Community Defends Humanity (and vise versa)

We humans are looking for transcendent gems of wisdom and power that can guide us beyond the morass we’re caught up in to a place we can barely imagine at this moment.  What guru knows the secret we’re grasping for?  The problems are so complex and the powers so entrenched it seems hopeless.

Here’s something to consider:  The deepest underlying problems we face rest on the values problem. 

At some hidden level, too many people still believe that the people on the top of our economy have some right to be there.  The assumption that those people are wiser, stronger and more powerful so they have the right to dominate the decision-making and the resources meant for all.  The on-going dilemma is knowing what regular people like us can do about that.  Few consciously approve of the current situation – right, left or otherwise – even though our solutions are different. 

Since our goals are the welfare and rights of people, planet and community, how should we respond?  Covid 19 has exposed the deeply flawed power structure we live in and opened up intriguing possibilities.    But how can they become real?  Where can we begin to change systems so flawed and entrenched?

I’d like to share a story about a group that doesn’t get enough mention in our discussion here.   It’s the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund – CELDEF (https://celdf.org/)  They’re about the same age as Omni – 20 years, and they started as a traditional public interest law firm protecting the environment, helping communities protect themselves from projects like incinerators and waste dumps. Along the way, they encountered barriers put in place by both government and corporations. Such barriers included corporate constitutional “rights” and the preemptive authority of state government – both of which are used to override community decision making.

CELDF learned that no matter how hard they tried to stop projects that cause known environmental harm, our own government had worked with corporations to make sure such projects could be stopped.

In fact, together they had developed a structure of law which – rather than focused on protecting people, workers, communities, and the environment – was instead focused on endless growth, extraction, and development.

Today, through grassroots organizing, public education and outreach, and legal assistance, nearly 200 municipalities across the U.S. have enacted CELDF-drafted Community Rights laws which ban practices – including fracking, factory farming, sewage sludging of farmland, and water privatization – that violate the rights of people, communities and nature.

To protect those rights, the laws address the key barriers to local self-governance and sustainability – such as corporate constitutional “rights” – and has assisted the first communities in the U.S. to eliminate corporate “rights” when they interfere with Community Rights.

Further, CELDF has worked to establish the rights of nature in law – recognizing the rights of ecosystems and natural communities to exist and thrive, and empowering people and their governments to defend and enforce these rights.

CELDF is now bringing communities and groups together to form statewide Community Rights Networks and the National Community Rights Network to drive change from the grassroots upward to the state and federal level. One of their tools is a Democracy School that sounds really interesting.

What does that mean?  Consider some things global communities did in 2019.  Some were done with CELDEF’s help, and all are part of a new sense sweeping through humanity that we can do better:

• The residents of Toledo, Ohio adopted the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, the first law in the U.S. to secure legal rights for a specific ecosystem.
• Residents of Exeter and Nottingham, New Hampshire enacted laws elevating the rights of ecosystems above the rights of corporate polluters.
• The Yurok tribe in the U.S. recognized legal rights of the Klamath River.
• The High Court in Bangladesh recognized legal rights of rivers.
• The National Lawyers Guild amended its constitution to include the rights of ecosystems.
• A New York assemblyman proposed a law to recognize the rights of Lake Erie.
• The Youth Climate Strike included Rights of Nature (and respect for indigenous sovereignty) in their list of demands.
• Rights of Nature bills were introduced in Australia and the Philippines.
• In Colombia, the Plata River was recognized as a “subject of rights.”

CELDEF is plotting a strategic course building a foundation of law and practice to defend the rights of nature and community that has been eroded by this exploitative economic system.  Find out more about them on their awesome website here. (http://celdef.org/ )

The Rights of Nature concept may seem like one of those ‘pie-in-the-sky’ ideas that new age hippies would think of but could never be a reality.  But one thing about new age hippies is that they’ve never given up the vision of A WORLD THAT WORKS FOR ALL.  That’s one thing I hope we can share with the next generation of every skin color, gender orientation, language, religion and culture.  We are one human race, and we must learn to understand and respect each other.  We must also change our relationship to the earth that birthed us and gives us breath and nurture.  We can learn to be a productive life-form again, as we take our rightful place as a member of the Earth Tribe who stewards our earth-mother’s resources rather than exploiting them.

To move toward a post-covid age of true human-ness we need to know about more of the marvelous work being done on this planet to let us move toward that reality with confidence.  Here is a group doing powerful work to protect communities from the ravages of a rogue economic system designed to exploit people and planet for profit. 

Read CELDEF’s newsletter on “Community Rights / Rights of Nature:  Living in the Covid Era” here and allow yourself to enjoy feeling awed by the commitment and wisdom that human beings bring to the never-ending struggle to be freely, fully and lovingly human in community.

Subscribe to Gladweaver’s blog “Peace Weavers: A Tapestry for a New World”  

Join the facebook group “Ozark Uplift” to share uplift and inspiration as we move through the covid era.