Part 2: Jordan Cove LNG Backers Spend Huge Money to Sway Tiny Oregon County Election
This Read the Dirt production was published by DeSmogBlog Two weeks ahead of an Oregon county special election, backers of the multi-billion [read more …]
Part 1: Oregon County Faces Gas Industry Funding, Lobbyists in Battle to Halt Jordan Cove LNG Project
This Read the Dirt production was published by DeSmogBlog and Truthout. Scattered throughout Coos County, situated on Oregon’s southern coast, are signs [read more …]
For Teachers and Citizens: How to Respond to Federal Immigration Raids
Editor’s Note: TeachDream is a “group of educators and counselors working in New York City Public Schools, as part of an Inquiry [read more …]
How To Respond When Your (Local) Government Gets Sued By A Corporation
Editor’s Note: This piece, by Tish O’Dell of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) and Ohio Community Rights Network, was written [read more …]
Interview: The Working Class Movement Fighting for Local Authority
Editor’s Note: Make the Road New York is a membership-based grassroots immigrant organization that leads and supports local lawmaking efforts, including recent [read more …]
Interview: Challenging Corporations’ ‘Right’ To Grow GMOs in Rural Oregon
Editor’s Note: Oregonians for Community Rights has filed paperwork to begin petitioning for a “Right to Local, Community Self-Government” state constitutional amendment [read more …]
Cancer Clusters Spark Historic Pesticide Vote in Oregon
Editor’s Note: Pesticide-induced cancer clusters have driven one Oregon county to propose a never-before-seen initiative. This November, residents of Josephine County, OR [read more …]
The Devil In The Details of Local Law
Editor’s Note: A background story of a region fighting corporate industrial wind farming in New Hampshire. We learn about conditions that bring [read more …]
Don’t Tread On Us-A Message from Colorado
Editor’s Introduction: Colorado Springs, CO residents are in court, fighting for the right to vote on a Community Bill of Rights that [read more …]
Making Sense of Recent Legal History
Editor’s Note: Did you know that our Supreme Court ruled—seventeen years ago—that corporations’ right to negative speech trumps citizens’/consumers’ right to know [read more …]
Where Push Is Coming To Shove, USA
East Boulder County United statement on Colorado Oil and Gas Association’s lawsuit against Lafayette’s Community Rights initiative By Cliff Willmeng and [read more …]
The First Big Win for the $15 Movement
Editor’s Note: The first big win for the $15 movement has happened before many thought it was possible. We speak with Sage [read more …]
A Legal Definition for ‘Unsustainable Energy’?
Grafton Community Bill of Rights Ordinance Succeeds in Keeping Industrial Wind Out Editor’s Note: A small town in New Hampshire has banned [read more …]
When The State Pushes Back
Editor’s Note: We speak with Kai Huschke, the NW and Hawaii Organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund—working to pass Community [read more …]
This Crow Won’t Fly
Editor’s Note: Continuing our coverage of the Homeless Rights Movement. See here for an introduction to the movement by one of its [read more …]
A New County Constitution
Editor’s Note: On Nov.5 citizens of Jefferson County, WA will vote on if they want to “charter” their county. To charter is [read more …]
Homeless Bills of Rights-New Narratives
Editor’s Note: Continuing our coverage of rights-based movements and narratives. Simon Davis-Cohen speaks with Paul Boden about Homeless Bills of Rights. Paul [read more …]
Colorado Anti-fracking Movement Heating Up!
Editor’s Note: A run down of the towns and counties in Colorado that are passing laws in opposition to the industrial gas [read more …]
Local Initiative Process Gutted
Judge Decides That the Spokane’s Community Bill of Rights is Outside the Authority of Citizen Initiative You Don’t Decide – On August [read more …]
Obstacles to Asserting Rights
Editor’s Note: When citizens get together to elevate their rights above corporations’—there is a backlash. What this backlash looks like can be [read more …]
Benton County, OR Moves Forward with Nation’s Potential First Food Bill of Rights
Introduction by Dana Allen: Since the pre petition of the Sustainable Food System Ordinance of Benton County was filed by the three [read more …]
Spokane Continues to Fight for the Right to Vote
Editor’s Note: Read the Dirt staff writer Alex Valentine provides context to Spokane, Washington’s current work to pass a Community Bill of [read more …]
Foster Youth Bill of Rights, New Narratives
Editor’s Note: Continuing our coverage of rights-based narratives. Foster youth in Oregon are working to explicitly recognize rights of theirs that are [read more …]
Santa Monica Passes West Coast’s First Rights of Nature Ordinance
Editor’s Note: Santa Monica recently passed an ordinance that elevates its right to enforce its Sustainable City Plan, rights to clean air, [read more …]
Housing Justice: Fighting for Rights
Editor’s Note: As banks continue to foreclose our homes a new narrative about housing—one focused on rights—begins to emerge. Kari of We [read more …]
A Community Rights Ordinance For South Puget Sound
Editor’s Note: A resident of Thurston County, Washington gives her perspective on the logic of Community Rights Ordinances, the Washington State Community [read more …]
County Government Writes History, Hydrocarbon Ban is First of its Kind
Editor’s Note: Read the Dirt intern Alex Valentine reports on Mora County, New Mexico—the first county in the nation to ban oil [read more …]
Food Bills of Rights and Monsanto-Speech
Editor’s Note: Paul Cienfuegos articulates the connection between the Community Rights Movement and the growing resistance to genetically modified foods. Cienfuegos gave [read more …]
GM Wheat Discovered in Oregon, Benton County Continues Work on Food Bill of Rights
By Clinton Lindsey, 5th-generation farmer and co-founder of Benton County Community Rights Coalition Editor’s Note: Benton County, Oregon grows seed (including wheat) [read more …]
Does Food Sovereignty Exist in the United States? Food and the Community Rights Movement
Editor’s Note: Trisha Mandes speaks to the deficiencies of U.S. food activism and proposes an adaptive way forward. Trisha has worked with [read more …]
Washington Community Action Network Talks Rights
Editor’s Note: Rachael DeCruz of Washington Community Action Network and the Seattle-King County NAACP speaks to the conflict between people’s right to [read more …]
Under the Radar: How a Multinational Corporation Quietly Bought a County-Wide Election
Editor’s Note: Citizens in Thurston County, WA put an initiative on the ballot to make its electricity publically owned. Puget Sound Energy [read more …]
Day One of the Occupation of Detroit
By Ron Scott & Shea Howell, Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership (March 25, 2013) DETROIT, MI – Today is a sad [read more …]
Crude Oil Trains Proposed for Grays Harbor, WA: Citizens Challenge Permitting Process
Editor’s Note: Proposals to bring crude oil terminals to Grays Harbor are making local citizens ask questions. What rights do communities have [read more …]
Middle School Elevates its Rights above Corporations’
Editor’s Note: We were invited to Sunnyside Environmental School of Southeast Portland, OR to speak to middle schoolers about citizen law making. [read more …]
What a Difference a Degree Makes
Editor’s Note: Learn about the latest with regard to coal exportation in British Columbia, Canada, and why the surrounding region is up [read more …]
The Story of Broadview Heights, Ohio
Editor’s Note: Broadview Heights, OH has introduced the novel community rights to pure water, clean air, peaceful enjoyment of home, a sustainable [read more …]
Democracy Denied in Small Town, USA
Photo: Daniel Schwen, Wikimedia Commons Editor’s Note: Read the story of the inner workings of Mt. Shasta, California’s effort to pass a [read more …]
The View from Plymouth, NH
Photo: Pete Martin, Plymouth, NH This article is by Pete Martin, a citizen of Plymouth, NH and retired Delta Airlines crew member, [read more …]
Benton County’s Fight to Protect Our Seed Heritage: A Food Bill of Rights
Photo: Bruce Bittle By Clinton Lindsey, a 5th-generation farmer and local food advocate from Corvallis, Oregon. He currently works for Greenwillow Grains, [read more …]
Fighting for the Right to a Sustainable Food System: Benton County, Oregon
Photo: Philomath Barn, Benton County, Oregon, Wikimedia Commons By Dana Allen Editor’s Note: The Benton County Community Rights Coalition is working to [read more …]
Rivers and Natural Ecosystems as Rights Bearing Subjects
Photo: Ron Mertons, Whanguanui River Editor’s Note: Should nature be integrated into our social contracts? Should we be empowered to dissent on [read more …]
Case Study: The Community Right to Sustainable Energy
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, High Voltage Direct Current transmission lines. Editor’s Note: Are we capable of learning from the successes and failures of [read more …]
Barnstead, NH: Establishing the Community Right to Water and Self-Governance
Photo: Channing Johnson, originally taken for Yes! Magazine. Pictured (from left to right): Gordon Preston, Gail Darrell, Jack O’Neil. Editor’s Note: We [read more …]
New Section: Community Rights
Introducing Read the Dirt’s coverage of the American Community Rights Movement. When we first launched Read the Dirt, we envisioned an online [read more …]
Changing ‘Fundemental Law’, a Case Study: Bellingham
Photo: Simon Davis-Cohen Context: This is a discussion with Breean Beggs. Breean Beggs, attorney at law, represents No-Coal Bellingham and the petitioners [read more …]
The Right to Self-Govern
Photo: “Spokane Falls” by Tracy Hunter By Kai Huschke, Washington organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund and Campaign Director for [read more …]
