This is of interest to all who are concerned that corporations have been
given rights as if they were natural persons. Apologies for any duplications.
Tom
Subj: [GWTF] Fw: Pennsylvania Borough Strips Sludge Corporations of “Rights”
Date: 10/23/2006 7:50:11 PM Central Standard Time
From: [log in to unmask] (Sam Pearson)
Sender: [log in to unmask] (Global Warming/Clean
Energy Task Force)
Reply-to: <A HREF="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]</A> (Global Warming/Clean
Energy Task Force)
To: [log in to unmask]
This has a lot of implications for SC in general, not just this list of
course. Does anyone know if this is happening in other places as well and to what
effect?
Sam Pearson
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Catherine McLaughlin <<A HREF="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]</A>>
Date: Oct 23, 2006 8:31 PM
Subject: Fw: Pennsylvania Borough Strips Sludge Corporations of "Rights"
To: Sam Pearson <<A HREF="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]</A>>
?
Sam, Forwarding this and another press release to try to garner some
interest from your wing. Ed
: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- From: <A HREF="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]</A>
To: <A HREF="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]</A> ; <A HREF="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]</A>
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 1:51 PM
Subject: Pennsylvania Borough Strips Sludge Corporations of "Rights"
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
675 Mower Road
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania 17201
Pennsylvania Borough Strips Sludge Corporations of "Rights"
Becomes First Municipality in the United States to Recognize the
Rights of Nature
CONTACT : Ben Price, Projects Director
(717) 243-6725
<A HREF="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]</A>
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania (September 20) – On September 19th,
the Tamaqua Borough Council in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, unanimously
passed a law declaring that sludge and dredge corporations possess no
constitutional "rights" within the Borough. Tamaqua thus becomes the fifth local
government in the country to abolish the illegitimate "rights" and privileges claimed
by corporations. Those constitutional "rights" and legal privileges have been
routinely asserted by corporations in other localities to nullify local laws.
The Tamaqua law also (1) bans corporations from engaging in the
land application of sludge within the Borough; (2) recognizes that ecosystems
in Tamaqua possess enforceable rights against corporations; (3) asserts that
corporations doing business in Tamaqua will henceforth be treated as "state
actors" under the law, and thus, be required to respect the rights of people and
natural communities within the Borough; and (4) establishes that Tamaqua
residents can bring lawsuits to vindicate not only their own civil rights, but also
the newly-mandated rights of Nature.
In the ordinance, the Borough Council also declared that if state
and federal agencies – or corporate managers – attempt to invalidate the
ordinance, a Borough-wide public meeting would be hosted to determine additional
steps to expand local control and self-governance within the Borough.
Ben Price, the Projects Director for the Community Environmental
Legal Defense Fund, the organization that helped draft the Ordinance, declared
that "the Tamaqua Borough Council has taken an extraordinary – but logical –
step. Since this nation's founding – and for thousands of years before –
'law' in the western world has treated rivers, mountains, forests, and other
natural systems as 'property' with no rights that governments or corporations must
respect. This has resulted in the destruction of ecosystems and natural
communities, backed by law, public policy, and the power of government. The people
of Tamaqua have changed how the law regards Nature, and have acted in the
grand tradition of the Abolitionists, who launched a people's movement in the
1830's to end the legal but immoral treatment of slaves as property and to
establish forever their rights as people entitled to fundamental and inalienable
human rights."
Richard Grossman, the Legal Defense Fund's historian, pointed out
that the work in Tamaqua Borough has several parallels to prior people's
movements, and declared that "Abolitionists struggled over decades to undo
constitutional law which had long defined slaves as 'property' and to transform this
nation's 'property and commerce' constitution into a 'rights and liberty'
constitution. Tamaqua has now challenged today's constitutional injustices –
against Nature and against the self-governing 'We the People.'"
The Tamaqua ordinance emerged out of six months of discussion and
debate across Tamaqua Borough and Schuylkill County. Democracy Schools
presented by the Legal Defense Fund along with public meetings, hosted by local
governments and community groups, laid the groundwork for the Borough Council to
overturn years of collusion between the Pennsylvania legislature, state
environmental agencies, and corporate polluters focused on denying the rights of
people within Tamaqua. Helping to drive the campaign was the Army for a Clean
Environment (ACE), a thousand-member Schuylkill County citizen organization led by
Dr. Dante Picciano.
In the coming months, other municipalities in Schuylkill County
are expected to follow Tamaqua's lead. Municipalities across Pennsylvania are
considering similar ways of equipping their citizens with the legal authority
to stop corporate assaults engineered by mining, sludge, and factory farm
corporations – assaults enabled and protected by State permitting agencies and
courts.
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, located in
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, has worked with communities resisting corporate assaults
upon democratic self-governance since 1995. Among other programs, it has
brought its unique Daniel Pennock Democracy Schools to communities in Pennsylvania
and twenty-five other states where people seek to end destructive and
rights-denying corporate acts routinely permitted by state and federal agencies. Over
one hundred Pennsylvania municipalities have adopted ordinances authored by
the Legal Defense Fund.
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