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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Corporate Control? Not in These Communities
  • Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 10:27:40 -0600


seems to me the first step is local production & control of food


Corporate Control? Not in These Communities
http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/corporate-control-not-in-these-communities
Can local laws have a real effect on the power of giant corporations?
by Allen D. Kanner posted Feb 04, 2011

Mt. Shasta, a small northern California town of 3,500 residents nestled in
the foothills of magnificent Mount Shasta, is taking on corporate power
through an unusual process—democracy.

The citizens of Mt. Shasta have developed an extraordinary ordinance, set to
be voted on in the next special or general election, that would prohibit
corporations such as Nestle and Coca-Cola from extracting water from the
local aquifer. But this is only the beginning. The ordinance would also ban
energy giant PG&E, and any other corporation, from regional cloud seeding, a
process that disrupts weather patterns through the use of toxic chemicals
such as silver iodide. More generally, it would refuse to recognize corporate
personhood, explicitly place the rights of community and local government
above the economic interests of multinational corporations, and recognize the
rights of nature to exist, flourish, and evolve.

Mt. Shasta is not alone. Rather, it is part of a (so far) quiet municipal
movement making its way across the United States in which communities are
directly defying corporate rule and affirming the sovereignty of local
government.

Since 1998, more than 125 municipalities have passed ordinances that
explicitly put their citizens' rights ahead of corporate interests, despite
the existence of state and federal laws to the contrary. These communities
have banned corporations from dumping toxic sludge, building factory farms,
mining, and extracting water for bottling. Many have explicitly refused to
recognize corporate personhood. Over a dozen townships in Pennsylvania,
Maine, and New Hampshire have recognized the right of nature to exist and
flourish (as Ecuador just did in its new national constitution). Four
municipalities, including Halifax in Virginia, and Mahoney, Shrewsbury, and
Packer in Pennsylvania, have passed laws imposing penalties on corporations
for chemical trespass, the involuntary introduction of toxic chemicals into
the human body.

When the attorney general of Pennsylvania threatened to sue Packer Township
for banning sewage sludge within its boundaries, six other Pennsylvania towns
adopted similar ordinances.

These communities are beginning to band together. When the attorney general
of Pennsylvania threatened to sue Packer Township this year for banning
sewage sludge within its boundaries, six other Pennsylvania towns adopted
similar ordinances and twenty-three others passed resolutions in support of
their neighboring community. Many people were outraged when the attorney
general proclaimed, "there is no inalienable right to local self-government."

Bigger cities are joining the fray. In November, Pittsburgh's city council
voted to ban corporations in the city from drilling for natural gas as a
result of local concern about an environmentally devastating practice known
as "fracking." As city councilman Doug Shields stated in a press release,
"Many people think that this is only about gas drilling. It's not—it's about
our authority as a municipal community to say 'no' to corporations that will
cause damage to our community. It's about our right to community, [to] local
self-government."

What has driven these communities to such radical action? The typical story
involves a handful of local citizens deciding to oppose a corporate practice,
such as toxic sludge dumping, which has taken a huge toll on the health,
economy, and natural surroundings of their town. After years of fighting for
regulatory change, these citizens discover a bitter truth: the U.S.
environmental regulatory system consists of a set of interlocking state and
federal laws designed by industry to serve corporate interests. With the deck
utterly stacked against them, communities are powerless to prevent
corporations from destroying the local environment for the sake of profit.

Enter the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit public
interest law firm that champions a different approach. The firm helps
communities draft local ordinances that place the rights of municipalities to
govern themselves above corporate rights. Through its Democracy School, which
offers seminars across the United States, it provides a detailed analysis of
the history of corporate law and environmental regulation that shows a need
for a complete overhaul of the system. Armed with this knowledge and with
their well-crafted ordinances, citizens are able to return to their
communities to begin organizing for the passage of laws such as Mt. Shasta's
proposed ordinance.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is collaborating with Global
Exchange, an international environmental and workers' rights organization, to
help supporters of the Mt. Shasta ordinance organize. In an interview for
this article, I asked Shannon Biggs, who directs Global Exchange's Community
Rights Program, if she expected ordinances of this type to be upheld in
court. Biggs was dubious about judges "seeing the error of their ways" and
reversing a centuries-old trend in which courts grant corporations increased
power. Rather, she sees these ordinances as powerful educational and
organizing tools that can lead to the major changes necessary to reduce
corporate power, put decision-making back in the hands of real people rather
than corporate "persons," and open up whole new areas of rights, such as
those of ecosystems and natural communities. Biggs connects the current
municipal defiance of existing state and federal law to a long tradition of
civil disobedience in the United States, harkening back to Susan B. Anthony
illegally casting her ballot, the Underground Railroad flouting slave laws,
and civil rights protesters purposely breaking segregation laws.

But the nascent municipal rights movement offers something new in the way of
political action. These communities are adopting laws that, taken together,
are forming an alternative structure to the global corporate economy. The
principles behind these laws can be applied broadly to any area where
corporate rights override local self-government or the well-being of the
local ecology. The best place to start, I would suggest, is with banning
corporations from making campaign contributions to local elections.

The municipal movement could provide one of the most effective routes to
building nationwide support for an Environmental and Social Responsibility
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the movement is already
expanding. In Pennsylvania, people are now organizing on the state level and
similar stirrings have been reported in New Hampshire.

What about your community?

Allen D. Kanner, Ph.D., is a cofounder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free
Childhood, co-editor of Psychology and Consumer Culture and Ecopsychology,
and a Berkeley, California child, family, and adult psychologist.




  • [Livingontheland] Corporate Control? Not in These Communities, Tradingpost, 05/28/2011

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