Protecting the Rights of
People & Nature From
the Local Up
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Join US for our first-ever Community Rights US Livestream Fundraiser!
On April 30th and May 1st, Community Rights US is hosting an Arts and Culture Livestream event.
We are excited to celebrate the turning of the seasons and the history of workers’ struggles for human rights on May Day, also known as Beltane AND International Workers Day. Our eclectic crew of musicians, artists, crafters, gamers, and other entertainers will be sharing a wide variety of programming related to Nature, Work, Human Rights, People’s History, plus lots of arts and crafts just for fun!
The event will stretch over 24 hours, beginning noon on Friday with engaging skillshares – arts and crafts plus other skills like cooking and gardening – ending Saturday midday with educational talks about the deep cultural significance of May Day (plus some more fun skillshares!).
The heart of the program will be a world-class concert on Friday night – we’ve got famous singer-songwriters, such as Dana Lyons and David Rovics, plus so much more, including a late night DJ spinning dance music and gamer-entertainers in the wee hours!
Between our many talented streamers, the CRUS crew will educate about our work and promote our fundraiser. Check out our HOTT new fundraising video. And be sure to bookmark our Twitch page, so you can find it again easily. We will share the full schedule very soon!
Do you have time and talents that you’d like to contribute? There is still time to sign up! Please, contact Twitch@CommunityRights.US if you would like to participate, or just want to learn more.
Solidarity,
Tyler Norman
Director, CRUS
We need to both abolish our use of fossil fuels and cut energy demand NOW
In the early days of US energy corporations building commercial nuclear power plants that they claimed at the time would be “too cheap to meter,” an anti-nuclear-power movement rose up rapidly in response. It didn’t demand safer nukes, its call was for “No Nukes.” Its stance was abolitionist, which was the right position, right from the start of the movement.
Other localized movements have also understood the importance of a hardline stance, such as those who fought to ban strip mining in Appalachia in the 1970’s. Frontline communities, who suffered from poisonous mine waste, unsafe working conditions, and the economic hardships of boom-and-bust business cycles, wanted the practice entirely banned.
Unfortunately, these examples are the exception to the rule over the past few decades of environmental activism. In the Appalachian case, Big Green environmental groups and Washington politicians, swindled the Appalachian people with a “regulatory framework” that allowed and even normalized harmful practices to continue.
In another example, the movement to get pesticides out of our food supply uses all the right words in their messaging, but their actual demands are all about strengthening food chemical regulations, or enforcing existing regulations, both of which simply legalize and normalize numerous recognized poisons in our food supply. There are many other examples of this kind of “regulatory law” activism in the US. In fact for most groups, it’s all they know.
So thank goodness that someone is finally stating the obvious, in the recent Guardian article about fossil fuels and the climate emergency titled, “It’s unavoidable: we must ban fossil fuels to save our planet. Here’s how we do it.” At least someone out there is calling for a quick abolition of fossil fuel use, before it’s too late. (And let’s hope it’s not already too late.) The Author makes clear that this does NOT mean claiming that so-called “natural” gas is a perfectly fine “bridge fuel” to get us there. Or by fudging the numbers with cap-and-trade systems or carbon offsets. Good start!
But then the author starts to backtrack, when he states, “One necessary condition for a ban is the existence of viable substitutes.” It would be lovely indeed if we had the time to gradually and calmly reduce our use of fossil fuels, but unfortunately we’re decades too late for that. And wind and solar energy are far less ideal technologies than we have been led to believe; they also cause enormous ecological destruction if they are merely 1 to 1 replacements for civilization’s ever-expanding demand for new energy. Instead, we need absolutely massive and rapid cuts in total energy usage, not just replacing our currently gluttonous non-renewable energy usage with so-called renewable gluttonous usage.
Alpine Meadow by Paul Cienfuegos
The author’s stated goal is exactly right, but his timeline doesn’t match the dire ecological reality on the ground. Our planet’s climatic systems are not going to sit idly by while we tinker with our energy demands. Or lie to ourselves that high tech and energy intensive carbon-capture machines are the solution, or new supposedly safer models of commercial nuclear energy, or the electrification of our utterly devastating car culture. Let’s get real! We’re in a pickle of our own making, and there’s only one way out – a massive and rapid drop in DEMAND for energy. And it needs to be led by those who live in the most energy gluttonous societies, such as the United States. We need to be leading the way.
What are the mechanisms, what are the processes, for We The People leading this effort – thinking and acting much more boldly – as The Sovereign People that we actually are? We have the Constitutional authority to govern ourselves, especially when our elected and appointed officials (at all levels of government) are not fulfilling their “consent of the governed” responsibilities to us.
What would a citizen-led fossil-fuels abolitionist movement actually look like? Actually feel like? What new energy reduction policies would We The People be urging, if We understood that We have ultimate governing authority? And on what timeline? It’s high time we figured this out. HERE is a list of examples of what We could be calling for, organizing for, in our own communities – actual municipal or county Community Rights laws that We could be working to pass TODAY.
Bold social change ALWAYS begins locally, and scales up from there. Is there anyone out there reading this who wants to have this urgent conversation with us at Community Rights US? We look forward to hearing from YOU.
Warmly,
Paul Cienfuegos
CRUS Founding Director
Essential News from the Web
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Ponca to Recognize Rights of the Arkansas and Salt Fork Rivers in Tribal Law
Uh-Oh, Nevada Wants To Let Corporations Form Their Own Governments
What’s More Legit Than Community Activism?
Want to help further the work of Community Rights US?
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