Shannon Biggs, Community Rights Program Director at Global Exchange, shares some holiday reading suggestions for fans of community rights, followed by a few staff picks.

COMMUNITY RIGHTS HOLIDAY READING

• Exclusive! David Korten shares some thoughts on nature and the future of economics: A rights-based economy begins with the biosphere. In 2013 Global Exchange will be looking at how the rights of nature can play a role in shaping a new economy (or more correctly new economies) based on the needs of ecosystems and the human communities they support. What does that look like? Ecological economist, author and YES! Magazine co-founder David Korten gives Global Exchange a sneak peak of a piece he’s working on. For more related to this topic, read David Korten’s article in the latest issue of Yes! Magazine.
• An Inconvenient Truth About Lincoln (That You Won’t Hear from Hollywood): Have you seen the movie Lincoln? I watched it over the Thanksgiving break, and quite enjoyed the romp through the inner workings and backroom political dealings that go on (spoiler alert!) when passing an Amendment to abolish slavery. However much we love to love Lincoln, it’s worth noting that as a former railroad lawyer, he was a huge advocate of corporate personhood, as a means to ensure that the plantation system was replaced by a corporate version. Before you sit down to watch Daniel Day Lewis inhabit our favorite President, this Huffington Post piece is a quick and entertaining read.
• How the Mayan Calendar Works: Next, check this out for a short read before the End of Days.

STAFF PICKS available at your local independent booksellers:

• Community Rights staff suggest reading: Taming Democracy by Terry Bouton. Americans are fond of reflecting upon the noble Founding Fathers, who came together to force out the tyranny of the British and bring democracy. Unfortunately, the Revolutionary elite often seemed as determined to squash democracy after the war as they were to support it before.
• This is what Shannon Biggs is REALLY reading at home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson. Bryson takes us on a room-by-room tour through his own house, using each room as a jumping off point into the vast history of the domestic artifacts we take for granted. As he takes us through the history of our modern comforts, Bryson demonstrates that whatever happens in the world eventually ends up in our home, in the paint, the pipes, the pillows, and every item of furniture.
• Executive Director Carleen Pickard is reading: The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts by Louis de Bernières. Set in an impoverished, violent, yet ravishingly beautiful country somewhere in South America. When the haughty Dona Constanza decides to divert a river to fill her swimming pool, the consequences are at once tragic, heroic, and outrageously funny.
• Online Communications Manager, Zarah Patriana is reading: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  A masterpiece that tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family.
• And finally, in case you missed it, check out our most popular community rights blog post (to date), which was also cross-posted on AlterNet. Read it here.

Happy holidays!

Susan B. Anthony beaten and jailed by police for casting her vote

No matter which side you butter your political bread, by now you’ve heard more than you ever wanted to about the election results and who won. But that’s just politics.

What you probably missed in the glare of the pundits flashy graphics and the incessant Wednesday morning quarterbacking were the real victories by and for people actually asserting their rights on Election Day against the powers that be. Yes, regardless of political affiliation; against the endlessly deep pockets and scare tactics of huge corporations; AND against the mighty robed ones of the Supreme Court—they prevailed. Big time. And they may have set the stage for the rest of the country to follow suit.

What does Susan B. Anthony have in common with voters in Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania?

 If Susan B. Anthony was afraid (and surely she was), she did not let her fear of being sued, ridiculed, harassed, beaten and jailed stop her from standing up for her rights.  And while voters in these states didn’t risk their personal security, on Election day, they took a stand for their rights, and they acted is if government belongs to us. Rights—as in, unalienable self-evident rights that come by virtue of being born, that cannot be given or granted, taken away or surrendered.

In the Big Sky state of Montana, where the Governor is a Democrat, but the electorate runs fire engine-red, you may have heard that the state voted to urge or direct Congress to enact a Constitutional Amendment to overturn corporate personhood, as did Colorado. But the real story is so much richer than that.

Verner Bertelsen (R) Montana’s former Secretary of State
photo credit: standwithmontanans.org

Many states—not only Montana—  included in their early Constitutions the subordination of corporations to the will of the people, and banned corporate political expenditures in state elections.  Over the years, most of those Constitutional provisions have been deleted to pave the way for more corporate-friendly laws—but not in Montana. In early January 2012, Montana’s state supreme court, in recognition of the rights of residents to determine the outcome of their elections, struck a defiant blow to the heart of the Super-PAC-creating-unlimited-corporate-elections-spending SCOTUS Citizens United decision, by restoring their state ban on corporate elections spending. 

The federal court was quick to respond to this challenge of their supremacy by reaffirming Citizens United and striking down Montana’s Constitutional provision. And with the flick of a pen, five of the Robed Nine denied the 1 million residents of Montana their right to decide the proper role for corporations in local and state elections (take THAT democracy).

Montanans seemed to take this news personally, as a denial of their very real authority to govern corporate entities, and on Election day, reminded the learned SCOTUS who is boss in Big Sky country. By a landslide of 75% Montanans restored their rights on Election Day and sent corporations and the Supreme Court a powerful message. Initiative 166, officially called the Prohibition on Corporate Contributions and Expenditures in Montana Elections Act, was endorsed by the Governor (D), the Lt. Governor (R) and the former Secretary of State (R).

As C.B. Pearson, treasurer for the I-166 group, Stand with Montanans  put it, “For nearly a century, Montana had elections free of corporate money. But now our fair elections system is compromised. With this vote, Montanans have provided much needed leadership on this important issue, much as we did 100 years ago with the passage of the Corrupt Practices Act.”

Communities stand up to Big Energy, State & Federal law to stop toxic dumping

Scare tactics FAIL: Mailer sent to all residents of Mansfield, paid for by the American Petroleum Institute, as noted above the address.

Elsewhere in Ohio and Pennsylvania, three communities fed up with a wealthy minority scaring people to vote against their own interests challenged the entire structure of law that puts corporate interest before residents—and won.

Mansfield, Ohio’s 50,000 residents were slated to be on the receiving end of Pennsylvania’s toxic frackwater waste, a byproduct of hydraulic fracturing, one of the dirtiest energy production methods in the US. 

Under the law, there wasn’t really anything that concerned residents could do to stop it from coming. The permits are approved by the State, and the dumping of PA’s unwanted fracking chemicals into “injection wells” in Ohio is legal, despite the scientific evidence that storing frack waste is causing large earthquakes….in Ohio (that’s right…Ohio).

Mansfield residents respond to corporate elections ads with their own message

After an initial conference call with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, and follow-up conversations with community members and the Council, the Law Director John Spon proposed a rights-based charter amendment.

Suddenly, a matter of local concern—namely the right of residents to protect their own health safety and welfare from ultra-hazardous materials—became an election issue for Big Petroleum and their PACs.

Corporate contributors poured over $300,000 into TV attack ads and glossy mailers to frighten residents into voting against their own interests, citing that the Charter Amendment Bill of Rights was a “jobs killer”. Residents didn’t believe the hype, reasoning that jobs related to injection wells are not as plentiful as promised, and dumping toxic waste into Mansfield’s industrial park seemed more likely to chase away new business.

As the Mayor put it “We don’t like out-siders telling us what to do.” Residents voted by 63% to pass the charter amendment that affirms the rights of all residents to decide if injections wells are wanted (they’re not); subordinates all corporate protections (not just personhood) to community wishes, and recognizes rights for ecosystems to be free from toxic frackwater dumping.

Elsewhere in Ohio, the town of Broadview Heights similarly passed a Community Bill of Rights charter amendment to ban any new fracking, and new injection wells or disposal of “frack-water,” “brine “tailings,” or other waste products of the fracking process.  The organizing group, Mothers Against Drilling In Our Neighborhoods (MADION) took it another step further, proposing the community vote to ban injection wells, but to futher protect the rights of citizens by prohibiting all new gas and oil drilling, fracking and injection wells.

Unlike their neighbors in Mansfield, the Mayor was not in support of the rights-based effort, and the City Council threatened to pull the initiative from the ballot, thereby stripping residents of their right to even vote on the matter, which did not go down well with residents. MADION’s charter amendment garnered the support of the local newspaper, and with no funding whatsoever the Mad Mothers made their case—door to door. On election day, the rights-based initiative passed with an impressive 66% of the vote.

Going “Home Rule” to access democracy

Campaign headquarters at the home of Pam Steckler in Furguson, PA Photo credit: Groundswell/CRAFT

Whatever you might say about the citizen initiative process—whereby the electorate can collect signatures to put items of concern before residents for a local or statewide vote—in states that don’t allow for it, residents are left with very few options when their elected officials abandon them.

Pennsylvania is a ‘no citizen initiative’ state.There is only one thing communities can put up for a vote there—and that is whether or not to become a “home rule” municipality (in other states it’s also called a charter city), which allows them to change how decisions are made tin their community and opens the door for local citizen initiatives that can effectively amend their town’s charter.   For the majority of Pennsylvanians who do not live under Home Rule, when residents oppose a policy, they must persuade their elected officials to enact new laws—sometimes difficult in areas where the “Good Old Boys” network runs in partnership with the “corporate boys”, turning towns into  sacrifice zones for one corporate activity to the next. Its something more communities are working toward—more community decision-making by “going” Home Rule.

In Furguson, PA—already a  Home Rule township, the activity that seeks to turn their community into a sacrifice zone  is fracking, along with hundreds of other communities dotted along the enormous Marcellus Shale  Marcellus Shale that crosses six states.

Local citizens groups Groundswell and CRAFT (Community Rights Activism for Ferguson Township) put forward a referendum to amend the Ferguson Township Home Rule Charter to add a Community Bill of Rights that would ban fracking. The initiative passed—despite being heavily opposed by the mayor, the town manager, and the town solicitor, who support fracking.  But as Groundswell put it, its not just about fracking, “these initiatives amount to a challenge to existing structural law concerning local government and a revolution in the way we deal with issues concerning communities and our environment…We’re not stopping here. A world will exist with an economy, environment and democracy that thrive together.”

All of these victories represent more than meets the eye. In these places Election Day wasn’t about RED or BLUE, nor were they about issues like  Citizens United, corporate personhood or fracking. Not to wax too poetically, but in each of these places, Americans took a deep breath of ownership of their rights that allows us all to breathe more freely.  If Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth are to be believed our rights are worth the risks, sacrifices and the bigger struggles for freedoms that lie ahead. It’s why Susan B. Anthony took her action to vote—not just for herself—but for all women.  Its why the freedom riders took white knuckle journeys through dangerous roads.

Montana surely faces a response from the U.S. Supreme court. And when it happens, we must all recognize that their struggle for rights is also our own—together we must stand not just against corporate so-called “rights” but we must stand together for our right to govern.

•  This piece was also cross-posted on AlterNet.

—

Shannon Biggs is the Director of the Community Rights program at Global Exchange,  assisting communities confronted by corporate harms to enact binding laws that place the rights of communities and nature above the claimed legal “rights” of corporations.

Refinery fire blazed through the Richmond community

 “If Chevron violated the law,” spouted EPA Assistant Director Dan Meer at a recent public meeting,  “we will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”  After the refinery explosion and fire that rocked the entire Bay Area—if Chevron did NOT violate the law, maybe there is something wrong with the law.

Chevron reps announced it would pay medical expenses and reimburse property damage resulting from the heavy smoke that billowed for miles throughout the night. Not surprisingly these big statements offer no large comfort to angry and frightened residents—14,600 of whom were sent to the hospital in the aftermath of the August 6 blaze.

And while a total of 5 investigations have been launched, those living on the refinery fenceline have heard it all before—and more critically live with it everyday—not just on days Chevron’s negligence makes headlines. “In North Richmond, we are on the front lines of chemical exposure on a daily basis,” Henry Clark, founder of the West County Toxics Coalition told demonstrators on Labor Day.

What would it really take to make Chev-wrong truly responsible to the community and to the ecosystem—more hearings? A fatter fine? Up-to-date first warning systems? How about another task force made up of city officials, regulators and members of Chevron’s slick PR machine? While ideas like these have popped up at Town Hall meetings and other public forums, they all seem right out of the Chevron public-backlash playbook.

But what if we actually believed we could get what we WANTED, not just what we thought we could get? We could ask real questions such as:

• What would  it look like if the residents of Richmond were truly in charge—would Chevron operate differently (or would it be there at all)?
• What if the local ecosystem had legal rights and could sue Chevron … to make the local environment whole, the way it was before the refinery was ever built?

Shannon Biggs

Weekend Seminar in Richmond CA September 7-8th

These are questions Global Exchange and Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus (WECC) will be asking at a weekend seminar taking place in Richmond, CA September 7th-8^th.  I’ll be there on behalf of Global Exchange, and Osprey Orielle Lake will represent WECC.

Osprey Orielle Lake, founder WECC

We are thrilled that joining the discussion will be local activist and Native American gallery owner, Pennie Opal Plant, who said, “Chevron has been destroying nature and poisoning people for over 100 years. Humanity is part of the web of life known as Nature. If Nature doesn’t have rights, then a viable future for the next seven generations is doubtful.”

Pennie Opal Plant and Michael Horse from Gathering Tribes

Please join us for a rich discussion of just what rights of nature could mean for residents in Richmond, CA—and across the country. Learn what over 100 other communities across the US are doing differently to put the rights of residents and nature before corporate profits.

In this dynamic seminar we will discuss whether or not rights of nature would be a good campaign for residents of Richmond, and look at the historic 2008 event when Ecuador became the first country to include Rights of Nature in its national constitution and then cover movements since then in Bolivia and here in the U.S. as Rights of Nature takes hold as an idea whose time has come.

Rights of Nature laws create a right to legal standing, offering citizens, communities, Indigenous peoples, and others a revolutionary new way to protect the vitality of the ecosystems we live in and depend upon.

Seminar Details: The seminar will run from 7:00-9:30pm on Friday, September 7th and 10am-5pm on Saturday, September 8th. The cost for both days is $50 and includes all materials. (If you are a resident of the Richmond fenceline community, we may have a scholarship for you.   To register, please contact Jordan Vilchez (jordanvilchez@gmail.com).

2,000 people make a human banner on the beach in Rio. Photo credit: Amazon Watch

With over 50,000 accredited participants registered, Rio+20 was the largest gathering in the history of the UN. And yet, despite the participation of heads of state officials, experts, media, corporate titans and tens of thousands of civil society representatives, the United Nations Rio + 20 Earth Summit was a tragic, if predictable, failure. Get a recap of what was at stake in Rio here.

Predictable because the outcome document was all but written before the heads of state entered the RioCentro compound, a mere 2-hour journey by taxi or shuttle bus from the People’s Summit — itself a 2 mile stretch of bustling action, noise, confusion and speakers tents along the Flamenco beach.

Participants convene at the People’s Space

Tragic because rather than shifting course, the so-called Green Economy strategy unveiled at the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development drives nature further into the global marketplace by defining an economic value on what the Earth “does” for humans, detachedly called “ecosystem services.” Proponents of this scheme of “commoditizing” soil, forests, and fresh water profess that by putting a price on the natural world, it can be ‘saved’. The reckless drive for unlimited growth on a finite planet is itself a legalized Ponzi scheme perpetrated on communities around the globe, future generations and Earth’s biosphere.

The future we want banner at Rio+20

The Future WHO wants?

The official negotiated outcome document was largely an uninspired retread of ideas from the original Earth Summit in 1992, with very little new, other than a commitment to  fulfill the corporate wishlist of commoditizing (pricing) nature’s processes, paving the way for the commodification (selling) of those “services.” As ETC Group’s Neth Daño noted, “Many delegations are genuinely embarrassed by the title of their outcome document, ‘The Future We Want,’ which sets sights on a future that can’t be achieved by the haplessly short-sighted initiatives proposed.”

Shannon at the People’s March

Over at the Peoples Summit, with its beautifully hectic congestion of platforms—from women’s issues, to economic solidarity, to poverty, to food sovereignty to land grabs and more were unified in protesting the Green Economy and the financialization of nature, and diverse in presenting visions for change—though far from the UN site, speaking truth to power seemed remote, and networking somewhat haphazardous.  The People’s March, though a bit drizzly, was emblematic of both the chaos and harmony of civil society present at Rio. Thousands lined the streets, signing, dancing and chanting in favor of a new world order, however colorfully defined.

At the Indigenous Kari-Oca venue

At the Indigenous Kari-Oca venue, an additional 45 minutes from the official RioCentro space, over 500 grassroots Indigenous Peoples held their own summit, ceremonies, events, press conferences and gatherings, and wrote their own The Declaration of Kari-Oca, condemning the UN agenda: “We see the goals of UNCSD Rio+20, the ‘Green Economy’ and its premise that the world can only ‘save’ nature by commodifying its life-giving capacities as a continuation of the colonialism that Indigenous Peoples and our Mother Earth have faced and resisted for 520 years.” Download the entire declaration here.

• To read the People’s media and updates from Rio visit the Global Justice Ecology Project’s Climate Connections website.

Rights of Nature Presents an Alternative

Global Exchange blogged from Rio about the activities of the various members Global Alliance for Rights of Nature on the ground, including a symbolic signing ceremony of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth and the release of the GX report Rights of Nature: Planting Seeds of Real Change  featuring visionary thinkers such as Maude Barlow, Vandana Shiva, Thomas B.K. Goldtooth, Pablo Solon, Cormac Cullinan, Mari Margil and others who address questions like: What would it look like to truly take on the root causes of climate change and put forward a system of law that places humankind in living balance with the carrying capacity of the Earth’s systems?

• View and download a copy of the report here.

Watch our video blog from Rio+20:

Indigenous groups sign the Universal Declaration on Rights of Mother Earth

The signature campaign gathering  over 120,000 signatures in support of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth was turned over to UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-moon, and there was growing synergy with rights of nature advocates and large portions of the civil society.  Strategy meetings with new allies were held, interviews were taken, and some progress was made towards introducing rights of nature language within major groups of the UN, including the Womens Major group, in which GARN member Osprey Orielle Lake and WECC held a special heartfelt and inspiring forum entitled Women Leading the Way.

Altogether our experience was mixed as activists seeking to put forward laws recognizing rights for ecosystems.

Finding Inspiration at Rio + 20

Youth respond to UN outcomes document. Photo Credit: Ben Powless

Somewhere between shuttling back and forth to the Peoples Space and the UN site, frustratingly spotty internet connections and getting my wallet swiped on a public bus, there were moments of exhaustion, exasperation and yes, doubt.  Doubt that as a civil society we will ever be bold enough to leave the comfort zone of summit hopping, critiquing the world as corporate elites designed it, and truly just dig in, work together and just create the world we want. Doubt that we will grab the reigns, and impose the laws that make our ideas real in the world, and defend our right to live within the carrying capacity of the Earth, no matter what the Monsantos, the Exxons and the Pepsi Co’s of the world dictate.

Yet at the Women Leading the Way forum, I was first introduced to a spark of light at Rio 20 —a beautiful, poised 11-year old soul named Ta’Kaiya Blaney. From the stage of the Forum, with Ted Turner in the audience and the likes of movement superstar Dr. Vandana Shiva on stage with her, Ta’Kaiya, a member of the Sliammon First Nation spoke eloquently about the need for a different path—humans recognizing their own existence depends on our growing interconnectedness with the natural world, and the idea that corporations may currently rule, but that the youth of tomorrow have different ideas in mind. Watch Ta’kaiya speak here.

Ta’Kaiya Blaney tearing up the UN outcomes document. Photo credit: Ben Powless

As the youth gathered to pronounce the failure of the Rio + 20 outcomes document, it was Ta’Kaiya, hoisted on the shoulders of her First Nations brother Clayton Thomas Muller and sister  Kandi Mosset from IEN that spoke most clearly, for me, and for thousands of others gathered in the moment of anger and seeking solace in solidarity. “Join me in Earth Revolution,” she beckoned. Indeed those five little words, if we hold true to them in our hearts and our actions, are our way forward.

–Audrey Shenandoah, Clan Mother of the Onodaga Nation.

June 20th-22nd, 2012 Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

If you’re old enough to recall, think back to 1992: the year of the original Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Way back then—in the days before space-age smart-phones, when newspapers were delivered daily by a kid on a bike, and college tuition was within reach for the working class—the human race was concerned about what we were doing to the planet. The attention of a hopeful world was focused on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for a historic gathering of nations, tasked with developing solutions for the emerging crisis of climate change, environmental degradation and increasing poverty.

There, under the watchful gaze of Corcovado’s Cristo, the United Nations Earth Summit took place.  Leaders gathered in the spirit of international cooperation: promises were made, treaties and accords were signed, protocols were developed. The term “sustainable development” rang out as the mantra ushering in a new era for  “Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Countries fell like dominos to the theory that a growing economy led by big business benefits the poor, and that once developed, countries could afford to protect the environment.

Students (like me) read about it in school, heaving a collegiate sigh of relief at a rather-unfathomable crisis averted, and took national pride in the leadership role we had played in such a monumental global undertaking.

Now fast-forward 20 years.  Commitments made at the Rio Earth Summit have long since been broken.  Turns out a “rising tide” absolutely does NOT lift all boats, and true environmental protection cannot be achieved alongside a corporate-led model of unlimited economic growth. As proof of that fact, we are rapidly approaching the tipping point—a 4º C rise in temperature, which will threaten everything we know about life on the only planet we call home.

Faith in the UN as a global “justice league” has all but been shattered.  Critiques range from calling out the UN as a flaccid institution to the more cynical view that it has been co-opted, branded and sponsored by corporations.

So why should we care about the Rio+20 (years) Earth Summit this June? 

For many activists currently packing their bags for Rio, the goal is to protest the “Green Economy”, the name given to the primary agenda for the Rio + 20 negotiators. What could be wrong with a Green Economy, you may ask? Haven’t environmental activists been promoting such a thing for years?

The Green Economy put forward by the United Nations Environment Program (nicknamed the “Greed Economy” by many) is about promoting the idea that we can only “save” nature by putting a price tag on what nature “does” for us. Proponents call it “ecosystem services” and from forests generating the air you breathe to the decomposition process resulting in the ground you walk upon, everything has its price, and corporations are wringing their hands with anticipation of what the Greed Economy could do for profit margins.

But the human connection to the rest of our living system is not contained in the calculation of the “flow of value to human societies.” Our Earth’s value is not merely that which serves people.  You cannot put a dollar value on what is truly lost when island nations like the Maldives succumb to the rising tides of climate change, or when the seas themselves are void of fish—both of which are projected to occur in the next 50-100 years.  So how is it possible to put a price on the system that governs all life, or break down an ecosystem into units of “service” and to what end?

Confronting the Greed Economy: The Rights of Nature goes to Rio

Rights of Nature: Planting Seeds of Real Change report being released for Rio+20

Those of us working on the rights-of-nature framework are seeking to reconnect humanity with the rest of species. We seek to change human law that can only “see” nature as a thing — separate and apart from us, property to be owned and destroyed at will. We seek to change the law because our own salvation can only come from a cultural mindset enforced by an earth jurisprudence that we are a part of nature.

Global Exchange and our partners at the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN), a growing network we co-founded, don’t believe putting a price on nature is the path to protecting nature, and in fact is a faster-track to privatizing and commodifying nature.  But we’re not showing up just to stand up for what we’re against, but to articulate what we’re for, and to build the movement for Rights for Nature. We’ll be blogging from Rio, convening strategy meetings with new allies, talking with media and unveiling our new report at a special panel and signing ceremony for the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth.

Rights of Nature Speakers:

·Nnimmo Bassey – Environmental Rights Action / Friends of the Earth, Nigeria

· Shannon Biggs – Global Exchange, USA

· Cormac Cullinan – EnAct International, South Africa

· Tom Goldtooth – Indigenous Environmental Network, USA

· Natalia Greene – Fundación Pachamama, Ecuador

· Osprey Orielle Lake – Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus

· Linda Sheehan – Earth Law Center, USA

· Dr. Vandana Shiva – Navdanya, India

· Pablo Solon – Focus on the Global South, Former Ambassador to the UN, Bolivia

The report directly confronts the notion of the Gree(d)n Economy of course, and is full of examples from around the world.  But it is also a call out about what a true rights of nature framework would offer the world—and includes examples and updates of the growth of this movement, and new laws taking hold. And lastly, the report asks: if nature had rights, how different would our organizing look around water, Tar Sands extraction and Indigenous rights? And what would the economy look like?  Contributors to the report include Dr. Vandana Shiva, Pablo Solon, Tom B.K. Goldtooth, Mari Margil and many others.

The report, Rights of Nature: Planting Seeds of Real Change will be available for free download from our website on June 15. Until then, we’ve selected two chapters for free preview and download now:

• Pablo Solon: At the crossroads between green economy and rights of nature (.pdf)
• Tom B.K. Goldtooth: Indigenous Sovereignty, “Green” Economy and the Rights of Mother Earth (.pdf)

Our work at Global Exchange with our partners at CELDF  is to assist communities, native tribes, activists, and governments put these ideas into law.  Confronting the Greed Economy alone won’t get us where we want to go—we’ve got to move beyond that, and fast.

Building a movement capable of actually changing culture and law to institute new economies based on community values and Earth rights is the civil rights struggle of our time.  Changing the structure of law and shifting our culture toward a new way of living in balance with nature is the hardest work imaginable. But if we are really to change the course of humanity, we must be bold and believe we are able and strategic enough to know that building a real movement is not about ownership of an idea, but working together in solidarity toward a common goal in myriad ways.

• For more information on Global Exchange’s Community Rights Program and our international work advocating for Rights of Nature, please visit our website.

• For a full calendar of Rights of Nature events at the upcoming Rio+20 Earth Summit, go here.

• The Community Rights Program has entered a contest to win $5,000 towards advancing our work around engaging youth in the Rights of Nature movement! Please vote for our project on the Doing Good This Summer website. Voting begins Friday June 8th at 12pm and ends Friday June 29th at 12pm.

——————————————

Shannon Biggs is the Director of the Community Rights program at Global Exchange. She recently co-authored two books, Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grass Roots and The Rights of Nature. Her current work focuses on assisting communities confronted by corporate harms to enact binding laws that place the rights of communities and nature above the claimed legal “rights” of corporations.

——————————————————————————————-

‘When we speak of ecosystems as ‘resources’ — it is as if we are saying the Earth is in the business of liquidating itself.”
– Randy Kapashesit of the Cree Nation

The sacred fire was lit as over 100 primarily Indigenous peoples gathered—and hundreds more participated online—for the RIGHTS OF MOTHER EARTH: RESTORING INDIGENOUS LIFE WAYS OF RESPONSIBILITY AND RESPECT International Indigenous Conference APRIL 4 – 6, 2012 at Haskell Indian Nations University, Lawrence Kansas.

As Renee Gurneau of the Chippewa Nation explained, the fire is an important spiritual tradition acknowledging our relationship with the rest of creation in all things we do, and part of “getting into our ‘right Indigenous mind.’ As she said, “We must always give before we can take, and the fire reminds us of our Original Instructions and helps us wake up to our own knowledge.”

The Sacred Fire

Each day as we walked by the fire circle right outside the auditorium where the conference was held, we felt very grateful and honored to participate in this historic gathering to hold a discourse about Rights of Nature / Rights of Mother Earth with Indigenous leaders and activists from the Global North and South.

Conference organizers, Tom BK Goldtooth (Indigenous Environmental Network) and Dan Wildcat (Haskell University) stated, “This is the greatest challenge facing humanity in the 21st Century. How do we re-orientate the dominant industrialized societies so that they pursue human well-being in a manner that contributes to the health of our Mother Earth instead of undermining it? In other words – how do we live in harmony with Nature?”

Buen Vivir
In part, the gathering was a response to the Cochabamba World People’s Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth conference called forth by President Evo Morales of Bolivia who proposed that the United Nations adopt a declaration that recognizes that Nature or “Mother Earth” is an indivisible living community of interdependent beings with inherent rights, and that as human societies we have responsibilities to follow the true laws of nature, and to live within the carrying capacity of the planet.

Marlon Santi and Patricia Gualinga Montalvo of the Sarayaku Tribe with Shannon Biggs and Ben Price

In the Kichwa  language of the Indigenous people of Ecuador it is called “sumak kawsay,” in Spanish it is “Buen Vivir” — decolonial concepts that mean ‘living well’, as opposed to consumer-driven notions of living more.  But how do we get there? Starting from where we are now, can we really envisage a future other than that which has come from enslaving nature, and treating all other life as mere “resources” for exploitation?

The conference focused on a system of earth jurisprudence (rights of nature) that views the natural world, Mother Earth, not as property to be destroyed at will, but as a rights bearing entity with legal standing in a court of law. The intent of the gathering was to bring primarily Indigenous people together with some non-Indigenous allies to explore questions about how the rights of nature legal framework could re-direct the dominant industrialized society to one of living in respect of natural laws.

The Trail of Tears

The Trail of Tears, which refers to the forced resettlement of Native Americans from their homelands and spiritual sites to far-away encampments remains present in the stories of modern colonization, theft and destruction of lands throughout Indian country. It was quite humbling and heartbreaking to realize how little we learn in our conventional school systems about the history of Native American peoples, their brutal struggles, and their outstanding resilience to hundreds of years of ongoing assaults.

Modern stories of broken promises from government officials, corporations, speculators and lawyers have created a wariness among Native leaders to partner with outsiders, and for those of us “non-native allies” present, it was a constant learning of how to engage with love and humility in a space that was first and foremost—Indigenous. Tom Goldtooth spoke at the conference on the idea of Indigenous leaders partnering with non-native allies to promote Rights for Nature:

Although not everyone saw eye-to-eye throughout the 3-day event, it was clear to all in attendance that the basic tenants proposed by the rights of nature framework, while new to western legal systems, are actually based on”original instructions” — Indigenous worldviews and philosophies that uphold the essential interrelatedness of all life and our human responsibility to respect and protect the natural world that we are part and particle of. This basic unifying principle has the potential to create new alliances and protections for every community as we face the challenging years ahead.

Shannon Biggs and Clayton Thomas-Muller, Tar Sands Campaign Director for IEN enjoy some traditional eats

Almost all of the speakers at the conference were Indigenous—from as far away as Hawaii, Ecuador and Canada.  Shannon Biggs of Global Exchange (co-author of this blog) and Ben Price from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund had the honor and opportunity to present the work we do with communities confronted by unwanted and dangerous projects to write new laws to recognize legal rights for communities and ecosystems.

•    Watch a video of Shannon and Ben present on Community and Nature’s Rights.

•    For video and audio archive of the conference, go here.

Rights and Responsibilities to Future Generations

Representing Global Exchange and the Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus as well as our shared collaboration with the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, we listened and learned a great deal from Indigenous leaders exploring concerns about rights of nature and how they might interface or interfere with existing Indian Native and First Nations laws.  We have much to learn about how Indigenous communities define responsibilities as much as rights, and that the rights of future generations—not just of human but all species—is critical to building a bridge toward common understanding in the shared work that we do.

Renee Gurneau at the Harvest Banquet  hosted by the Osage Nation

The call for environmental justice in Indigenous communities on the frontlines of uranium mining, tar sands extractions, water takings and more are all potential opportunities for rights of nature and community rights to come into action.

We look forward to further alliance building with Indigenous communities and offering all that we can as we look towards the Rio + 20 Earth Summit and beyond and how we can create broad support for the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth and care for all of our communities and bioregions in a truly just and respectful manner. As Tom Goldtooth said at the conference,

“We cannot flourish breaking the laws of nature. Rights of Nature is a human recognition that we are part of a larger Earth community and if we want to continue we must recognize the laws of that community; the true system governing our own well being.”

Further resources/links

• Watch videos of Tom Goldtooth and Shannon Biggs discussing the Rights of Nature on the Council of Canadians’ ‘System Change, Not Climate Change’ website.

• Hawaiian Rev. M. Kalani Souza, storyteller, songwriter, musician, poet, 
philosopher, priest, political satirist, and peacemaker joins a banjo playing friend impromptu 
for a song on the grass at Haskell College.

• Shannon Biggs and Osprey Orielle Lake are offering  Rights of Nature Trainings through the Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus and if interested, please contact Wyolah Garden (wgarden@ix.netcom.com). Also if you are interested in hosting a Rights of Nature Training in your community please contact Wyolah Garden.

————————————–

Shannon and Osprey at the conference

Shannon Biggs is the Director of the Community Rights program at Global Exchange. She recently co-authored a book, Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grass Roots  (PoliPoint Press). Her current work focuses on assisting communities confronted by corporate harms to enact binding laws that place the rights of communities and nature above the claimed legal “rights” of corporations.

Osprey Orielle Lake is a lifelong advocate of environmental justice and societal transformation. She is the Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus (WECC) and an International Advocate for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. Her book, Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature (White Cloud Press) is a 2011 Nautilus Book Award winner.

Photo credit: Justin Elliott

Which president told Congress: “I recommend a law prohibiting all corporations from contributing to the campaign expenses of any party…let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly?”

If you recognize this Presidential quote, it probably means you’re a history buff (or you watch too much Jeopardy). The correct answer: Who was Theodore Roosevelt?

While the speech has become a notable quotable, it’s often forgotten that it followed public outrage surrounding Roosevelt’s acceptance of huge corporate contributions that locked-in his election in 1904.  This popular clamor for accountability (the Progressive Era; maybe they were the Occupiers of their times) was enough to move Teddy and Congress to pass the first ever Federal legislation prohibiting corporations from making monetary contributions to national political campaigns, called the Tillman Act.

Now for extra points: What happened to the Tillman Act?

Like so many other attempts over the last 100+ years to restrict, reform, reign in, eliminate and otherwise account for Big Money in politics, the Tillman Act didn’t even need to be overturned for the corporate elite to get around it. It was simply whittled away. How is this done?  In the same way Congress later banned unions from making political contributions in the 1940’s, only to see Big Labor skirt the restrictions by forming the first-ever PAC, and collecting campaign donations (sometimes coercively) outside of regular worker’s dues.

OK, now for a Civics question: What is the source of power for the corporate elite?

Throughout our history as a nation, the wealthy elite have always held power, and its not an accident, or the result of a few bad decisions, or even corruption (though those all exist), its far more structural and insidious than that.  The Constitution itself provided—from the beginning—for a government by and for the 1%. The Founding Fathers truly believed that the best form of government was one in which wealth made the rules. At the time the Constitution was being debated, the majority of people were against it, despite how our folklore has remembered it.

Turns out the 99% of yesteryear were quite prescient indeed.

The REVOLVING DOOR: Center for Responsive Politics found 370 former members of Congress were in the "influence-peddling business", becoming lobbyists or corporate advisors.

Fast-forward to the present day, the ways money has seeped through the cracks of our political system and pooled into the pockets of our elected officials has only grown despite generations upon generations of ever-ongoing reform efforts.

* Dozens of Acts of Congress have been passed attempting to address corruption in government and our elections yet for every reform our system has enabled bigger, better ways for wealth to hold the reigns.

* Lobbyists. They walk right into lawmaking areas and help write bills and buy votes. They present politicians with corporate-friendly Bills already drafted. They are well paid to successfully influence, chop and change legislation, and work deals with our elected officials and even with Supreme Court Justices. Under our Constitution this is protected as free speech and despite the numerous laws to regulate lobbyists, the practice is only on the rise.

*  Constitutional laws.  Many states—not only Montana— wrote their Constitutions to include the subordination of corporations to the will of the people, and banned corporate political expenditures in state elections.  Over the years, most of those Constitutional provisions have been amended to pave the way for more corporate-friendly laws. (Montana, of course still has this language in their Constitution, and has used it to challenge Citizen’s United)

*  The Supreme Court. We ended the plantation system and slavery with the passage of the 14^th and 15^th Amendments.  Yet it was the unelected lifers of the USSC that added corporate monsterhood to the 14^th Amendment, providing the new vehicle for wealth to continue to rule after slavery was abolished. They also made sure that our labor and environmental laws are placed under the Commerce Clause, so that our worker and environmental laws have the seal of approval from business.

(Fun fact: did you know that the Constitution didn’t specify how many Justices there could be? It could have been just one!). Find out more here.

* The Commerce Clause – it looks so benign in the Constitution—15 little words that empowers Congress to regulate commerce—but it is one of the most powerful weapons in corporate arsenal. Anything defined as commerce (and everything is defined as commerce, including toxic waste) has been used by corporations and the courts to strip state and municipal governments of lawmaking designed to protect communities and ecosystems from harm. It has been exported around the world to do the same  (see NAFTA). Its powers have quietly grown over the last 100 years. For a great history of the Clause, click here (pages 18-37).

The list goes on and on. But the point is, there isn’t just ONE tool, or two, or even three. The system is designed to be an underground burrow for a never-ending game of Corporate-Whack-A-Mole. You know, the arcade game where you take a big mallet and smack the “mole” when it pops up from its hidey-hole…only to find that once you whack it down, it comes up in another place, faster and faster until you can’t keep up? We can’t stop the moles from popping up; it’s the function of the game.

The point is, if we think the system is broken,  then we could fix it, we could reform it. We could ask our elected leaders to work with us to amend or otherwise throw in some new rules to work out the bugs, and strike down laws that are inconsistent with a functioning democracy.  That makes sense—if it’s merely broken.

But if we find that its not broken at all—but rather working perfectly as the manufacturers designed it— a Constitutional structure that is designed around Property and Commerce (rather than Rights and Democracy) then the time has come to stop playing corporate whack-a-mole, and start taking a step toward something more revolutionary.

We could begin to ask new questions like: what if corporations aren’t the problem at all? Or: If the Supreme Court had never granted “personhood” rights to corporations, would they still be trammeling the rights of citizens and riding roughshod over communities and nature—Would we have democracy?

The revolution for new rules is already here. Its happening at the grassroots. 150+ communities have already begun to challenge the system by writing new laws that place community and ecosystems above corporate profits and they’ve challenged the entire structure of law—right from Main Street, where they  live. These brave communities want real democracy and government in the hands of the people, and they are not afraid to challenge unjust laws that deny their rights and place corporate harms in their midst.

Revolutionaries who fought for Independence from Britain wanted nothing so much as the right to govern themselves locally. They trusted themselves to make critical decisions at the local level on issues that directly affected them.  We could learn a lot from our real founding brothers and sisters. We could join today’s Community Rights rebels across the country, make a nationwide movement that asserts (rather than asks for) our rights.  After all, upholding the rights of the people is the real job of government and just law.

So. Final Jeopardy question:  What are we truly prepared to do to put government in the hands of the people?

For more information on Community Rights visit us here, or call Shannon at 415.575.5540.

On October 26 I spent a chilly and drizzly day on Wall Street along with my fellow community-rights organizer, Ben Price from CELDF. We had been asked to share our experiences with those occupying Liberty Plaza. Together we spoke on the steps in the now-famous style of ‘the People’s Mic’, an altogether exhilarating experience. Below is a portion of my talk.

Liberty Street - OWS

Greetings from Global Exchange, Occupy Wall Street West, San Francisco and Oakland California, and the land of the Ohlone tribe. I am deeply honored to be here at the US epicenter of the most important thing happening in the world right now — a budding revolution for real democracy.

We the 99% are naturally diverse.
We’re young, we’re old, we cross the political spectrum, we’re urban, we’re rural, we’re the overworked, the underpaid and the unemployed. What unifies us is not just our outrage against the handful of global rule-makers who occupy OUR streets, but a common goal to change the rules.

We the 99% seek more than the illusion of democracy.
We want government in the hands of the people. We want more than the opportunity to elect the next politician to carry out the corporate agenda.

As I boarded the plane yesterday before dawn, hundreds of police forces swarmed our comrades Occupying Oakland, CA. Tear gas, rubber bullets, flash bang grenades and excessive force resulted in dozens of injuries and arrests throughout the day and into the night. I hold them in my heart as I stand here with you all today and ask you to do the same.

Other cities are also being forcibly swept, and as the cold of winter approaches, pundits question the resolve of those holding open this public space. Politicians who initially disregarded us, now desperately seek to curry our favor in an election year, hoping to move our cause from structural change to a few policy concessions to business as usual.

Some say we’re leaderless. But our truth is we’re all leaders.
The power of this moment lies in our refusal to be divided by partisan politics and to stay focused on dismantling corporate rule by taking control of our own structures of government. Rule by the people. If we can remain united in this, it is we — the 99% — that are too big to fail.

Occupiers, you have shifted the conversation – a feat that can’t be overstated. You have woken up millions of the disillusioned, and inspired them to find their own voice, their own power. We have the opportunity now to shift more than just politicians but the political and economic paradigm that places corporate interests above our shared values of justice, equality, good jobs, healthy resilient vibrant communities and ecosystems. This is our time.

Shannon Biggs speaking at OWS

Our communities are ground zero for the corporate-friendly policies of current law. Everything from the destructive Tar Sands pipeline, to GMOs and pesticides on the supermarket shelves, to big box stores, to unemployment, occurs in a real place on the map, and is experienced by real people living in a community. We are all being denied the right to determine our own quality of life and have become sacrifice zones to corporate plans of one kind or another. But that is changing.

My colleague, Ben Price of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, and I are here today to share our experiences from the front lines of the movement for community and nature’s rights. Over 125 communities (and growing) are taking control of their local government and stripping corporations of their constitutional protections. More than 600,000 people are living under these rights-based laws (and growing) in order to ban unwanted corporate activity in their midst, or to legalize and practice sustainability.

These communities have begun to understand that the specific issues that affect them cannot be solved without dismantling a structure of law, government, and culture that guarantees that corporate minorities will continue to make decisions on energy, agriculture, and environmental extraction.

This movement for community and nature’s rights isn’t about electing the “right” people – it is about exercising our fundamental right to local self-governing authority. As rights-based community organizers we assist citizens to pass local laws that assert their right to decide what happens in their community on issues of local concern, recognize rights of nature, and strip corporate so-called “rights.”

We stand on the shoulders of past peoples movements.
These movements sought to force cultural transformation, social transformation, political and economic transformation. These were movements for RIGHTS.

The Occupied Wall Street Journal

Abolitionists did not seek to regulate slave owners to be kinder to slaves. They fought for equality and to drive the rights of African Americans into law. Suffragettes did not wait for permission, they asserted their rights and broke the law to cast their ballots, as was their right. And while the lunch counter sit-ins are historically remembered in Greensboro, people in over 700 cities asserted their rights in this way, in some places for over two years. These are the defining moments of movements for rights that change unjust laws.

Rights come from creation. By virtue of being born we are all equal, Rights cannot be granted to corporations because corporations are in fact property, a legal fiction on paper, a mechanism for conducting business. Property cannot hold rights.
JUST laws are instituted to protect and uphold rights. When the law denies rights of people and nature, we can and must change the laws – they are OUR laws.

This is a defining moment.
If we truly seek change, we must become the new civil rights movement of our time. Together we can occupy Wall Street, occupy Main Street, occupy City Hall and our local governments — not just today, but everyday.
Thank you, OWS.

We were asked to give our entire 1 hour presentations again indoors for the OWS web network. It is available here in its entirety. (Its worth saying that the speeches, prepared for the format of the People’s Mic, did not feel  the same during taping, and after a few minutes quickly abandoned written text for more conversational discussion.)

It is not too late to change our human relationship with nature from one of dominance to one of interdependence and balance. In fact, the movement for nature’s rights is happening all over the world. Join us for a rich and interactive dialogue on how we can rewrite our human story on planet Earth, by signing up for a one-hour telecourse or a weekend seminar in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In this dynamic seminar we will learn about the historic 2008 event when Ecuador became the first country to include Rights of Nature in its national constitution and then cover movements since then in Bolivia and here in the U.S. as Rights of Nature takes hold as an idea whose time has come. Rights of Nature laws create a right to legal standing, offering citizens, communities, Indigenous peoples, and others a revolutionary new way to protect the vitality of ecosystems.

Climate activists have long been seeking a new way to protect the climate and all of the environment, which would enable communities affected by climate change to gain recognition for the harms done not just to human interests around the globe, but also to environmental ones. We come together with a com