CELDF’s Community Rights work is a paradigm shift. It moves away from unsustainable practices that harm communities by moving towards local self-government. Community Rights include: environmental rights, such as the right to clean air, pure water, and healthy soil;

worker rights, such as the right to living wages and equal pay for equal work;

rights of nature, such as the right of ecosystems to flourish and evolve;

democratic rights, such as the right of local community self-government, and the right to free and fair elections. We work with communities unwilling to submit to oppression by an unjust structure of law that the largest economic powers have created in their own favor. Together, we are creating a new movement – one that recognizes, secures, and protects the rights of all those living within a community.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A Movement Whose Time Has Come Today, policy-makers have told communities across the country that they don’t have the right to make critical decisions for themselves. They’re told they cannot say “no” to fracking or factory farming. They’re told they cannot say “yes” to sustainable food or energy systems. Through the Community Rights Movement, communities are working with CELDF to create a structure of law and government of the people, by the people, and for the people. That structure recognizes and protects the inalienable rights of natural and human communities.

We have a democracy problem. We live under a system of laws that doesn’t care what we want as a community.

how does a community lose itS voice? State and Federal Preemption – There are laws that allow large corporations to force harmful activities into communities – despite community opposition. Corporate Privilege – Our structure of law elevates corporate decision-making over community decision-making. Corporations have court-conferred constitutional “rights.” They wield these “rights” against communities to eliminate local efforts that may interfere with industry plans to expand their operations, regardless of the impact to communities and nature. The Regulatory Fallacy – Agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Minerals Management Agency do not actually protect us. Rather, they regulate the amount of harm that is inflicted on our communities. Nature as Property – Our legal system grants landowners the right to damage the environment, even though the entire community carries the impact.

Examples of a broken system Grant Township, PA: Residents are told they cannot stop the injection of toxic frack waste into their community. Why? Because the State has pre-empted them from doing so, and the corporation has the “right” to inject. Spokane, WA: Residents are told they do not have federal Bill of Rights protections on the job. Corporate “rights” trump their rights to privacy and to free association. Willamette Valley & Josephine County, OR: Communities are told they cannot say “no” to the contamination of their farmland by genetically modified (GM) seeds and poisoning of their forests and waterways from pesticides. Their own state government protects these harmful practices and blocks communities’ efforts to codify sustainability. New Hampshire: Communities face construction of a massive energy transmission project that will cut through the state’s most pristine landscapes. They are told they have no right to stop the project or to establish sustainable energy systems. Communities across the country are told they have no authority to demand free and fair elections, police accountability, divestment from fossil fuels, or religious freedom – among many other issues – because such policies run up against state preemptive laws and corporate “rights.”

Community Rights in the american revolution

An assertion of Community Rights laid the very foundations for our country. In the years leading up to the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War, the colonists had decided that they could no longer tolerate a distant, monarchical, and oppressive system of government that treated communities on this continent as resources to be plundered. Many of the grievances outlined in the Declaration of Independence of 1776 are similar to grievances voiced by communities across the nation today. Preemption The colonists had to deal with preemption. The King and British Parliament constantly interfered with the legislative priorities of the local communities. Indeed, the very first grievance laid out in the Declaration of Independence deals with preemption directly: “HE has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.” “He” of course means the King. The colonists noted that time and time again, the King had interfered with legislation desired by the colonists to protect their health, safety, and welfare. Nature as Property Royal treatment of the natural environment had also outraged the colonists. The King and his loyalists considered the natural environment as property for profit: “HE has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts.” Corporate Privilege Corporations, and the privileges bestowed upon them, were of particular concern to the colonists. Royal charters gave corporations, such as the East India Company, privileges and protections that legalized their harmful activities all over the world.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. — Thomas Jefferson

The Community Rights solution of 1776 Given the growing injustices, the colonists issued the Declaration of Independence and developed new governing documents, including the Articles of Confederation and new state constitutions. While not perfect, these new constitutions took local community self-government seriously. They brought corporations under the control of the communities that they served. It was understood that the community was the sole and legitimate source of all governing authority. The first Pennsylvania constitution, ratified in 1776 (not long after the Declaration of Independence), stated: “WHEREAS all government ought to be instituted and supported for the security and protection of the community as such… and whenever these great ends of government are not obtained, the people have a right, by common consent to change it, and take such measures as to them may appear necessary to promote their safety and happiness.”

The Modern Community Rights Movement Community Rights secured in this country’s founding have eroded over the last two hundred years. Corporations have hijacked our state and federal constitutions, routinely wielding them to force harmful environmental and economic activities into communities that don’t want them. And yet, over the past decade, and despite overwhelming opposition from large, multinational corporations, hundreds of municipalities across the country have reclaimed and reasserted the Community Rights secured in our country’s founding. Local Community Rights CELDF works with communities seeking to codify Community Rights. Nearly 200 communities have adopted these laws, known as Community Bills of Rights. They protect rights by banning harmful corporate activities ranging from coal mining to factory farms to fracking to the dumping of sewage sludge. While the issues may be different, the DNA of these laws is the same: the recognition of a right of local community self-government and the right to strengthen the floor of rights protected by state and federal government. Communities are stepping forward to determine a future of their own making – a future not determined by out-of-area corporations, but rather by the people who inhabit these communities. Success Story A 2014 Ordinance passed in Grant Township, Indiana County, PA, demonstrates language common to Community Rights laws: “All residents of Grant Township possess the right to a form of governance where they live which recognizes that all power is inherent in the people and that all free governments are founded on the people’s consent. Use of the municipal corporation “Grant Township” by the people for the making and enforcement of this law shall not be deemed, by any authority, to eliminate, limit, or reduce that sovereign right.”

Moving Community Rights to the State Level Movements begin at the local level. The movement for women’s suffrage didn’t start with a dictate from the US Supreme Court. Rather, the struggle lasted more than 50 years. It included over 400 local and state laws that recognized the right of women to vote. Townships and states began to adopt these laws long before the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920 ensconced that right in the U.S. Constitution. We also learn from prior movements that organizing only at the local level will always leave communities vulnerable to attack from corporations and state and federal government. Part CELDF’s work is to help communities harness the momentum from local, grassroots organizing, and channel that energy into state-based organizations to drive larger structural legal change.

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. — R. Buckminster Fuller

CELDF has assisted communities in six states to join together, forming Community Rights Networks (CRNs). These CRNs are hubs, facilitating and amplifying the energy and resources from community organizing. They support Community Rights organizing locally, helping communities protect themselves from immediate threats. They also serve to channel the growing energy of these communities into a collective force, working to secure and protect Community Rights at the state level. Partner Communities CELDF’s partner communities, which make up the CRNs, are enacting local rights-based laws that explicitly demand action at the state and federal levels. For example, Grant Township, Indiana County, PA, adopted a Community Bill of Rights in 2014. It states: “Through the adoption of this Ordinance, the people of Grant Township call for amendment of the Pennsylvania Constitution and the federal Constitution to recognize a right to local self-government free from governmental preemption and or nullification by corporate ‘rights.’” Statewide Support These calls echo across states, causing our state-level work to expand rapidly. In 2014, the Colorado Community Rights Network circulated a petition for a state constitutional amendment recognizing the right of Colorado communities to protect their health and safety by prohibiting harmful corporate activities. While corporate challenges interfered with the signature-gathering process, making it difficult to gather the required number of signatures in a short period of time, the Colorado Network is leading signature-gathering efforts for a similar amendment in 2016. In February 2016, a constitutional amendment for Community Rights was introduced in the New Hampshire legislature. And in March of 2016, the Pennsylvania Community Rights Network rolled out a state constitutional amendment that would recognize the right of citizen initiative. If adopted, it will empower Pennsylvanians to advance Community Rights amendments to protect themselves and create sustainable communities – liberating them from the corporate state legislature. Moving Community Rights to the National Level Our Community Rights work has moved to the national level to mobilize local and state Community Rights advancements into a force that will eventually democratize our federal constitution. Formed in 2014, the National Community Rights Network (NCRN) states: “Without a federally protected right of local, community self-government, rights- based laws adopted at the local and the state level can be overturned by preemptive federal laws and by federally-anchored corporate constitutional “rights.” The National Community Rights Network is now, (1) coordinating the work of the state-based Community Rights Networks; (2) raising the profile of community rights-based organizing at the national level; and (3) drafting federal constitutional amendments that recognize and protect the right to community self-government.