02/12/2008 01:46 PM

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Wild Law: The New Jurisprudence Page 2

CELDF's project director, Ben Price said of the landmark Tamaqua ordinance, that the council took "an extraordinary - but logical - step. Western law treats rivers, mountains, forests and other natural systems as ‘property' with no rights that governments or corporations must respect. This results in the destruction of ecosystems, backed by law, public policy, and the power of government.

The people of Tamaqua acted in the grand tradition of the Abolitionists, who launched a peoples' movement in the 1830s to end the legal but immoral treatment of slaves as property and to establish forever their rights as people entitled to fundamental and inalienable rights. Now, nature's inalienable rights are beginning to be restored.

100 Communities Follow  

100 communities in Pennsylvania have since passed ordinances to keep corporations out that they don't want. The state responded by passing legislation allowing the attorney general to sue municipalities to overturn such ordinances on the ground that they are illegal and unconstitutional. Five suits have been initiated so far. "People have had the veil ripped away from their eyes," says Linzey. "They're saying, ‘We thought the state was here to help us.'"

Unless a courageous judge refuses to uphold the law, the citizens won't find help in the courtroom either. The problem stems from an 1886 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that granted corporations "personhood," with rights that go with that, including due process and equal protection.

With the mega-resources that corporations have at their disposal, any legal battle is ridiculously one-sided. Corporation argue that people that try to stop them from entering a community are interfering with their "personal" right to conduct business.

The upshot is that as long as corporations are legally viewed as "persons," there is no recourse against them. That's why CELDF is helping municipalities write ordinances that strip corporations of personhood and even, in some cases, to rewrite their local constitutions to override state and federal government.

So far, five years after the first Pennsylvania towns stood up to the factory farms and sewage sludge corporations, not one new factory farm or "one teaspoon of sludge" has gone into the 100 communities. 

The fight is far from over, however. The lawsuits are winding their way through the judicial system, but the townspeople in this traditionally conservative region of the state vow they will not submit, even to judges' rulings. They now see we don't live in a democracy, says Linzey, and have learned it's up to them to take back their right to govern themselves.

Democracy School

It was difficult at first for people to believe that a clear majority vote in their community could be overridden by outside interests and that the government wasn't on their side. Linzey has seen the same disbelief in people in Virginia, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio and Alaska where CELDF has helped communities engaged in similar battles.

CELDF started the Daniel Pennock Democracy School along with Richard Grossman - writer and historian and cofounder of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy. Named for a 17-year old resident of Bucks County, PA., who died after exposure to land-applied sewage sludge, the school offers 3-day trainings to provide people with the historical background, analysis of the regulatory system, and other information they need to oppose corporate control of their communities.

In just two years the schools have graduated 2000 people. This year, the number of trainings will rise from a dozen to 150, with about 15-20 people each.

New Kind of Activism

CELDF originally represented groups across Pennsylvania in permit appeals in the environmental regulatory process. Linzey now calls this process the "regulatory chute" because it funnels people into arguing over "parts per million or paper vs plastic or how many odors are going to be released or how much of the river will be polluted" instead of working to prevent business from polluting at all. After five years, Linzey was frustrated with the process and how little it accomplished.

He saw that adherence to the regulatory model is the reason that 40 years of environmental activism in the U.S. has failed to stop degradation of the environment. He changed tactics from regulatory-based to community-based organizing.

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Democracy School schedule: http://www.celdf.org/

This article is adapted from Wild Law: The Rights of the Earth and Bringing Democracy Back to America, which appeared in the Long Island Natural Pages, a division of The Natural Pages.

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