Sludge Watch ==> Forbes- Linzey: When majorities can't make decisions, we don't have democracy

[Maureen Reilly]

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2007/05/24/thomas-linzey-law-tech-cx_07rev_ee_0524linzey.html

Revolutionaries
Tree Rights
Elisabeth Eaves 05.24.07


Thomas Linzey, 38
Executive Director
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

The folks in the borough of Tamaqua, Pa., were sick and tired of sewage 
haulers in the region spreading foul-smelling, toxic sludge on agricultural 
land--with the permission of the farmers and the backing of the state. 
People were getting sick--even dying--and local governments felt powerless 
to do anything about it.

So, with the encouragement of Thomas Linzey, head of the nonprofit Community 
Environmental Legal Defense Fund, the borough passed an unprecedented law 
giving ecosystems legal rights of their own. Yes, you read that right. The 
trees, rivers, mountains and all the little critters that live in them have 
rights just like people, at least in Tamaqua ... and at least until the law 
is struck down. Of course, since nature itself can't march down to the 
courthouse, the new ordinance also establishes that the municipal government 
or any Tamaqua resident can file a lawsuit on behalf of the local ecosystem. 
The law flies in the face of thousands of years of Western legal precedent 
that treats nature strictly as property.

Linzey has been asserting the rights of local governments against those of 
corporations for more than a decade, but only recently did he fuse the 
principle of local self-government with so-called "wild law."

More than just an environmental campaigner, Linzey is also pushing for a 
legal revolution that would strip corporations of their status as "persons," 
which grants companies many of the same legal rights as actual humans. In 
Pennsylvania, corporations have relied on that status when claiming the 
right to dump toxic sludge in rural areas.

"When majorities in communities can't make decisions, we don't have 
democracy anymore," Linzey says.




DEMOCRACY SCHOOL - 
http://www.celdf.org/DemocracySchool/tabid/60/Default.aspx

Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund     http://www.celdf.org/
The Center for Earth Jurisprudence
Biography of wild law pioneer Cormac Cullinan