[GPSCC-chat] Fwd: [gpsmc-d] Shasta and Goliath: Bringing Down Corporate Rule

[Gerry Gras]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[gpsmc-d] Shasta and Goliath: Bringing Down Corporate Rule
Date: 	Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:44:08 -0800 (PST)
From: 	Arlen Comfort <acomfort at rocketmail.com>
To: 	gpsmc-d at cagreens.org



Scott Munson Posted this on SfBayOil 1/13/11

I found it hopeful and inspiring that some communities are doing
something to challenge corporate power.
- Arlen

Shasta and Goliath: Bringing Down Corporate Rule
**
<http://stevebeckow.com/2011/01/kanner-shasta-goliath-bringing-corporate-rule>*http://stevebeckow.com/2011/01/kanner-shasta-goliath-bringing-corporate-rule*
prohibit corporations such as Nestle and Coca-Cola from extracting water
from the local aquifer.
ban energy-giant PG&E, and any other corporation, from regional cloud
seeding

/The people at the grassroots strike back. I’m not sure of the legality
of all measures but I do get Mt. Shasta’s intention to sound the
trumpet./ /Thanks to Penny.
/*
KANNER: Shasta and Goliath: Bringing Down Corporate Rule
*

Wed, 12/29/2010
By: Allen D. Kanner
Tikkun <http://www.tikkun.org

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.

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 Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, council
member Doug Shields announced this August that he is about to introduce
a bill banning corporations in the city from drilling for natural gas,
an environmentally devastating practice known as “fracking.” As 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 of the kind proposed
by Tikkun. In fact, the movement is already expanding. In Pennsylvania
people are now organizing on the state level. Similar stirrings have
been reported in New Hampshire.

What about your community?


*http://stevebeckow.com/2011/01/kanner-shasta-goliath-bringing-corporate-rule/* 






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MUST SEE The American Dream Film - END THE FED
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPWH5TlbloU
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv2oCXbW4r0> Fun 30 minute CARTOON

Video Combo by Max Igan: The Calling & The Awakening http://bit.ly/33YHr9

The Story of Your Enslavement
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbp6umQT58A

The Video BP & Big Oil Don't Want You to See
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMkXA6kqNsw

Crash Course Chapter 3: Exponential Growth Chap 4: Compounding Is The
Problem are you prepared?
http://chrismartenson.com/crashcourse Chap 16: fuzzy numbers

33 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True, What Every Person
Should Know... http://bit.ly/74BIA9

50 Reasons to Oppose Water Fluoridation http://truthisscary.com/?p=9534

RED ALERT re: DHS by former KGB agent IDEOLOGICAL SUBVERSION
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHiKnqEFzDA

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