We The People have the right to protect ourselves. This original 29-minute interview with Paul Cienfuegos appeared on the Alliance for Democracy's Populist Dialogues TV show in Portland, Oregon on September 24, 2017. Community Rights organizer, Paul Cienfuegos, talks about the concept and history of community rights. Community Rights measures are characterized by three specific provisions [...]
This original article by Cathy Holt appeared in Mountain XPress, June 29, 2017. At the July 4 Independence From Fossil Fuels gathering at Lake Julian, many T-shirts and signs will ask “Who decides?” Who determines what kind of energy will power our city? Right now, the answer is “Duke Energy decides.” Duke (the largest electric utility [...]
This original article by Jan Morice appeared in. Cleveland.Com on May 31, 2017 CLEVELAND, Ohio - Years before cleveland.com conceived its Western Reserve project to push for fair representation in northern Ohio, a grassroots group drafted its own declaration of self-governance to launch a fight for local control. "We declare," the Columbus Declaration states, "that the [...]
This article by Simon Davis-Cohen was published in Truth-Out on March 19 2017. Simon is a remarkable up-and-coming young journalist whose writings now appear in many independent journals. He is the founder of ReadTheDirt.org. Right now, there are two bills filed in the Florida legislature that propose sweeping new restrictions on local governments. One (House [...]
A Blog Posting by Ben Price of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, from January 15, 2017. Just who are the legislators protecting when they enact legislation that forbids local law making – law making that limits or bans corporate activities like fracking, GMOs, factory farms, retail proliferation of plastic bags or sewage sludge dumping? Just who [...]
A Blog Posting by Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, from November 12, 2016. In the United States, we put a lot of faith in the theory of “checks and balances” of government power. The theory goes that, since power corrupts, it is best to not give absolute power to any one [...]
This post contains links and opening paragraphs to two articles focusing on the fight for the right to food sovereignty and local, community self-government in Maine. One of the articles was written and published in the Bangor Daily News, March 9th of 2016; the other in The Center for Media and Democracy in what appears [...]
An original essay from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. Some Historial Context: “There is no unalienable right to local self-government.” That’s what Pennsylvania attorney general Thomas Corbett said to the Commonwealth Court as he tried to overturn a municipal ordinance banning the dumping of urban sewage sludge on farm land. Was he right? When [...]
An excellent introductory Primer on “Rights-Based” Organizing, presented as a 20-minute slideshow. Produced by Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.
In this article by Simon Davis-Cohen in Truth-Out, the Michigan state government actually cites Supreme Court cases that relied on Dillon's rule, in its argument defending the Michigan Emergency Manager law that unconstitutionally swept various poor communities' city councils into the dustbin. Detroit's hardship has garnered much attention: the privatization; the racism; the water shutoffs; [...]
