This article by Thomas Linzey was originally published at Occupy.com on July 1, 2013. Thomas is the Executive Director of Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. A little over 10 years ago, a small, rural township in central Pennsylvania banned corporate factory hog farms from their community. A couple of years later, several New Hampshire and Maine towns [...]
A critique of the Food Sovereignty movement in the US, through a Community Rights lens, by Trisha Mandes. The International Peasant’s Movement—La Via Campesina, defines food sovereignty as “the human right of all people to healthy, culturally appropriate, sustainably grown food, and the right of communities to determine their own food systems” (1). Are our [...]
The 600 residents of Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, have done a laudable jobof keeping the vulgarities of modern life at bay. There are no fast-food restaurants, no neon signs. Instead, the former iron-mining town has rambling country inns and a main road lined with Victorian and Arts and Crafts houses. Locals gather for breakfast, as they have since [...]
This article by Jane Anne Morris was published on her website, DemocracyThemePark.org, on October 15, 2012. Regulatory agencies are not, and never were, the Great Protectors of the public interest that hazy origin myths suggest.1Understanding regulatory failure entails accepting this inconvenient truth and then moving on. Are we ready to go beyond the usual ritualistic laments about how [...]
Ward Morehouse was the co-founder of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD). He died on June 30, 2012, while swimming laps, one of his favorite activities. He was 83. His death comes less than nine months after POCLAD's other co-founder, Richard Grossman, passed away. Below are reflections from Ward's present and past POCLAD colleagues [...]
This essay was written by Paul Cienfuegos and Matt Guynn in preparation for an experimental weekend-long Organizers Training bringing together the issues of Nonviolence and Community Rights. The workshop took place on June 30 & July 1, 2012 in Portland, Oregon. (And which, by the way, was well attended and highly successful!) It may seem [...]
Richard Grossman died of cancer on November 22, 2011. We miss him terribly. Jan Edwards wrote this essay about Richard's life and work in Justice Rising, a publication of the Alliance for Democracy. When Richard Grossman died of cancer on November 22, 2011, he was still searching for the answer to his fundamental question: How do we turn ourselves into [...]
This is an unfinished draft of a document Richard Grossman was working on when he died in November of 2011 at the age of 68. Pay special attention to the Notes section in the latter half. As of 12:01 a.m. on July 4, 2012, no incorporated business shall exist or operate within the United States [...]
An original essay written by Ben Price, of Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. (Date unknown.) The sleight of hand that slipped the rights of property into a superior relationship to the sovereignty of the people where they live was almost imperceptible. While the local charter could supply the privileges of the rights of property, the [...]
This article by Richard Grossman was originally published in CounterPunch on April 16, 2010. So the Supreme Court has been igniting passions, has it? Of its Citizens United decision, people cried: “shameless hypocrisy,” “nothing short of fraud . . . ,” “Truly frightening . . . ,” “a narrow elite is imposing itself through the [...]