“We are going to defend our property rights like any other property owner would. That means defending our rights under the state and federal constitutions.” Those following the heroic efforts to stop the proposed Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline might attribute these words to any one of the more than 600 affected landowners along the […]
Published on Wednesday, May 04, 2016 by Common Dreams by Andrea Germanos, staff writer For one community attempting to stop fracking wastewater injection wells, civil disobedience just became a sanctioned civic right. The community is Grant Township, Pa., which, in November 2015, had fought off the Pennsylvania General Energy Company (PGE) and the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association […]
“Extending standing to the real party at risk of harm — the environment — would preserve “priceless bits of Americana” before they become “forever lost or are so transformed as to be reduced to the eventual rubble of our urban environment.” US Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas During an especially heated primary debate […]
The more I engage in community rights work the more sense the right of local self-government makes to me. Whether it is banking regulators, energy regulators or environmental regulators the working class communities are getting the short end of the stick because the industry writes the rules. One of the main rules is that communities […]
By John Fett Roseburg The World editorial about maintaining civil discourse was brought to my attention, along with another opinion written by Mark Wall. First, I want to thank the paper for making the right decision not to publish an ad depicting the Salem anti-LNG protesters as unpatriotic because one guy was standing on a […]
The Coos County Right to a Sustainable Energy Future Ordinance notes that the adoption of the ordinance will call for an amendment of the Oregon Constitulion and the federal constitution to confirm the existing right to local self-government free from governmental preemption and or nullification by corporate “rights.” The Oregon Community Rights Network (ORCRN) has […]
More than 160 ordinances banning unsustainable and harmful development have been adopted in communities around the US using the right of local self-government. Out of that number only 9 have been challenged. Five of those did not include a bill of rights like the Coos County initiative and the elected officials caved to pressure from […]
Petitioners of the citizen initiative to enact a local bill of rights received the official “Authorization to Circulate” from the Coos County Clerk, Wednesday. In order to qualify for the May 2015 ballot we must collect 1,521 valid signatures from voters registered in Coos County. In essence the ordinance declares that this is our community […]
The disastrous results of the Port of Coos Bay’s 1987 ELECTION FRAUD – and how we may be able to fix them. “Prophets” may not describe them well, nor does the word “prophecies” do justice to their warnings. Nope; since the dire predictions they published in 1987 have entirely come true, they deserve the title […]
“All governments in the United States owe their existence to the people of the community that those governments serve, and governments exist to secure and protect the rights of the people and those communities. Any system of government that becomes destructive of those ends is not legitimate, lawful, or constitutional.” Draft local ordinance Time and […]