We The People: Stories from the Community Rights Movement in the United States

Description

We the People offers powerful portraits of communities across the United States that have faced threats from environmentally destructive corporate projects and responded by successfully banning those projects at a local level. We hear the inspiring voices of ordinary citizens and activists practicing a cutting-edge form of organising developed by the non-profit law firm, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF).

Anneke Campbell is a writer and documentary filmmaker who has worked for many years to advance the causes of justice and respect for all humanity and the environment. She is the coauthor of Moonrise. Thomas Linzey is an attorney and the executive director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. He is the coauthor of YES! magazine's "This Changes Everything."

"Nature's right to gloriously carry forth are as inalienable as the sun rising each morning. Yet, we must fight hard to codify those immutable principles in human law and community practice. Tom Linzey and Anneke Campbell's remarkable book help to revolutionize our thinking and our plan to enact and sustain this deep common sense. With an offence we can save the day. We the People: Stories from the Community Rights Movement in the United States is on the offence!" --Randy Hayes, Rainforest Action Network founder, Executive Director Foundation Earth "For thousands of years, the law of human beings was to keep the covenant with the natural world. Greed, the rise of empire and the modern corporate state have undermined this covenant and placed communities, human health, and the natural world in peril. The work on restoration of the rights of nature, and the rights of those who live there, or community rights, is essential to the transformation of our legal and policy system into one which is sustainable, and one which will serve the needs of the natural world and the seven generations ahead. This book is not only the concept, it is most importantly the practice of the hard work of making change." --Winona LaDuke, executive director of Honor the Earth "As we scan the landscape of cataclysmic destruction, both environmental and social, behind the curtain in most cases is an economic motive. The rhinoceros in the room today is corporate power, the inevitable logic of a system that relentlessly concentrates wealth, distributes poverty, and leaves in its terrible wake a democracy deficit. This powerful book is a field guide to nonviolent revolution. It tells the story of how courageous communities are using innovative legal and political strategies to restore nature, communities, and democracy. It's some of the most important work in the world today. Read it and act." --Kenny Ausubel, CEO and founder of Bioneers