Taking Action!
When it comes to taking action against a corporation that has violated your rights, it seems as though it is going to be an uphill battle. The corporations are equipped with an army of attorneys, have very deep pockets and seem to have mastered the art of manipulation, especially when it comes to dealing with beaurocracy. However, there is hope. Citizens can actually take matters into their own hands at the local level, where justice can be served. Enter the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. The CELDF works with communities across the country – from New England to California, from Pennsylvania and Virginia, to Spokane, Washington.
Justice CAN be served!
Building Empowered & Sustainable Communities
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is a non-profit, public interest law firm providing free and affordable legal services to communities facing threats to their local environment, local agriculture, the local economy, and quality of life. Their mission is to build sustainable communities by assisting people to assert their right to local self-government and the rights of nature.
Established in 1995, the Legal Defense Fund has now become the principal advisor to community groups and municipal governments struggling to transition from merely regulating corporate harms to stopping those harms by asserting local, democratic control directly over corporations.
Through grassroots organizing, public education and outreach, legal assistance, and drafting of ordinances, they have now assisted over 110 municipalities in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine, and Virginia to draft and adopt new laws with over 350,000 people living under these governing frameworks. These laws address activities such as corporate water withdrawals, longwall coal mining, factory farming, the land application of sewage sludge, and uranium mining.
Ben Price
Ben Price, is the Projects Director for the CELDF. Ben coordinates community organizing across Pennsylvania where over 100 communities have adopted Legal Defense Fund-drafted laws. He serves as adviser to Pittsburgh City Council members, assisted in drafting Pittsburgh’s Protection from Natural Gas Drilling Ordinance, and is working with other communities in Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio to adopt community-rights ordinances that subordinate corporate privileges to human and civil rights. He offers free organizing assistance and training to municipal officials and residents for adoption of local laws that protect communities from corporate assaults. As Projects Director he assists strategic organizing in all areas of the country, and travels as needed to jump-start organizing and support movement-building. He is a certified first-chair Democracy School Lecturer.
In this segment of The Organic View Radio Show, host, June Stoyer talks to Ben Price about how citizens can take action at the local level!
Thanks for sharing June. Nice to see organizations creating some push back regarding sensitive environmental issues. Creates a necessary balance.
It is about time people understand that they need to do something instead of letting someone else deal with it.
Really interesting post june, I myself work for a legal funding company and its nice to see options for people who feel their communitys are threatend by bigger companys so its good they have somewhere to turn and fight for their cause fairly.