Watch and read (also below) Charlotte Owen’s 3-minute testimony in front of the Columbus City Council HERE. This testimony was given on July 30th, 2018, and was published a day later on YouTube.
Columbus City Council Speech
By Charlotte Owens
7/30/18
“President Hardin and members of City Council, I am here today to speak in support of the Columbus Community Bill of Rights as a proposed ordinance. I know there are concerns about the legal grounds, but slavery was once legal, as was denying women the right to vote. Just as these have been changed, our current legal interpretations are untenable and undermine the access of people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I believe in your desire for people to flourish in Columbus, now and 50 or 100 years from now. To do that, we need to take a broader and longer view.
Especially since the industrial age, our subconscious view has been that the earth is so abundant that we don’t need to worry about running out of resources or about what to do with our wastes. We have taken the essentials of life for granted, when, in fact, they are priceless: clean air, potable water, fertile soil, and hospitable temperatures. We have acted as if we are separate from nature, and can use the earth as we want, without consequences. In fact, humans are only one, if a very influential, species in our biosphere, and we are dependent and interdependent: we can’t destroy everything else and have a livable habitat.
Currently, the legal fictions known as corporations have been extremely successful in getting government to extend their rights to resources at the expense of the people and other species living here. Worse, the goal of business is to grab profits while pushing environmental and human costs back on the public and the earth.
We need much more care and respect for our habitats, and local people need to have the voice to protect them. Our current situation in which private companies are able to control essential resources for their profit is becoming untenable, especially as the world population and demand for resources grow.
Even if the resource is available for a price, people who lack the money for housing or water are not able to have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When masses of people lack the basics, not only will people die, but the society and democracy are not stable.
Our current interpretation that ignores the pricelessness of our habitat and ignores the limits of the earth cannot stand, even if we wanted it to. If we want to avoid the violence of suffering people, we instead need to be part of the movement where we together can negotiate how to live sustainably within our resources.
Let Columbus be at the forefront of a movement that must happen around the world. Let Columbus help lead into the future. Together, let’s challenge what is currently legal and create what is just and sustainable.”