This letter to the editor by Michelle Sanborn of the New Hampshire Community Rights Network (NHCRN) appeared in InDepthNH.org, August 26, 2018.

Brief commentary by Community Rights US media team member Curt Hubatch: A lot of people ask what they can do when faced with a corporate harm like an oil pipeline, frac-sand mine, factory farm, or pick your poison. Michelle Sanborn lays out clearly in this letter to the editor what can be done from a Community Rights perspective. Check this out:

“Firstly, we can recognize that we have 1) the inherent and inalienable right to protect our pursuit of life and protect our properties and 2) the moral responsibility to protect both local ecosystems and economies. Secondly, we can exercise this right and responsibility by way of adopting rights-based ordinances (RBOs). Almost a dozen NH communities have done just this to address proposed corporate harm.”
 
We at Community Rights US (CRUS) invite you to read the rest of Michelle’s insightful letter, then take a look around our website and see how you can help support and build the Community Rights movement in the United States.

Eversource recently appealed to New Hampshire’s Supreme Court, contesting the Site Evaluation Committee’s (SEC) denial of Northern Pass. This appeal was expected by those in the NH community rights movement because when corporations don’t get the answers they want, they challenge the decision-making system, with only required consideration for the wishes of people affected by a proposed project.

This kind of corporate jockeying is par for the course in a state and federal decision-making system made up of a web of regulatory agencies that operate not to protect people and planet but to facilitate corporate applications like that for Northern Pass. Were the system truly designed to protect rather than to facilitate, local people affected by proposed corporate projects would sit at the decision-making table with real authority, not merely with permission to make token public comments regarding their local needs. Read the rest of Michelle Sanborn’s insightful letter HERE…