It’s the day after the Lake Erie Bill of Rights vote in Toledo, Ohio. Voters overwhelming declared the Great Lake is worthy of having its own Bill of Rights. It’s a major step forward for the Rights of Nature and Community Rights movements in The United States and beyond. To the north, the Washburn County Community Rights Alliance whose meeting I facilitate, has come together for another meeting. We’ve been meeting most Wednesday evenings for two years now. I assume everyone there knew about the landmark Toledo vote. But something told me I better ask just in case. I had an article in mind to read aloud in case there was interest. And there was plenty of interest… the excited kind! I was surprised they hadn’t heard the news out of Toledo in this day and age of instant information. So we abandoned the original agenda and basked in the satisfaction of reading part of the article out loud.
We ended the reading with a powerful quote from The Toledo Social Justice Subcommittee of the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests praising the landmark vote. One of the members of our group, Father Jim, a local Catholic Priest, is passionate about Pope Francis’s call for climate and environmental justice. After some questions and comments we moved on with our meeting.
What happened next is what reminds me that we never know what a difference we might be making. And it reminds me that sharing our passion and our work for CR is a gift and an inspiration for others.
The next morning I found a request from Father Jim in my email. He requested a link to the news article we’d read from the night before. I sent the link. A few days later I was included in a email dialogue between Father Jim and Sister Sharon Havelak of Toledo, Ohio. She also takes Pope Francis’s call for environmental justice to heart. Making my way through the dialogue, the conversation turning here and there, I came across her organization’s full statement about the Lake Erie Bill of Rights vote and victory. I was so impressed by it, that I thought it deserved more eyes . Sister Sharon apparently agreed. She simply responded to my request for permission to share it by saying, “It’s OK to post the statement. The more it gets seen the better!”
So, here is the Toledo Social Justice subcommittee’s statement for your eyes and hopefully, through your sharing, for others to see:
The Toledo Social Justice subcommittee of the Association of US Catholic Priests supports the passage of the Lake Erie Bill of Rights. The initiative not only ensures the “right to a healthy environment for the residents of Toledo,” but also supports the “irrevocable rights for the Lake Erie ecosystem to exist,flourish and naturally evolve.”
One of the basic tenets of our faith tradition is the intrinsic, intimate relationship between God and creation, both human and non-human. Everything created is a gift of God; everything reflects God the creator and leads us back to God. Everything, therefore, is sacred. If we live that belief, we see the natural world as a blessing to be cultivated and protected, not as a resource to be exploited. In his encyclical, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis urges us to a “sublime communion” with the created world, so deep that we feel the pain of the Earth’s problems as our own.Lake Erie and the ecosystem around it, which supports its life and receives its life, deserves recognitionas an essential element of northwest Ohio, so that the Lake, the residents that live around it, as well as all the flora and fauna that depend on it, may flourish.
Thank you to the Toledoans who made the landmark Lake Erie Bill of Rights possible. Caring led to sharing . . . which led to connection and inspiration from one community to another. Wow! So many of us who didn’t even know of the other’s existence and shared commitments. Let’s keep going! You can sometimes make a surprising difference even with small acts.
Note: We’re trying out a new column titled “Reflections on Community Rights from Rural America”, by CR activist and organizer Curt Hubatch. Curt is an unschooling father of two young children and one young adult. Currently he works as a substitute rural letter carrier for the USPS. He lives in a cordwood house that he built with his wife, family and friends in Northwestern Wisconsin. One day while delivering mail, he heard a talk by historian Richard Grossman, and ever since he’s had his hand in the effort to elevate Community Rights over corporate “rights”.
This column along with other stories and updates from the Community Rights movement can be read at our monthly newsletter HERE.