Election 2014 Community Rights Review

“Election 2014 Community Rights Review”

Paul Cienfuegos’ November 18th, 2014 Commentary on KBOO Evening News

(His weekly commentaries are broadcast every Tuesday evening. You can view or listen to them all at PaulCienfuegos.com, CommunityRightsPDX.org, or subscribe via ITunes. This particular commentary can be heard HERE.)

Greetings! You are listening to the weekly commentary by yours truly, Paul Cienfuegos.

This week, I wanted to do a bit of an Election wrap-up.

No, not a review of the mostly awful results from state and federal candidate and ballot initiatives across the country. You’ve already heard plenty about those election results.

This week, I wanted to share with you the status of the rapidly growing Community Rights movement, which had six local elections on the ballot across the US – and we won two of them. Not a bad average for a new social movement whose goals are nothing less than dismantling and rewriting our nation’s structures of law that allow corporate “rights” to trump our rights.

There are now about 200 communities and two counties in nine states across the US that have passed Community Rights ordinances since the year 2000. These nine states include Pennsylvania, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Maryland, Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico, and…… drum-roll please….. California, which just joined this list, so let’s start there.

On November 4^th, Mendocino County, California, on the far north coast of the state, passed a Community Bill of Rights ordinance that includes:

The Right to Community Self Government

The Right to Clean Water, Air, and Soil

Rights of Natural Communities and Ecosystems, and

The Right to be Free From Chemical Trespass

67% of voters approved the new law, drafted by the Community Rights Network of Mendocino County, which will ban corporations and governments from engaging in fracking. This is the first Community Rights ordinance ever to have passed in California, and I’m feeling so proud of them, because I’ve been teaching Community Rights in that county on and off since 1998.

In early October, they invited me back for an amazing get-out-the-vote RoadShow, where we visited nine communities in just eight days. Every night a potluck, two or three speakers, and then live music and dancing. It was a total blast. They’re already starting to discuss how and when to begin drafting a second more expansive Community Rights ballot initiative that lays out an even bolder vision of sustainability under law, and gives the county’s residents direct enforcement authority.

Our second stop today is back in our home state of Oregon, where the very first one of ten counties that are mobilizing for Community Rights made it to the ballot box on November 4^th in Josephine County. This one was titled “The Freedom From Pesticides Bill of Rights”, which included

The Right to be Free From Chemical Trespass

The Right to Pesticide-Free Air, Water and Soil, and

The Right to Self Government

If it had passed, which it did not, it would have banned corporations and governmental entities that hold an applicator license from engaging in the application of pesticides anywhere in Josephine County.

The Freedom From Pesticides Alliance campaign was outspent by corporate opponents eight to one, so they had to struggle against the endless lies that were circulated around Grants Pass, Cave Junction, and the other small towns in the county. CropLife, an industry front-group, was one of the biggest opponents. The yes vote was 33% and accounted for almost 11,000 voters who saw through the corporate haze, and supported the right of a community to protect its own health and welfare from corporate pesticide spraying.

As with local Community Rights efforts in Ohio and Washington state - which have shown incredible stamina - running their election campaigns over and over in the same community, and building grassroots support year by year - the Josephine County group plans to move forward until they win. All of us in this movement understand that our work isn’t just about stopping one corporate harm at a time, but about structural change that strips corporations of their so-called “right” to harm us. And this type of organizing can take many years.

Our third and final election stop today is in Athens, Ohio, which passed a Community Bill of Rights that banned fracking, with 78% of the vote. Athens now joins other Ohio communities - in Yellow Springs, Oberlin, Mansfield, and Broadview Heights - which had all previously banned fracking. Sadly, three other Ohio communities that also had fracking bans on the ballot went down to defeat – in Youngstown, Gates Mills and Kent.

That wraps up my first-ever Community Rights Election Report as a commentator on the KBOO Evening News.

Before I go, I want to remind you that I will be leading my very affordable workshop here in Portland this coming weekend. It’s called “We The People Are More Powerful Than We Dare to Believe First Steps in Dismantling Corporate Rule”. Visit my website calendar at PaulCienfuegos.com for more info.

You’ve been listening to the weekly commentary by yours truly, Paul Cienfuegos. You can hear future commentaries every Tuesday on the KBOO Evening News. I welcome your feedback.

You can subscribe to my new weekly podcast via I-Tunes or at CommunityRightsPDX.org. You can follow me on twitter at CienfuegosPaul. You can sign up for my newsletter at PaulCienfuegos.com. THANKS FOR LISTENING! And remember: WE are the people we’ve been WAITING for!