Sludge Watch ==> Pennsylvania Borough Strips Sludge Corporations of "Rights"

[Maureen Reilly]

 www.celdf.org

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
                                     bengprice at aol.com


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

             Chambersburg, Pennsylvania (September 20) - On September
19th, the Tamaqua Borough Council in Schuylkill County,
Pennsylvania, unanimously passed a law declaring that mining 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.

-30-
-
Mike Hudak, PhD, Director
Public Lands Without Livestock
38 Oliver Street
Binghamton, NY 13904-1516
Phone: 607.330.0351
Web: http://www.mikehudak.com 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.web.net/archives/sludgewatch-l/attachments/20060923/e45d6aba/attachment.htm