstream of proposed gas drilling, the Bucks Transition Group is offering a free public forum for helpful information about the rights and protections for the people of Pennsylvania. Shireen Parsons will discuss Pennsylvania citizens’ rights and possibilities of redress. Parsons is a community organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in PA.

This program will take place at the Unitarian Universalist Church (around the corner from the Belfast Library) on October 30th from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The tuition is $100 which includes an extensive curriculum, and there are some full or partial scholarships available. Flyers are available in the Monroe Town Hall lobby. To register, or ask questions, please contact Chad Nicholson at 541-3649 or e-mail chad@celdf.org.

But it's not just because gas drilling corporations have more money than municipal governments. It's because state government and corporate decisionmakers work hand-in-hand to ensure that state law overrides local laws even when those local laws protect communities and the environment better than state law.

I have personally investigated the case of federal fisheries regulations and shown that the record is clear: neither economists, nor environmentalists, nor government bureaucrats have any right to impose the regulations they have been imposing upon the fishermen during the last 20 or more years. Indeed, those rules and regulations have been depriving the fishermen of their rights to fish, their right of access to the common wealth of our natural resources and appropriate it on the basis of their labor.

he Northwestern Pennsylvania Community Rights Network understands that it is time to protect our communities through an aggressive rights-based initiative, which establishes the right to local decision-making on issues with direct local impact. The Network questions the use of “regulation” (adjusting and documenting the rate of destruction) and “mitigation” (putting Band-Aids on amputations), which negotiate away the absolute rights of people, communities and nature.

The practical implications of the law are significant. The Town Select Board and the people at Town Meeting can adopt laws that promote sustainable practices and development based on the aspirations of the community, rather than bowing to the claims of corporate lawyers that local laws may not “interfere” with corporate priorities. In addition, corporate representatives cannot claim to have “legal standing” that obliges the Town to allow them equal rights to testify and influence local decision-making. The new law recognizes the people as the source of governing authority and that corporations are “creatures of the state,” created with the people’s blessing, without unalienable rights. As such, their activities are subject to governance by the community in which they operate.

In partnership with Global Exchange and Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, proponents of the Mt. Shasta City Community Water Rights & Self-Government Ordinance are working to pass an ordinance that will prohibit corporations from withdrawing water from the municipal aquifer and will also prohibit weather manipulation from cloud seeding in the Mount Shasta keystone bioregion.

The Mount Shasta City Council voted unanimously Monday evening to order a special report on the Mt. Shasta Community Water Rights and Self Governance Ordinance, which would prevent corporations from cloud seeding and bulk water extraction within Mount Shasta city limits.

The new Ordinance under consideration asserts that the “Pennsylvania legislature has repeatedly violated the right of Packer Township residents to govern their own municipality” and calls for “the outright nullification of the doctrine of preemption when it prohibits the people of Packer Township from adopting higher standards than those set forth in state law, but also requires the people of Packer Township to refuse to recognize the authority of the Attorney General or the courts, when those entities attempt to enforce the legislature’s illegitimate acts.”