CELDF fights corporate "personhood", other issues

[jaqeboy]

Folks:

I wanted to share a clip from today's Democracy Now program.   

Amy Goodman interviewed CELDF Executive Director Thomas Linzey about our work with labor, environmental, and community groups in Spokane to put a "Community Bill of Rights" into the city's Home Rule Charter.  In addition, they talked about our work with communities in New England facing the privatization of their water by bottled water companies.

Watch here:   http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/21/envision_spokane_coalition_works_to_get

Best wishes,

-          Mari

Mari Margil

Associate Director
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
126 NE Mason Street
Portland, Oregon   97211
(503) 284-2814
mmargil@celdf.org

[jaqeboy]

Here's the "money quote" from the interview:

THOMAS LINZEY: It's an understanding that our activism is limited in the United States. We're, in essence, placed into a box, which is limited by something called corporate rights. Corporations today have the same constitutional rights as you or I, but because of their wealth, of course, they can exercise those rights to a greater extent. So, even though you and I have First Amendment rights and Fourth Amendment rights and Bill of Rights protections under the US system of law, corporations have those rights too. So, Wal-Mart Corporation, for example, has First Amendment rights and Fourth Amendment rights under the law.

And what the folks in Spokane have started to say is, well, as a hundred-some communities on East Coast which have begun passing these ordinances and laws as well, is that to say to themselves, "We can't build a sustainable, environmentally, economically sustainable system, if our activism is defined for us within that box. And so, we need to break out of that box somehow." And one of the most amazing things about this—these particular Community Bill of Rights, which are being amended into the Spokane city home rule charter, is that it actually deals with that, declaring in that bill of rights that corporations don't have rights that can actually exceed those rights of people within the city of Spokane. And so, it's pretty groundbreaking stuff, in addition.
...
It's fascinating stuff happening in New England right now.... these folks have moved forward and at town meetings have actually passed law that bans corporations from withdrawing water from within their aquifer, and then have also taken steps within those town meetings to strip corporations of those constitutional rights, which would normally be used to overturn those laws that are being passed in those areas.

And so, what's happening is almost like a grassroots revolt, where people have said, "We're not going to wait for the regulatory agencies to come in and save us. We're not going to wait for the Sierra Club to come in to save us." These rural, relatively conservative towns are rising up to seize their own lawmaking authority...

[emphasis added]