This article by Will Falk and Sean Butler was published at Deep Green Resistance News Service on June 18th, 2019. It should be clear to anyone following the events surrounding attempts by the citizens of Toledo, OH, with help from nonprofit law firm the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), to protect Lake Erie with [...]
Derrick Jensen interviews Ben Price, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund's (CELDF) national organizing director, about his newly published book, "How Wealth Rules the World: Saving our Communities and Freedoms from the Dictatorship of Property." on June 2nd, 2019. This 53 minute interview can be listened to and downloaded HERE and HERE. A bit about [...]
This press release was released by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund on May 21, 2019. Crackdowns on local democracy are accelerating, as corporate and state interests continue efforts to repress social movements. In this well-timed book, How Wealth Rules the World, Ben Price presciently reveals structures of power and law that facilitate blatant corporate supremacy in [...]
This article by Mike Ferner appeared on Counter Punch on May 15th, 2019. A rare, hybrid environmental campaign is underway to save a great lake – in fact, a Great Lake – Erie. That grand body of water, declared dead in the late 1960s experienced a textbook turnaround by the mid-80s, but is once again [...]
Derrick Jensen interviews Thomas Linzey for the seventh time on Resistance Radio. This interview happened on April 21st, 2019. In this interview they talk about the Lake Erie Bill of Rights that was recently passed in Toledo, Ohio; the Rights of Nature, and other topics concerning Community Rights. This 51 minute interview can be listened [...]
As several countries rally around the idea of legal rights for natural resources, can a similar status be granted to the Ganga? This article by Shrishtree Bajpai and Ashish Kothari appeared in The Wire on March 19th, 2019. A casual search on the internet yields a plethora of promises, allegations and symbolism linking the Ganga to [...]
This article by Alan Guebert was published in the Beatrice Daily Sun on March 21st, 2019. If the ballot box is the ultimate source of power in the United States, then voters in Toledo, Ohio, used that power Feb. 26 to create what’s now being called a “Bill of Rights” for their wide, blue neighbor, [...]
But residents in Lincoln County, Oregon, are fighting to rise about preemptive restrictions. This article by John Abbots and Eric de Place was published by the Sightline Institute on March 12, 2019. Local communities can often see connections between pollution and environmental health long before big government agencies respond. That’s what happened on the Oregon [...]
This article by David Webber was published in The Missourian on, March 8th, 2019. The Lake Erie Bill of Rights, adopted by voters in Toledo, Ohio, last month, establishes the right of citizens to sue polluters of Lake Erie for damages to the lake itself. It establishes “legal rights for nature.” At first blush, this [...]
The piece below was read aloud at Portland, Oregon’s public event: "Roasting 200 Years of Corporate Constitutional 'Rights' 1819-2019". Paul Cienfuegos, Director and Founder of Community Rights US, did the writing and reading of what follows. In 1816, the society was still primarily composed of small farmers. It was important to them that higher education would be available [...]
