This original blog by Jane Anne Morris was published on her website, DemocracyThemePark.org on January 24, 2016. There are two kinds of activist groups, equally (in)effective. Which are you? And why? Pop-up activists tend their topiary and anguish over bathroom fixtures until… a Big Bad Issue pops up and invigorates them. Permanent Waves — the second kind of activist group [...]
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.
Cliff Helming led this public forum in Carbondale, Colorado, on May 27, 2015. Cliff is a board member of the Colorado Community Rights Network and the President of the National Community Rights Network. In response to state preemption of community rights to local self-government; preemption of the Lafayette, Colorado's Community Bill of Rights for Banning [...]
This article by Jane Anne Morris was published on her website, DemocracyThemePark.org on April 5, 2015. It contains the entire 1995 booklet she wrote, titled, "How to Research the Legal History of Corporations in Your State". The piece below, once available as a pamphlet, was written in 1998 to try to induce “activists” to pierce the invisible force [...]
An original speech by Paul Cienfuegos - presented in Minneapolis on February 23, 2015. Paul used Naomi Klein's extraordinary book, This Changes Everything, as the jumping off point for his groundbreaking speech, proposing the Community Rights strategy as the critical missing piece in Naomi's book. In fact, Naomi's vision begs for a Community Rights solution, [...]
Thomas Linzey was interviewed by Paul Roland on the KBOO Radio show, Wednesday Morning Talk Radio, in 2014. Thomas Linzey is the Executive Director of Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. Listen to the entire 57 minute interview HERE.
Thomas Linzey, Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, gave a speech at the Colorado Community Rights Network's State Assembly on August 30, 2014. Linzey spoke about the challenges and successes of local communities asserting their rights to local governance. The Colorado Community Rights Network helps communities create their own local laws to define and [...]
Ben Price made a presentation and answered questions on a conference call with the local Community Rights group in Fairfield, Iowa, on February 25, 2014. This local group has written a draft ordinance that would prohibit any further CAFO's (factory farms) in Jefferson County, Iowa. Ben is the Projects Director of Community Environmental Legal Defense [...]
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 [...]
