Home Rule: How Communities Can Stand Up to Polluting Industries and Decide the Future of Their Towns


If you think that nothing can be done on the local level to combat big polluters like gas fracking companies, think again.

June 24, 2011


Helen Slottje at the podium, Eldred HS in Highland, NY.Photo Credit: John Back LIKE THIS ARTICLE ?

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The following is from Sabrina Artel's Trailer Talk: The Frack Talk Marcellus Shale Water Project.



In New York the debate about whether or not to allow gas drilling rages. Many strategies for controlling if, how, when and where this will happen is occurring throughout the state. In Sullivan County New York in the Catskill and Delaware River Valley Region, town boards and councils are brainstorming, debating and taking control of their municipalities. The Highland and Lumberland Committees on Energy and the Environment formed last year to decide the fate of their towns. They sponsored a forum on February 19th that was held at the Eldred High School to talk about the options that municipalities have to protect themselves from being industrialized and how the power of Home Rule can be preserved. The speakers were Helen Slottje, an attorney with the Community Environmental Defense Council based in Ithaca, NY and Ben Price, the Projects Director from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund located in Chambersburg, PA.



A gas drilling moratorium was passed in the town of Highland on May 10th. The towns of Lumberland and Tusten are in the same Delaware River Region and are working together to inform themselves, resulting in the town boards revision of their comprehensive plans, including the revision of zoning ordinances that would state that it is inappropriate to have High Impact Land Use. The Moratorium Bill has just passed in the New York State Assembly and it's currently in the New York State Senate awaiting their decision, along with that of governor Cuomo.



Carol Roig, a 14 year resident of Highland and one of the organizers of the Highland Concerned Citizens group, said, "We've been hearing that there's nothing we could do on the local level because the state had approved natural gas drilling for all zones but we started to find out that there are many legal opinions including from the New York Association of Towns that said, in fact, the Environmental Conservation Plan that governs gas drilling does not preclude towns from using their land use powers to decide whether or not they want gas drilling or any high impact industrial use on their towns."



This is a story of individuals speaking up when the gas corporations are attempting to control their hometowns and of individual becoming increasingly involved in their local government, collaborating with each other as they face drilling throughout the area

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The following is from Helen Slottje speaking to those in attendance at the forum on February 19th in Eldred, NY.





Sabrina Artel: We're exploring the impact of natural gas drilling on New York's water resources and the issues being debated in our neighborhoods throughout the country and globally. What is guiding people's decisions about whether or not to lease their land for gas drilling? And at what point do the rights of the individual diminish in the face of the health of an entire area? What impact is this having not only on the communities in the shale regions, but also on the national dialogue and policy-making decisions around energy extraction?



What defines the American Dream, and how does it impact the decisions being made in our communities? Local culture, generations of history, and beloved homes can be lost when the oil and gas companies, intent on fossil fuel extraction, move into a new region. We're facing a complete shift in our region as the largest-ever concentration of gas lies in wait beneath our feet.



The Highland and Lumberland Concerned Citizen groups hosted a forum about the legal rights municipalities have in regulating drilling for natural gas. A couple hundred people were at the forum on February 19, which was held at the Eldred High School, and this audio is from Helen Slottje, who is the managing attorney of the Community Environmental Defense Council in Ithaca. She was followed by Ben Price, who is the Project Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fun in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, so representatives from both New York and Pennsylvania shared what communities can do to regulate what happens in their community looking at home rule.



The forum was moderated by John Conway, who is the Sullivan County, New York, historian since 1993.



John Conway: Our first speaker is Helen Slottje, the managing attorney of Community Environmental Defense Council, a pro bono public interest law firm based in Ithaca, New York. The CEDC works with citizen groups and municipalities that want to retain their rural character in the face of threatened industrialization, especially that from gas drilling. The CEDC recently prepared a local law for a gas drilling task force in a town in Tompkins County in upstate New York that prohibits high-impact industrial uses. It is my honor this morning to introduce to you Helen Slottje.



Helen Slottje: So, hello. Thank you all for coming out here this morning. And many thanks for the organizers, Highland Concerned Citizens and their collaborators from across this region.



We're based in Ithaca, where my husband and I live, and where we want to be able to continue to live in peace and quiet and clean air, and that's why many of us are here today. We made specific choices to live in upstate New York, whether along the banks of the Delaware River, or on an organic farm, or in a cabin the middle of the woods. And the truth is that we want it to stay that way; that's why we came to live here.



And so, we're often accused of being NIMBYs, but the fact of the matter is, we don't want this in anyone's back yard -- not here, not in PA, not out west, and not in other countries. We believe, as I'm sure many of you do, too, that methane gas is a bridge to a very ugly future, and to a climate that's even more out of balance as we pump methane gas that's tens of times more potent than CO2 into the atmosphere.



I was recently on a panel with Sandra Steingraber and she had the most vivid description of the situation we're in that I have heard. And what she said went something like this -- with apologies to Sandra -- she's a much better poet than I am.



Imagine you have a family member who's addicted to alcohol. They've gone through all the beer, all the wine, and all the liquor, and they've even gone through the cough syrup and everything else they can find. Then they learn that buried under the foundation of the family home, stashed away during Prohibition, is a stash of alcohol, and that family member sets about buying explosives and dynamite, and they're going to blow up the floor of the house. Do you ask this person, "Pretty please," to try to slow down and maybe not wreck the house? Do you say, "Well, let's come up with some regulations and try to regulate the blowing up of the foundation of the house?" Or, do you say, "No. We're going to bar the stairs to the basement and you cannot blow up our home."



And so, that's why we're all here today -- to try to call this crazy plan off. So, we're looking for ways to cut off our addiction to fossil fuel, and so, in the absence of this addiction to fossil fuel, clearly this hare-brained scheme of methane gas extraction would be seen for what it is. But how do we go about saying "no"? What can we do?



I'm a New York lawyer, and I'm here today to talk about local land use law in the State of New York, and how we can use local laws to just say "no."



We're fortunate here in New York to have much stronger home rule protections than many other states, including Pennsylvania. And unlike Pennsylvania, we here in New York have the power to say "no" to a wide variety of land uses. But before I begin to bore you with the answers to all the legal questions that you had about land use planning in New York but were afraid to ask, let me address one other question: "What are we going to do if we don't focus on extracting methane gas?"



First, the answer to fossil fuel addiction is not to continue the extraction of fossil fuels. Only when we take some of the fossil fuel options off the table will we get serious about alternative energy sources, and not just wind or solar, but biomethane, district heating, geothermal, and options that we haven't even invented yet, because we keep subsidizing the oil and gas industry, convinced that we can't get along with out them. But in fact, they can't get along if they don't have something to sell us.



So, they're the ones scrambling to find more things that they can control and sell us, and they have no incentive to try to find energy that they cannot use to control the world economies and governments. And this choice they offer us of jobs or the environment -- often framed as the economy or the environment -- is a false choice. Healthy environments provide tremendous economic benefits, and a healthy environment leads to economic growth.



Degraded, polluted environments are not a pathway to economic prosperity -- in fact, the opposite. Poverty is the highest in the most polluted states, and research shows that the poor just didn't happen to wind up there; the poverty comes after the environmental devastation. We can look to PA and West Virginia and out west and see whether or not resource extraction has made those communities rich, or the corporations rich and the communities poor.



Which brings us back to the question that got us all out of bed and not doing the things we prefer to do, and instead focused on becoming educated activists and community leaders -- "What can we do?" So now, for the legal lecture.



So, in New York, localities derive their power from the State Constitution, and it's implementing legislation, the Municipal Home Rule Law, and the town, village or city law as appropriate. The New York State Constitution empowers local governments to adopt, amend and repeal zoning regulations, the power to perform comprehensive or other planning work, and the power to enact laws relating to the government, protection, order, health, safety and wellbeing of persons or property within their municipality. I've asked to be here this morning to talk about a land use approach that our law firm has developed that we believe will allow communities to preserve their rural character and local agriculture, tourism and sustainable economies in the face of threatened industrialization.



First, let me explain that I've spent the past two years working on gas drilling issues. When I went to my first gas drilling meeting, I had no particular opinion one way or the other about gas drilling. I certainly wasn't an environmentalist. But thousands of hours of research later, I must tell you that now I don't think that gas drilling is being done safely in our country at this time. You might have already guessed that. But, when I think about the most negative impacts from this looming industrialization, I think of the truck traffic and the associated destruction of our roads, of our enjoyment of our homes, and the negative impacts from all this diesel exhaust. And this is the impact that can most change our region, and has an impact that occurs even when everything goes right.



So, as you listen to me here today -- and just as importantly, when you listen to other advocates including those for the gas drilling companies, the regulatory partners, and landowner coalitions -- you need to know what is motivating that person. Our motivation and bias is that we are looking into this issue not from the perspective of, what can we do to help localities accommodate industry? What can we do to make sure that we don't pass a road use ordinance that industry says is too onerous? Or, what federal or state funding we might be able to find so we can build infrastructure or train our school children to take some of the most dangerous jobs that are out there?



Our firm is looking at this issue from, what can we do to say "no"? So, that's my bias -- our bias as a firm.



In fact, I'm proud of this bias, because given the way lawyers and law firms and corporations work, usually lawyers are only out looking for clients who can pay them. But how can an eagle, the night sky, or the Delaware River pay a lawyer's bill? So, with the help of grants and donations from regular people, we seek to give a voice to the environment and individual citizens who would not otherwise have the funds to work with a lawyer on environmental causes.



As we've investigated and researched the problems with industrialization and truck traffic and the toxic waste that the industry conveniently calls "brine" -- and we didn't just accept what industry and their regulatory partners and the landowner coalitions and all of their lawyers had to say as a starting point. When we simply started at the beginning and asked the question so many of you have asked, "Can they really just come into our town and do whatever they want -- put a drilling rig right next to my house or on a farmer's field, and just dump exploration and production waste in our county landfill? Haul toxic fluids in for recycling? Bang pipes next door all night long? Coat our homes with silica dust?"



We concluded that if a town used zoning to prohibit the land-based and community-based negative impacts of such activities, the answer was "no," they can't do that, at least not if the town has the political will to say "no" and follow certain procedures and a process in getting there.



"But surely, this can't be true," you might say. "We've been told for so long and by so many that there's nothing we can do." So, let's run through the objections that we hear when we talk about the proposal that towns can draft a zoning ordinance that protects the health, safety and welfare of its residents through the prohibition of high-impact industrial uses.



And when I talk today about our proposed law, I am speaking of this draft law that we prepared for a town gas drilling task force in Tompkins County, although a similar law can be drafted for other municipalities that's tailored to that community's comprehensive plan and community goals.



So first, some people have asked, "Does the town have the right to exclude or ban an industrial use -- any industrial us?" -- not just, say, gas drilling. These people have heard that towns are restricted from prohibiting certain uses, such as adult entertainment or housing for people with very limited means. And so, they wonder, do the use restrictions apply to banning industrial uses? They do not. Those restrictions are very limited and very specific in nature. They have to do with the protection of constitutional rights, specifically First Amendment rights such as free speech. But there is no question that exclusion of a specified industrial use is a proper and legitimate use of land use laws.



There's no dispute. It's what lawyers call "black letter law." In a 1974 case known as The Village of Belle Terre, a case which, by the way, involved a New York State zoning ordinance, the United States Supreme Court specifically stated the town had wide latitude to use its zoning laws to protect the public welfare. The court held, and I quote, "The concept of public welfare is broad and inclusive. The values that it represents are spiritual as well as aesthetic. It is within the power of the legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well-balanced as well as carefully patrolled ... a quiet place where yards are wide, people are few, and motor vehicles restricted, are legitimate guidelines in a land use project. This goal is a permissible one. The police power is ample to lay out zones for family values, use values, and the blessings of quiet seclusion and clean air make the area a sanctuary for people."



And the New York Board of Appeals, the highest court in the state of New York, reached the same conclusion in a case called Gernatt Asphalt. And in Gernatt, a town had used zoning to ban mining, and the people who wanted to mine challenged the ban, saying it was unconstitutional, exclusionary zoning. The court -- again, the highest court in New York -- rejected this challenge. The court said, "We have never held that the exclusionary zoning test, which is intended to prevent a municipality from improperly keeping people out, also applies to prevent the exclusion of industrial uses. A municipality is not obliged to permit the exploitation of any or all of its natural resources within the town as a permitted use if limiting that use is a reasonable exercise of police power to prevent damage to the rights of others, and to promote the rights of the community as a whole." That's the holding of the New York Board of Appeals, again, the highest court in the state of New York.



Okay. Well then, isn't such a ban inconsistent with state or federal policy? And yes, the state and federal government have indicated broad support for natural gas extraction, buying industry's promotion of this fossil fuel as somehow green, and have gotten even the national environmental groups so desperate to stop the pillage of mountaintop removal that they're willing to make the sacrifices that methane gas entails. But I digress.



We are not a nation or state of a single policy. Let us not ignore there are many articulated state and federal policies that support the prohibition of high-impact industrial uses in rural areas. I'm only going to talk about two state policies.



Let's start with, say, the State Constitution. Our constitution provides, "The policy of the state shall be to conserve and protect its natural resources and scenic beauty, and encourage the development and improvement of its agricultural lands for the production of food and other agricultural products.



"The legislature, in implementing this policy, shall include adequate provision for the abatement of air and water pollution, and of excessive and unnecessary noise, the protection of agricultural lands, wetlands and shorelines, and the development and regulation of water resources."



So, the proposed law would seem to be consistent with that.



Next, why don't we look at the Environmental Conservation Law, the very law that contains the article on oil, gas and solution mining. The policy of that entire law, and not just the section on gas drilling, provides, "The quality of our environment is fundamental to our concern for the quality of life. It is hereby declared to be the policy of the state of New York to conserve, improve and protect its natural resources and the environment, and to prevent, abate and control water, land and air pollution in order to enhance the health, safety and welfare of the people of the state, and their overall economic and social well-being.



"It shall further be the policy of this state to develop and manage the basic resources of water, land and air to the end that the state may fulfill its responsibility as trustee of the environment for present and future generations." Again, another policy that our proposed law is consistent with.



But one principle of preemption analysis, which is what we're really talking about when we discuss whether this local law would be against federal or state policy, is that when one is trying to determine whether a federal or state law or policy preempts, supersedes or -- put another way -- invalidates a local law, is that you don't go looking for implied preemption when the extent of the preemption is set forth expressly in the statute. And that makes sense. If the legislature has taken the time to tell us what is preempted and what isn't, we don't need to go hunting around looking for more insight into their intentions.



And if you go back to the Gernatt Asphalt case, the court there said exactly that.



And in another case in 2008, the Court of Appeals held that, interpreting an express preemption clause, it is unnecessary to consider the doctrines of implied or conflict preemption. Instead, the resolution turned solely upon the proper interpretation of the statutory language.



So, the Court of Appeals has gone on to say that, "The inconsistency of a local zoning law with a state law general applicability is, of course, insufficient to trigger preemption power, for if that were so the supersession authority granted by the Municipal Home Law Rule would be meaningless." So, that's all good news for us.



What does happen when local zoning law intersects with state law? In New York State, statutes that affect the zoning powers of local governments fall into three broad categories: cases where the local government gets no say. The state decides where it wants to put a particular use, and that's it; cases where the local government can say "yes" or "no" to the use, but once you say "yes," that's it; and situations where you can say, "yes, "no," or, "yes with these conditions."



And the legislature's pretty good about making it clear which category a law falls into. So, when they want to site facilities for the mentally disabled, they expressly withdraw the zoning power of the local government. And then there are ones such as laws regulating solid waste where the statutes specifically contemplate municipal zoning and regulation.



And then there are laws like the Mining Law, the Alcohol Beverage Control Law, and the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Law, that allow a municipality to say "yes" or "no" to a use, but once you say "yes" you're prohibited from regulating the operation of process of the use. So, part of our proposed law deals with solid waste, and there's no issue with that under the state law, because municipalities are free to zone and regulate solid waste.



But other parts of our proposed law would pick up methane gas exploration and the disposal of their waste because of the high externalities that that industry currently inflicts on the communities around it. So, does this run afoul of the prohibitions in environmental conservation law? We don't think so. What that law says is that, "The provisions of this article shall supersede ..." ... okay, there's our express supersession language, so in this case we don't need to go around searching for more conflicts that put it out there. "The provisions of this article shall supersede all local laws or ordinances relating to the regulation of the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining industries;" ... and then there's an exemption clause, an exception to that prohibition against regulation. And that reads, "but shall not supersede local government jurisdiction, overlook roads, or the rights of local governments under the Real Property Law."



So, a local law may regulate the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining industries if it's a law that regulates the roads or real property taxation and is otherwise within the power of the municipality.



The statute reads again, "The provisions of this article shall supersede all local laws or ordinances relating to the regulation of the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining industries, but shall not supersede local government jurisdiction over local roads or the rights of local government under the Real Property Law."



Tthe question is, what does "relating to the regulation of the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining industries" mean? When does a local law relate to the regulation of this industry?



In answering this question, we can turn to our court, and in fact the New York courts have had occasion to interpret similar phrases, including in the Mining Statute, which previously read much like the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Statute reads now.



So, what did the court decide? The Court of Appeals held that regulating an industry meant regulating its operations and processes, and did not mean local zoning aimed at limiting the externalities of a land use. And if you look at the legislative history of the statute to try to get some idea of what the intent of the legislature was, there's barely a mention of this particular section because, in fact, this was part of a larger bill that was aimed at increasing permitting fees so that the DEC could hire more regulators. I guess some things really never do change.



We don't think that this interpretation of the statute ... that the statute says what it means -- localities cannot regulate industry -- but that doesn't mean that they can't apply their local land use laws is particularly bold, visionary, clever, or creative ... sometimes I'd like to think so.



This is not a situation where we're trying to create new law attempting to overturn a law that we don't agree with, or even trying to distinguish a lower court holding that goes against what we're saying. It's a fact that there's not one single published New York State case that says municipalities cannot do what we suggest they can do -- to ban high-impact industrial uses.



So, what's the next objection? Okay, well, won't the landowners and the landowner coalitions, or their lessees, sue the town if we pass such an ordinance? Well, of course, anyone can sue anyone for practically anything, and in the land use context it's not unheard of for disgruntled landowners to sue a town when a town passes a zoning ordinance that they don't like, alleging that the law constitutes a taking of their property. But, in the first place, we don't believe that a prohibition on high-impact industrial uses is a compensable regulatory taking.



Certainly, when the government physically invades your property, or takes it and subjects it to its own use, the government is required to compensate you. But enacting regulations that limit a use only results in a compensable taking when the regulations so diminish the value of property that the owner is left with no or virtually no permitted use of the property -- no economic value.



In this case, the owner of the property is left with whatever the use of the property is now, which is presumably something other than high-impact industrial use. Maybe it's a residence; maybe it's a farm; but presumably it has value.



Furthermore, to the extent that the gas drilling industry -- at least as it's currently executed -- falls into this definition of high-impact industrial use, and would thus be prohibited, in New York the only right that's impaired is the right to explore, because in New York no one owns methane gas until it's been brought to the surface and captured. So, you don't own the gas in the first place. And furthermore, gas drilling is not completely excluded under the terms of this proposed ordinance. The only reason gas drilling falls into the definition of high-impact uses is the externalities that result on the community and surrounding properties given how industry currently operates. Property owners remain free to drill for oil and gas to the extent they can do so without imposing major traffic congestion on everyone else; produce deleterious substances that have to be disposed of elsewhere; and have other negative impacts on their neighbors.



Well, we like to think, "It's my property and I can do whatever I want." That's only true if you can do what you want without negatively impacting other property owners because, after all, they have the right to enjoy their property as well. No one has the right to conduct a nuisance. It's not a property right enjoyed by industry, so nothing's been taken. But still, you might say, "Well, even so, the town can get sued and would have to defend the lawsuit."



So, we built into the proposed law a requirement that an administrative challenge be brought before the town as a condition before bringing any lawsuit alleging any sort of taking. So, if a landowner were to claim, "This is an unconstitutional deprivation of my property rights, substantive due process, or equal protection," they have to bring a claim in front of the town. And both federal and state courts require that administrative remedies be exhausted prior to filing for judicial relief.



So, a town would not be in a position where it was blindsided by a court case seeking damages. A town would be in a position to evaluate the merits of a claimant's case and to pursue an appropriate course in advance of a court filing. In other words, a town would be in a position to control its own destiny as to whether to stand its ground or retreat. If it retreats at the administrative remedy stage, then there's no court case, and of course no damages.



In conclusion, we don't believe the legal strategy that we have outlined is particularly novel or out of the box. It doesn't involve challenging the holding of any published judicial decision, and there's absolutely no reported New York case at any level that says that what we're suggesting cannot or should not be done. Well, of course, no one can guarantee that a lawsuit will not be filed. We believe it is much more likely than not that a town would prevail in a lawsuit if one were brought challenging the law, and moreover there's this Administrative Remedy provision which should act to place a town in control of its own liability destiny should any real risk of a damage award arise.



I hope that we have addressed the concerns and questions that you may have about whether or not a proposed law that would prohibit high-impact industrial uses is a worthwhile approach in the first place, and that we can next turn to a discussion of what such a law would actually look like in towns like yours. Thank you very much.



Sabrina Artel is the creator and host of Trailer Talk, stories from America's kitchen table. Her weekly radio show explores community engagement through conversations about culture, politics, the arts and the environment. To find out more about Trailer Talk's Frack Talk Marcellus Shale Water Project please visit Trailer Talk.

Seeds of Hope: How Sustainable Activism Transformed Detroit

After the death throes of urban decay, what the Motor City can teach us about vision, community, and the power of movements.

June 22, 2011  |  

In 1988, we in Detroit were at one of the great turning points in history. Detroit’s deindustrialization, devastation, and depopulation had turned the city into a wasteland, but it had also created the space and place where there was not only the necessity but also the possibility of creating a city based not on expanding production but on new values of sustainability and community. Instead of investing our hopes in GM, Ford, and Chrysler and becoming increasingly alienated from each other and the Earth, we needed to invest in, work with, and rely on each other.

Through no fault of our own, we had been granted an opportunity to begin a new chapter in the evolution of the human race, a chapter that global warming and corporate globalization had made increasingly necessary. In its dying, Detroit could also be the birthplace of a new kind of city.

As Detroiters, we were very conscious of our city as a movement city. Out of the ashes of industrialization we decided to seize the opportunity to create a twenty-first-century city, a city both rural and urban, which attracts people from all over the world because it understands the fundamental need of human beings at this stage in our evolution to relate more responsibly to one another and to the Earth.

In pursuit of this vision, we organized a People’s Festival of community organizations in November 1991, describing it as “a Multi-Generational, Multi-Cultural celebration of Detroiters, putting our hearts, minds, hands and imaginations together to redefine and recreate a city of Community, Compassion, Cooperation, Participation and Enterprise in harmony with the Earth.” A few months later, to engage young people in the movement to create this new kind of city, we founded Detroit Summer and described it as a multicultural, intergenerational youth program/movement to rebuild, redefine, and respirit Detroit from the ground up.
Through Detroit Summer, urban youth of a lost post-1960s generation, whom many adults had come to shun, fear, and ultimately blame for so many ills, became a part of the solution to Detroit’s problems. Recalling how the Freedom Schools of Mississippi Freedom Summer had engaged children in the civil rights movement, we asked Detroiters to just imagine how much safer and livelier our neighborhoods would be almost overnight if we reorganized education along the lines of Detroit Summer; if instead of trying to keep our children isolated in classrooms for twelve years and more, we engaged them in community-building activities with the same audacity with which the civil rights movement engaged them in desegregation activities forty years ago: planting community gardens, recycling waste, organizing neighborhood arts and health festivals, rehabbing houses, and painting public murals.

By giving our children and young people a better reason to learn than just the individualistic one of getting a job or making more money, by encouraging them to make a difference in their neighborhoods, we would get their cognitive juices flowing.

Learning would come from practice, which has always been the best way to learn. In Detroit Summer we combine physical forms of work with workshops and intergenerational dialogues on how to rebuild Detroit, thus further expanding the minds and imaginations of the young, old, and in-between. Instead of coercing young people to conform to the factory model of education, the time had come, we said, to see their rebellion as a cry for another kind of education that values them as human beings and gives them opportunities to exercise their Soul Power.

Detroit Summer began in 1992 and has since been an ongoing and developing program for more than fifteen years. Since 2005 it has been organized by a multiracial collective of twentysomething young people, many of whom have been a part of our past summer programs. With this younger generation now at the helm of leadership of the Detroit Summer Collective, the organization continues to tap the creative energies of urban youth.

Some skeptics question whether a program such as Detroit Summer can make much of a difference, given the magnitude of the city’s problems. They doubt that a program, which at its greatest capacity involved sixty youth, could have an appreciable effect in stemming the crises of school dropouts, violence, and incarceration that are stealing lives by the thousands. They ask how tending to a handful of gardens, painting one or two murals a year, and fixing up a house or vacant lot here and there can address the blight that has taken over much of the urban landscape. And they lament that small dialogues—between youth and elders, between neighbors, between people of different backgrounds, and between activists from various cultural and political traditions—cannot match the force of large demonstrations involving tens of thousands.

What they don’t understand is that our goal in creating Detroit Summer was to create a new kind of organization. We never intended for it to be a traditional left-wing organization agitating masses of youth to protest and demonstrate. Nor did we intend that it become a large nonprofit corporation of the sort that raises millions of dollars from government, corporations, and foundations to provide employment and services to large populations.

Both of these forms of organizing can be readily found in Detroit and all major cities in the United States, but the system continues to function because neither carries the potential to transform society. By contrast, our hope was that Detroit Summer would bring about a new vision and model of community activism—one that was particularly responsive to the new challenges posed by the conditions of life and struggle in the postindustrial city. We did not feel this could be accomplished if control of our activities was ceded to the dictates of government or the private sector, even though this meant that we would be working on a small scale. However, by working on this scale, we could pay much closer and greater attention to the relationships we were building among ourselves and with communities in Detroit and beyond.

The result has been that we have been able to develop the type of critical connections—of both ideas and people—that are the essential ingredients of building a movement. The best metaphor Detroit Summer has come up with to characterize itself is “planting seeds of Hope.”

What has developed through both conscious organizing drives and the actions of many individual residents is a significant urban agricultural movement in Detroit. All over the city there are now thousands of family gardens, more than two hundred community gardens, and dozens of school gardens. All over the city there are garden cluster centers that build relationships between gardeners living in the same area by organizing garden workdays and community meetings where participants share information on resources and how to preserve and market their produce.

When I think of this incredible movement that is already in motion, I feel our connection to women in a village in India who sparked the Chipko movement by hugging the trees to keep them from being cut down by private contractors. I also feel our kinship with the Zapatistas in Chiapas, who announced to the world on January 1, 1994, that their development was going to be grounded in their own culture and not stunted by NAFTA’s free market. And I think about how Detroiters can draw inspiration from these global struggles and how—just as we were in the ages of the CIO unions and the Motown sound—our city can also serve as a beacon of Hope.

Living at the margins of the postindustrial capitalist order, we in Detroit are faced with a stark choice of how to devote ourselves to struggle. Should we strain to squeeze the last drops of life out of a failing, deteriorating, and unjust system? Or should we instead devote our creative and collective energies toward envisioning and building a radically different form of living?

That is what revolutions are about. They are about creating a new society in the places and spaces left vacant by the disintegration of the old; about evolving to a higher Humanity, not higher buildings; about Love of one another and of the Earth, not Hate; about Hope, not Despair; about saying YES to Life and NO to War; about becoming the change we want to see in the world.
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This article was adapted for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions, from The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by Grace Lee Boggs with Scott Kurashige.

Grace Lee Boggs has been an activist for more than 60 years and blogs for YES! Magazine. She is the author of the autobiography Living for Change.Scott Kurashige is director of the Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies Program at the University of Michigan and the author of The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles.

10 Steps to Defeat the Corporatocracy | Economy | AlterNet

10 Steps to Defeat the Corporatocracy | Economy

10 Steps to Defeat the Corporatocracy

The only way to overcome the power of money is regain our courage and solidarity. Here's how to do that.

May 20, 2011 |

Many Americans know that the United States is not a democracy but a "corporatocracy," in which we are ruled by a partnership of giant corporations, the extremely wealthy elite and corporate-collaborator government officials. However, the truth of such tyranny is not enough to set most of us free to take action. Too many of us have become pacified by corporatocracy-created institutions and culture.

Some activists insist that this political passivity problem is caused by Americans' ignorance due to corporate media propaganda, and others claim that political passivity is caused by the inability to organize due to a lack of money. However, polls show that on the important issues of our day - from senseless wars, to Wall Street bailouts, to corporate tax-dodging, to health insurance rip-offs - the majority of Americans are not ignorant to the reality that they are being screwed. And American history is replete with organizational examples - from the Underground Railroad, to the Great Populist Revolt, to the Flint sit-down strike, to large wildcat strikes a generation ago - of successful rebels who had little money but lots of guts and solidarity.

The elite spend their lives stockpiling money and have the financial clout to bribe, divide and conquer the rest of us. The only way to overcome the power of money is with the power of courage and solidarity. When we regain our guts and solidarity, we can then more wisely select from - and implement - time-honored strategies and tactics that oppressed peoples have long used to defeat the elite. So, how do we regain our guts and solidarity?

1. Create the Cultural and Psychological "Building Blocks" for Democratic Movements

Historian Lawrence Goodwyn has studied democratic movements such as Solidarity in Poland, and he has written extensively about the populist movement in the United States that occurred during the end of the 19th century (what he calls "the largest democratic mass movement in American history"). Goodwyn concludes that democratic movements are initiated by people who are neither resigned to the status quo nor intimidated by established powers. For Goodwyn, the cultural and psychological building blocks of democratic movements are individual self-respect and collective self-confidence. Without individual self-respect, we do not believe that we are worthy of power or capable of utilizing power wisely, and we accept as our role being a subject of power. Without collective self-confidence, we do not believe that we can succeed in wresting away power from our rulers.

Thus, it is the job of all of us - from parents, to students, to teachers, to journalists, to clergy, to psychologists, to artists and EVERYBODY who gives a damn about genuine democracy - to create individual self-respect and collective self-confidence.

2. Confront and Transform ALL Institutions that Have Destroyed Individual Self-Respect and Collective Self-Confidence

In "Get Up, Stand Up, " I detail 12 major institutional and cultural areas that have broken people's sprit of resistance, and all are "battlefields for democracy" in which we can fight to regain our individual self-respect and collective self confidence:
• Television
• Isolation and bureaucratization
• "Fundamentalist consumerism" and advertising/propaganda
• Student loan debt and indentured servitude
• Surveillance
• The decline of unions/solidarity among working people
• Greed and a "money-centric" culture
• Fear-based schools that teach obedience
• Psychopathologizing noncompliance
• Elitism via professional training
• The corporate media
• The US electoral system

As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, "All our things are right and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike."

3. Side Each Day in Every Way With Anti-Authoritarians

We can recover our self-respect and strength by regaining our integrity. This process requires a personal transformation to overcome our sense of powerlessness and fight for what we believe in. Integrity includes acts of courage resisting all illegitimate authorities. We must recognize that in virtually every aspect of our life in every day, we can either be on the side of authoritarianism and the corporatocracy or on the side of anti-authoritarianism and democracy. Specifically, we can question the legitimacy of government, media, religious, educational and other authorities in our lives, and if we establish that an authority is not legitimate, we can resist it. And we can support others who are resisting illegitimate authorities. A huge part of solidarity comes from supporting others who are resisting the illegitimate authorities in their lives. Walt Whitman had it right: "Resist much, obey little. Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved."

4. Regain Morale by Thinking More Critically About Our Critical Thinking

While we need critical thinking to effectively question and challenge illegitimate authority - and to wisely select the best strategies and tactics to defeat the elite - critical thinking can reveal some ugly truths about reality, which can result in defeatism. Thus, critical thinkers must also think critically about their defeatism, and realize that it can cripple the will and destroy motivation, thus perpetuating the status quo. William James (1842–1910), the psychologist, philosopher, and occasional political activist (member of the Anti-Imperialist League who, during the Spanish-American War, said, "God damn the US for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles!") had a history of pessimism and severe depression, which helped fuel some of his greatest wisdom on how to overcome immobilization. James, a critical thinker, had little stomach for what we now call "positive thinking," but he also came to understand how losing belief in a possible outcome can guarantee its defeat. Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), an Italian political theorist and Marxist activist who was imprisoned by Mussolini, came to the same conclusions. Gramsci's phrase "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will" has inspired many critical thinkers, including Noam Chomsky, to maintain their efforts in the face of difficult challenges.

5. Restore Courage in Young People

The corporatocracy has not only decimated America's labor union movement, it has almost totally broken the spirit of resistance among young Americans - an even more frightening achievement. Historically, young people without family responsibilities have felt most freed up to challenge illegitimate authority. But America's education system creates fear, shame and debt - all killers of the spirit of resistance. No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top and standardized testing tyranny results in the kind of fear that crushes curiosity, critical thinking and the capacity to constructively resist illegitimate authority. Rebel teachers, parents, and students - in a variety of overt and covert ways - have already stopped complying with corporatocracy schooling. We must also stop shaming intelligent young people who reject college, and we must instead recreate an economy that respects all kinds of intelligence and education. While the corporatocracy exploits student loan debt to both rake in easy money and break young people's spirit of resistance, the rest of us need to rebel against student loan debt and indentured servitude. And parents and mental health professionals need to stop behavior-modifying and medicating young people who are resisting illegitimate authority.

6. Focus on Democracy Battlefields Where the Corporate Elite Don't Have Such a Large Financial Advantage

The emphasis of many activists is on electoral politics, but the elite have a huge advantage in this battlefield, where money controls the US electoral process. By focusing exclusively on electoral politics at the expense of everything else, we: (1) give away power when we focus only on getting leaders elected and become dependent on them; (2) buy into the elite notion that democracy is all about elections; (3) lose sight of the fact that democracy means having influence over all aspects of our lives; and (4) forget that if we have no power in our workplace, in our education and in all our institutions, then there will never be democracy worthy of the name. Thus, we should focus our fight more on the daily institutions we experience. As Wendell Berry said, "If you can control a people's economy, you don't need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant."

7. Heal from "Corporatocracy Abuse" and "Battered People's Syndrome" to Gain Strength

Activists routinely become frustrated when truths about lies, victimization and oppression don't set people free to take action. But when we human beings eat crap for too long, we gradually lose our self-respect to the point that we become psychologically too weak to take action. Many Americans are embarrassed to accept that, after years of corporatocracy subjugation, we have developed "battered people's syndrome" and what Bob Marley called "mental slavery." To emancipate ourselves and others, we must:
• Move out of denial and accept that we are a subjugated people.
• Admit that we have bought into many lies. There is a dignity, humility, and strength in facing the fact that, while we may have once bought into some lies, we no longer do so.
• Forgive ourselves and others for accepting the abuser's lies. Remember the liars we face are often quite good at lying.
• Maintain a sense of humor. Victims of horrific abuse, including those in concentration camps and slave plantations, have discovered that pain can either immobilize us or be transformed by humor into energy.
• Stop beating ourselves up for having been in an abusive relationship. The energy we have is better spent on healing and then working to change the abusive system; this provides more energy, and when we use this energy to provide respect and confidence for others, everybody gets energized.

8. Unite Populists by Rejecting Corporate Media's Political Divisions

The corporate media routinely divides Americans as "liberals," "conservatives" and "moderates," a useful division for the corporatocracy, because no matter which of these groups is the current electoral winner, the corporatocracy retains power. In order to defeat the corporatocracy, it's more useful to divide people in terms of authoritarians versus anti-authoritarians, elitists versus populists and corporatists versus anticorporatists. Both left anti-authoritarians and libertarian anti-authoritarians passionately oppose current US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Wall Street bailout, the PATRIOT Act, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the so-called "war on drugs" and several other corporatocracy policies. There are differences between anti-authoritarians but, as Ralph Nader and Ron Paul have together recently publicly discussed, we can form coalitions and alliances on these important power-money issues. One example of an anti-authoritarian democratic movement (which I am involved in) is the mental health treatment reform movement, comprised of left anti-authoritarians and libertarians. We all share distrust of Big Pharma and contempt for pseudoscience, and we believe that people deserve truly informed choice regarding treatment. We respect Erich Fromm, the democratic-socialist psychoanalyst, along with Thomas Szasz, the libertarian psychiatrist, both passionate anti-authoritarians who have confronted mental health professionals for using dogma to coerce people.

9. Unite "Comfortable Anti-Authoritarians" and "Afflicted Anti-Authoritarians

This "comfortable-afflicted" continuum is based on the magnitude of pain that one has simply getting through the day. The term comfortable anti-authoritarian is not a pejorative one, but refers to those anti-authoritarians lucky enough to have decent paying and maybe even meaningful jobs, or platforms through which their voices are heard or social supports in their lives. Many of these comfortable anti-authoritarians may know that there are millions of Americans working mindless jobs in order to hold on to their health insurance, or hustling two low-wage jobs to pay college loans, rent and a car payment, or who may be unable to find even a poorly paying, mindless job and are instead helplessly watching eviction or foreclosure and bankruptcy close in on them. However, unless these comfortable anti-authoritarians have once been part of that afflicted class - and remember what it feels like - they may not be able to fully respect the afflicted's emotional state. The afflicted need to recognize that human beings often become passive because they are overwhelmed by pain (not because they are ignorant, stupid, or lazy), and in order to function at all, they often shut down or distract themselves from this pain. Some comfortable anti-authoritarians assume that people's inactions are caused by ignorance. This not only sounds and smells like elitism, it creates resentment for many in the afflicted class who lack the energy to be engaged in any activism. Respect, resources and anything that concretely reduces their level of pain is likely to be far more energizing than a scolding lecture. That's the lesson of many democratic movements, including the Great Populist Revolt.

10. Do Not Let Debate Divide Anti-Authoritarians

Spirited debate is what democracy is all about, but when debate turns to mutual antipathy and divides anti-authoritarians, it plays into the hands of the elite. One such divide among anti-elitists is over the magnitude of change that should be worked for and celebrated. On one extreme are people who think that anything is better than nothing at all. At the other extreme are people who reject any incremental change and hold out for total transformation. We can better unite by asking these questions: Does the change increase individual self-respect and collective self-confidence, and increase one's energy level to pursue even greater democracy? Or does it feel like a sellout that decreases individual self-respect and collective self-confidence, and de-energizes us? Utilizing the criteria of increased self-respect and collective self-confidence, those of us who believe in genuine democracy can more constructively debate whether the change is going to increase strength to gain democracy or is going to take the steam out of a democratic movement. Respecting both sides of this debate makes for greater solidarity and better decisions.

To summarize, democracy will not be won without guts and solidarity. Risk-free green actions - such as shopping from independents, buying local, recycling, composting, consuming less, not watching television and so on - can certainly help counter a dehumanizing world. However, revolutions that truly transform fundamental power inequities and enable us to feel like men and women rather than children and slaves require risk, guts and solidarity.

Vision: How to Change Our Laws So That Corporations Don't Trump Communities | | AlterNet

Vision: How to Change Our Laws So That Corporations Don't Trump Communities

Vision: How to Change Our Laws So That Corporations Don't Trump Communities

Our environmental laws and regulations, rather than put in place protections for the environment, instead seem to be written to exploit it. Here's what can we do about it.

May 20, 2011 |

The following is excerpted from the recently released book, The Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth, produced by the Council of Canadians, Global Exchange and Fundacion Pachamama. This book reveals the path of a movement driving transformation of our human relationship with nature away from domination and towards balance. This book gathers the wisdom of indigenous cultures, scientists, activists small farmers, spiritual leaders and US communities who seek a different path for protecting nature by establishing Nature's Rights in law and culture. In addition to this excerpt, the book includes essays from Vandana Shiva, Desmond Tutu, Thomas Goldtooth, Eduardo Galeano, Maude Barlow and many others. Copies of the book may be obtained through Global Exchange.

It takes thousands of years for individual drops of rain to maneuver through silent passages and gently accumulate into underground aquifers. Purified and enriched over the millennia by mineral deposits deep in the earth, groundwater is the sacred lifeblood of local watersheds upon which all life -- including human communities -- depend. Yet it takes no time at all to destroy this delicate balance. In fact, all it takes is a simple piece of paper.

Steeped in colonial history, Nottingham, New Hampshire, could be a picture postcard of quaint village life in New England. Yet in 2001, this tiny rural village of 4,000 residents became the poster child for too familiar "site-fights" between small towns seeking to protect local water and large multinational corporations seeking to extract it. It was then that the USA Springs Corporation applied to the state for a permit to extract more than 400,000 gallons of water a day from Nottingham's local aquifer to bottle and sell overseas.

Corporate water withdrawals -- siphoning off hundreds of thousands of gallons a day from local aquifers -- impact both surface and groundwater resources. They deplete drinking water and can contaminate aquifers and wells. In addition, withdrawals dry up streams, wetlands, and rivers, as well as reduce lake levels, damaging habitat and harming wildlife.

For seven years the community of Nottingham came together to stop their water from being mined. Upon discovering that our own laws forbid communities from saying "no" to the wide array of dirty, destructive and unwanted practices allowed by law, they attempted to protect their local groundwater using all the tools available under the law. They did everything "right" by traditional, conventional environmental activism. They lobbied their state legislature, petitioned their government, testified at hearings, protested, rallied, educated and organized their neighbors and filed lawsuits. But as is so often the case, it just wasn't enough.

When the people of Nottingham beseeched their state environmental agency, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, to take effective action and protect the aquifer, their requests went unmet. Instead of helping them protect their water, the agency was in fact responsible for issuing permits to the corporation to take it.

Is the system broken or working perfectly?

The experience of Nottingham is shared by thousands of communities across the United States and around the world that discover that their government officials and agencies -- ostensibly in place to protect them -- are, in practice, serving other interests.

The question that the people of Nottingham were forced to ask is, "why?" Why are corporations allowed to override community concerns and put destructive projects in our midst? Why do our environmental laws and regulations, rather than put in place protections for the environment, instead seem to be written to exploit it? And why is our government helping a corporation to extract water from a community and sell it for profit, when the impacts from such projects are so significant?

These are the questions that people and communities find themselves asking when they face the threat of water extraction, mining, drilling, or a range of other activities. Based on the assumption that environmental legislation was in earnest set up to protect Nature, much of our environmental activism has logically been spent trying to "fix" what appears broken; seeking to improve the types of laws and regulations that Nottingham ran into.

But what if the system was never designed to put Nature first?

Under New Hampshire's Groundwater Protection Act -- initially lauded as an important legislative tool, corporations are awarded permits by the state to siphon off water from local aquifers. Thus, despite the Act's title, the law in fact authorizes the exploitation of water within the State of New Hampshire. It is much like the federal Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, which govern how much pollution of our air and water can occur.

This is not a mistake or somehow unique, and it is not about corruption within a generally functioning system. Rather, the major environmental laws in the United States, which have now been exported and adopted around the world, are laws not borne of protection, but of exploitation.

Although it's rarely said out loud, it is often the industry to be regulated that creates the laws we ask our legislators to enforce. And when it becomes too expensive to comply with the regulations, corporations are often exempted from them, or the regulations are simply rewritten. By design our environmental laws place commerce above nature, and in so doing they legalize certain amounts of harm to ecosystems. And by design regulatory agencies administering these laws are in place to operationalize that exploitation.

This isn't to say we haven't protected anything while toiling within this system of law. Whatever limits to damage have been achieved have come from dedicated vigilance by the hands of caring and concerned people. But taking a step back to look at the big picture, we must also recognize what has been lost.

By almost every measure, the environment today is in worse shape than when the major U.S. environmental laws were adopted nearly 40 years ago and replicated worldwide. Global species decline is increasing exponentially, global warming is far more accelerated than previously believed, deforestation continues unabated around the world, and overfishing in the world's oceans are pushing many fisheries to collapse. With so much at stake, the question is -- why haven't we been successful at ending this destruction?

It certainly is not from lack of effort by communities or activists. Rather, the system of law within which their efforts are taking place is based on entirely the wrong premise -- that Nature is property.

The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and similar state laws legalize environmental harms by regulating how much pollution or destruction of Nature can occur. Rather than preventing pollution and environmental destruction, these laws instead codify it. How else could we justify the damming of rivers, the blowing off of mountaintops for coal or fishing to extinction?

We codify our values in law, and thus for time immemorial we have treated nature in law, as well as in culture, as a "thing" -- as amoral, without emotion or intelligence, without any connection to or having anything in common with us. In this way we justify and rationalize our exploitation, our destruction, our decimation. It is the long history of humankind's relationship with Nature as a possession, rather than as a system governing our own well-being.

So when the people of Nottingham asked state agencies for help that was not forthcoming, the lack of assistance was not sheer unwillingness; rather the state agency was simply carrying out the law of the land in assisting the corporation to take their water.

The nature of property: Is Nature a slave?

In the United States, title to property carries with it the legal authority to destroy the natural communities (which include human communities and ecosystems) that depend on that property for survival. In fact, our environmental laws were passed under the authority of the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which grants exclusive authority over "interstate commerce" to Congress. The migration of birds, rivers flowing to the sea, or almost any natural process you can name is, or can be classified as interstate commerce. Treating Nature as commerce has meant that all existing U.S. environmental law frameworks are anchored in the concept of Nature as property.

But history shows that with enough will, unjust laws that deny rights can change. Slaves and women were once considered property, but through massive shifts in law and culture they moved from being "right-less" to being rights-bearing.

During slavery in the United States, the economies of both the North and South were based on slavery. Slaves provided the labor force upon which the new country depended. Slaves were the property of the slave master and a series of "slave codes" were put in place to regulate the treatment of slaves. Slave codes in South Carolina required the whipping of a slave who left his master's plantation without permission. In Louisiana, any slave who hit his master was to be punished by death. In Alabama, teaching a slave to read was illegal and violators were required to pay a fine.

Many advocates of slavery argued that the slave codes would somehow lead to a gradual end of the slave system; that slaves themselves did not "need" legal rights in order to be sufficiently protected. It is easy from today's vantage point to see that this regulatory framework did not and could never protect the slaves or end slavery. To the contrary, it codified, enforced and upheld the system of property and the continued enslavement of human beings. Today in the United States and in much of the world, Nature is treated in the same way, and laws and regulations have been put in place to regulate ecosystems as property.

What does it mean to recognize the Rights of Nature?

If we believe that rights are inherent, then Nature's rights already exist, and any law that denies those fundamental rights is illegitimate.

Under existing environmental laws, a person needs to prove "standing" in order to go to court to protect Nature. This means demonstrating personal harm from logging, the pollution of a river, or the extraction of water. Damages are then awarded to that person, not to the ecosystem that's been destroyed. Women were once considered the property of their husbands or fathers, and as such had no legal standing. Prior to the 19th Amendment, if a married woman was raped, it was considered a property crime and damages were awarded to her husband. In the wake of the BP oil spill, the only damage deemed compensable by the legal system is the financial damage caused to those who can't use the Gulf ecosystem anymore.

Communities in the United States are turning their backs on a system that cannot provide true environmental protection. They are beginning to craft and adopt new laws that recognize that natural communities and ecosystems possess an inalienable and fundamental right to exist and flourish. Residents of those natural communities, as stewards of the place where they live, possess the legal authority to enforce those rights on behalf of those ecosystems. In addition, these laws require local governments to remedy violations of those ecosystem rights.

Under a rights-based system of law, a river has the right to flow, fish and other species in a river have the right to regenerate and evolve, and the flora and fauna that depend on a river have the right to thrive. It is the natural ecological balance of that habitat that is protected. Just as the lion hunts the antelope as part of the natural cycle of life, recognizing Rights of Nature does not put an end to fishing or other human activities. Rather, it places them in the context of a healthy relationship where our actions do not threaten the balance of the system upon which we depend.

In essence, these laws represent fundamental changes to the status of property in the United States. While not eliminating property ownership, they do eliminate the authority of a property owner to destroy entire ecosystems that exist and depend on that property. These laws do not stop development; rather they stop the kind of development that interferes with the existence and vitality of those ecosystems.

This represents a true paradigm shift, one that recognizes that we can no longer tinker at the margins of a legal system that places property at the apex of civilization. It makes no apologies for recognizing that a linear system of development cannot be sustained on a finite planet and that we enslave Nature to our own demise.

Building a movement for the Rights of Nature

Environmental and community rights attorney Thomas Linzey has been known to say that, "There has never existed a true environmental movement in this country" because movements drive rights into fundamental structures of law, which environmentalists have never sought to do. It's a provocative statement sure to raise the ire of many an advocate for Nature.

On September 19, 2006, the Tamaqua Borough Council in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, became the first municipal government in the United States to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature. Working with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, they drafted and adopted a local ordinance recognizing that natural communities and ecosystems have a legal right to exist and flourish, that individuals within the community have the authority to defend and enforce the rights of those natural communities and ecosystems, and that the Borough government has a legal duty to enforce the ordinance.

Over a dozen more communities in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine, and Virginia have now adopted ordinances recognizing legally enforceable Rights of Nature. Communities in California, New Mexico and elsewhere are in the process of adopting similar laws. The people of Nottingham adopted an ordinance in 2008 that recognizes the inalienable Rights of Nature and bans corporate water extraction.

That same year Ecuador became the first country in the world to recognize the Rights of Nature in its constitution; after generations of watching its fragile ecosystems destroyed by corporate mining, drilling and other practices. The new constitution was approved by an overwhelming margin through a national referendum on September 28, 2008. With that vote, Ecuador became the first country in the world to codify a new system of environmental protection based on rights, leading the way for countries around the world to make this necessary and fundamental change in how we protect Nature. The constitution reads, "Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain itself and regenerate its own vital cycles, structure, functions and its evolutionary processes."

In 2009, international leaders that gathered in Copenhagen for the UN Climate Change Conference predictably failed to reach an agreement to save humanity from its own destruction. In response, the World People's Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth convened in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Some 32,000 people from around the world attended and, led by indigenous communities of Latin America, proposed the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth.

This work is now expanding as people and communities and governments conclude that we have pushed the Earth's ecosystems to the brink and that our existing frameworks of environmental laws are not only inadequate to reverse this destruction, but were never intended to do so.

In September 2010, an international gathering was held in Tamate, Ecuador, to develop a strategy for building an international movement on Rights of Nature. The gathering brought together individuals and organizations from South Africa, Australia, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and the United States. The outcome of the meetings was the formation of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. Key areas of work will be education and outreach, as well as assisting local, state, and national governments around the world to put Rights of Nature laws in place and to build and support a global movement for the Rights of Nature.

A new cultural context for Nature supported by law

How different would our world look if the Amazon could sue oil companies for damages, or if those responsible for the oil spill could be forced to make the Gulf of Mexico "whole"? What if communities could be empowered to act as stewards for their local environments and say "no" to massive groundwater extraction?

As a species we have come to value "endless amounts of more" to our own detriment, and we have codified that value into law. Of course it is up to us to begin the process of deprogramming our society and dispelling our arrogant belief that the Earth "belongs" to humans. Like all successful movements for rights, the cultural change necessary needs only be enough to change the law ¬- the law itself forces the larger cultural change that must take place. However, both are needed in order to truly recognize rights for the right-less.

In 1973, Professor Christopher Stone penned his famous law review article, "Should Trees Have Standing?". He wrote, "The fact is, that each time there is a movement to confer rights onto some new 'entity' the proposal is bound to sound odd or frightening or laughable. This is partly because until the right-less thing receives its rights, we cannot see it as anything but a thing for the use of 'us' -- us being, of course, those of us who hold rights."

This is the challenge that every rights-based movement comes up against -- not only an illegitimate structure of law that defines a living being as property, but also the culture which is built upon this concept.

The Abolitionists faced this -- with slavery not only providing the labor force in the South, but being the driving engine of the economy of the North. Abolishing slavery meant abolishing a way of life. Most said it could not and must never be done. That is the argument we hear and face now. But it can, and we must.

Shannon Biggs directs U.S.-based Global Exchange's Community Rights Program, working to place citizen and Nature's legal rights above corporate interests. She is the author of Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots (PoliPoint Press, 2007), a former senior staffer at the International Forum on Globalization and a lecturer of International Relations at San Francisco State University.

Mari Margil is the Associate Director of the U.S.-based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund where she conducts campaign and organizational strategy, media and public outreach and leads the organization's fundraising efforts. She is a co-author of the recently published The Public Health or the Bottom Line (Oxford University Press, 2010).

$6 Million Provided By USDA For Storms And Flood In 10 States

$6 Million Provided By USDA For Storms And Flood In 10 States: "
"Our thoughts are with the families and communities across many parts of the country that have been affected by this severe weather," said Vilsack. "USDA personnel in our state and local offices are coordinating with their state and local government counterparts in order to provide much-needed assistance as quickly as possible to communities that have been hard hit by this string of terrible tragedies."

In partnership and through local government sponsors, the EWP Program provides assistance to areas that have been damaged by natural disasters, such as floods, windstorms, drought, and wildfires. The EWP Program safeguards lives and property by installing conservation measures to reduce storm water runoff and prevent soil erosion, as well as remove watershed impairments such as debris caught in culverts and under bridges.

In response to the recent storms and floods, NRCS provided $600,000 in EWP Program financial and technical assistance to each of its 10 NRCS state offices so that field personnel can swiftly begin work on projects that reduce or remove dangerous threats to public safety and infrastructure.

To the extent possible, NRCS state and field personnel are surveying damaged areas and working with their local partners to identify the full scope of the damage and prepare disaster recovery projects. NRCS will evaluate the need on a continuous basis for additional assistance to the impacted communities.

Wonk Room » Maryland To Sue Chesapeake Energy For PA Fracking Blowout

Wonk Room » Maryland To Sue Chesapeake Energy For PA Fracking Blowout:
Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler now “plans to sue the company for violating federal anti-pollution laws” including the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and the Clean Water Act (CWA), as a press release issued yesterday explains:

On April 19, thousands of gallons of fracking fluids were released from a well owned and operated by Chesapeake Energy into Towanda Creek, a tributary of the Susquehanna River, which supplies 45% of the fresh water in the Chesapeake Bay. In his letter, Attorney General Gansler notified the company that at the close of the required 90-day notice period, the State intends to file a citizen suit and seek injunctive relief and civil penalties under RCRA for solid or hazardous waste contamination of soils and ground waters, and the surface waters and sediments of Towanda Creek and the Susquehanna River. The State also intends to seek injunctive relief and civil penalties under the CWA for violation of the CWA’s prohibition on unpermitted pollution to waters of the United States.

“Companies cannot expose citizens to dangerous chemicals that pose serious health risks to the environment and to public health,” said Gansler in the press release. “We are using all resources available to hold Chesapeake Energy accountable for its actions.”

High court erases recent environmental victory | Michigan Messenger

High court erases recent environmental victory | Michigan Messenger:

The case — Anglers of the Au Sable v. Dept. of Environmental Quality — involved Merit Energy’s DEQ-permitted plan to move contaminated water into a different watershed by pipeline and discharge it into Kolke Creek, which flows into the Au Sable river in Otsego County.

A group of anglers and riverfront property owners sued the state and Merit Energy, claiming that the plan violated their riparian water rights and the Michigan Environmental Protection Act. The Otsego circuit court agreed and blocked the discharge plan as unreasonable, though it allowed for the possibility that a reasonable plan could be determined.

Wishing to definitively block moves to transfer contaminated water between watersheds, the plaintiffs appealed, but the Court of Appeals ruled that the state could grant Merit the right to use Kolke Creek as a disposal site. It also found that the Anglers could not sue the state for permitting the discharge plan.

Last year the Michigan Supreme Court, which then had a Democratic majority, agreed to hear an appeal of this decision. The court indicated that it was ready to reexamine two controversial supreme court cases — Preserve the Dunes Inc v. Dept. of Environmental Quality and Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation v. Nestle — that narrowed citizen options for legal action to stop environmental damage. Both of those cases had been decided while the court was under Republican control.

In 4-3 decision issued at the very end of the year and authored by Justice Alton Davis, a Democrat who had lost his reelection bid, the court rejected DEQ and business arguments that people should not be allowed sue until after damage occurs. It also reaffirmed that the Michigan Environmental Protection Act allows anyone to sue to block environmental damage.

The decision was celebrated by environmentalists but it was pretty clear that the Republican majority that was set to retake the court in January saw the matter differently and that future cases might reverse the gain.

In January Michigan attorney general Bill Schuette asked the court to reconsider Anglers of the Au Sable v. DEQ. He said that allowing people to sue to the state over permitting decisions would harm Michigan’s economy.

It did not take long for the new court to act. In an order released last week the court took the unusual step of vacating the Anglers of the Au Sable ruling without any new information. The court decided that the case had been moot when it was decided because the company has abandoned its plans to discharge the water into the creek, and that the previous court should not have considered it.

“I have a hard time seeing this being anything other that a political or ideological decision,” said Nick Schroeck, executive director of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, which together with the National Wildlife Federation filed a brief in support of the Anglers/plaintiffs. “Ordinarily a court will not rehear a case when no underlying facts have changed.”

“I think it was an overreach on the part of the court. Hopefully people will notice this and remember it when they vote for the supreme court justices in the future.”

Though the court’s move is a disappointment for those who worked on the case and believed it had been decided, Jim Olson, who represented the Anglers, said that there is some consolation in the fact that the opinion also vacates the court of appeals ruling that had made it significantly more difficult for citizens to sue over environmental damage.

“The silver lining is that those problems in the court of appeals decision were erased,“ he said. “Michigan precedent prior to this case remains. Diversions of our watershed that diminish flow and level can’t be done.”

“We are back to where we were before the decision — questions remain over when the state is liable for permitting damage.”

Schroeck and Olson both agree that the lack of clarity over how the state can be held responsible for issuing permits for activities that destroy natural resources is especially dangerous given the fact that cash-strapped state agencies have diminishing capacity to evaluate permit applications and are under increasing pressure to streamline and speed up permitting.

“The idea that we must wait for harm to occur is dangerous,” Olson said. “The courts are favoring industry and weakening the rights of citizens and of the state, which is compromised by budget crisis. Not only do we have a budget crisis, our most valuable asset can’t be protected and conserved as it should be.”

Search for “watershed” - Technorati

Search for “watershed” - Technorati:

High court erases recent environmental victory

Michigan Messenger — Authority 666
— involved Merit Energy’s DEQ-permitted plan to move contaminated water into a different watershed by pipeline and discharge it […] . Diversions of our watershed that diminish flow and level can’t be done.” “We are back to where we were before the decision

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Maryland To Sue Chesapeake Energy For PA Fracking Blowout

Wonk Room — Authority 711
farms, even where cattle continue to graze.” The spill drained into the Susquehanna River watershed, which feeds Maryland

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Search results for watershed on Delicious

Search results for watershed on Delicious: 7,566 results

Everybody's bookmarks

• Surf Your Watershed | Surf Your Watershed | US EPA 112

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• Center for Watershed Protection 55

  www.cwp.org/

  • stormwater
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• www.bellmuseum.org/distancelearning/watershed/watershed2.html

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Best of the Web Directory Search Results for watershed

Best of the Web Directory Search Results for watershed:

Watershed Management Council

Category: Science: Environment: Water: Organizations: Professional Associations:

Professional organization established to promote proper watershed management. Also presents links to other water resources issues.

http://www.watershed.org/

Watershed

Category: UK & Ireland: England: Bristol: Arts and Entertainment:

Details the facilities, activities and events at this arts centre which specialises in film and digital media. What's on, screening times and tickets, media studio, and news.

http://www.watershed.co.uk/

Umpqua Watersheds

Category: Regional: United States: Oregon: Cities: Roseburg:

Promotes the preservation, protection and restoration of the watersheds in Umpqua River basin and beyond.

http://www.umpqua-watersheds.org/

Watershed Development Department

Category: Regional: Asia: India: Karnataka: Science and Environment:

Highlights contributory factors in the developmental project of the county’s watershed. Includes discussion on erosion of soil and drainage.

http://watershed.kar.nic.in/

Watershed Case Studies and Initiatives

Category: Regional: United States: Connecticut: Education: Colleges and Universities: University of Connecticut: College of Agriculture and Natural Resources: Cooperative Extension System: NEMO:

Presents the Chester Creek, Eightmile River, Salmon River, and Connecticut River case studies. Also offers expert helps for setting up a watershed project.

http://nemo.uconn.edu/successes/watersheds.html

Blogs and Websites Search - OnToplist.com

Blogs and Websites Search - OnToplist.com:

1.

The Watershed Chronicle

http://watershedchronicle.wordpress.com/

Life and Times at the Head of the Chesapeake Bay

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2.

The South Florida Watershed Journal

http://sfwj.blogspot.com/

Covering south Florida's water cycle and interconnected watersheds, written by a National Parks Service hydrologist.

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3.

Hillslope and Watershed Hydrology Lab

http://www.cof.orst.edu/cof/fe/watershd/

Focuses on conducting watershed intercomparison and explores the common features of watershed response.

read more