Overview

"We the People offers powerful portraits of communities across the United States that have faced threats from environmentally destructive corporate projects and responded by successfully banning those projects at a local level. We hear the inspiring voices of ordinary citizens and activists practicing a cutting-edge form of organizing developed by the nonprofit law firm, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). Their methodology is an answer for the frustrations of untold numbers of activists who have been defeated time and again by corporate political power and legal entitlement. Instead of fighting against what we don't want, this book can teach us to create from the ground up what we do want, basing our vision in local control and law. By refusing to cooperate with the unjust laws that favor corporate profit over local sustainability, communities can show the way forward, driving their rights into state constitutions and, eventually, into the federal Constitution. In communities from New Hampshire to Oregon, new forms of local organizing have sprung up to fight fracking, mining, dumping of toxic waste, and industrial agriculture, among other environmental assaults. These communities have recognized that the law has ""legalized"" the damaging actions of corporations, while providing no recourse against harm, and they have therefore decided to create a new system of law that makes local control and sustainability legal. Starting small, this process has spread from rural Pennsylvania to larger cities and towns, and has resulted in the creation of state networks seeking to amend state constitutions. This work is about finishing the American Revolution by giving up the illusion of democracy and forging a system of true self-governance. In addition, this is about recognizing in law, for the first time in history, that nature possesses legally enforceable rights of its own."

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9781629632292

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We The People catalogs the newest legal tools available to communities who want to use self-governance to preserve their natural heritage and fight back against corporate oppression. The individual stories of courageous action are a stark contrast to the false narrative that communities have to settle for what big government and big business allows them to have. While the outcome is never certain, rediscovering hope of local self-determination creates stronger communities and a better tomorrow. --Breean Beggs, City Councilmember, Spokane, Washington

These stories from the front lines of the community rights movement remind us of how corporate 'rights' supersede the rights of 'we the people' at the local level, and how we can never build the democracy we want unless a grassroots rebellion arises from below to challenge corporate supremacy. Every community fighting a corporate goliath should take the lessons from these pages to heart. Thom Hartmann, author and host of The Thom Hartmann Program For thousands of years, the law of human beings was to keep the covenant with the natural world. Greed, the rise of empire and the modern corporate state have undermined this covenant and placed communities, human health, and the natural world in peril. The work on restoration of the rights of nature, and the rights of those who live there, or community rights, is essential to the transformation of our legal and policy system into one which is sustainable, and one which will serve the needs of the natural world and the seven generations ahead. This book is not only the concept, it is most importantly the practice of the hard work of making change. Winona LaDuke, executive director, Honor the Earth As we scan the landscape of cataclysmic destruction, both environmental and social, behind the curtain in most cases is an economic motive. The rhinoceros in the room today is corporate power, the inevitable logic of a system that relentlessly concentrates wealth, distributes poverty, and leaves in its terrible wake a democracy deficit. This powerful book is a field guide to nonviolent revolution. It tells the story of how courageous communities are using innovative legal and political strategies to restore nature, communities, and democracy. It s some of the most important work in the world today. Read it and act. Kenny Ausubel, CEO and founder, Bioneers

Author Information

"Anneke Campbell is a writer and documentary filmmaker who has worked for many years to advance the causes of justice and respect for all humanity and the environment. She is the coauthor of Moonrise. Thomas Linzey is an attorney and the executive director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. He is the coauthor of YES! magazine's ""This Changes Everything."""

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