Our mission is to support and empower communities to secure local self determination and self-governance rights, superior to corporate power, in order to protect fundamental rights, quality of life, the natural environment, public health, and safety.

 

Where we began…

On September 12, 2013, community members from eight Oregon counties gathered in Corvallis, Oregon, to draft and sign the Corvallis Declaration of Community Rights, the founding document that launched the Oregon Community Rights Network (ORCRN) in January 2014.

The Declaration, as does the work of the ORCRN today, calls upon communities across the state to join together in a movement to elevate the rights of people, their communities, and nature above the claimed “rights” of corporations.

The Oregon Community Rights Network joins Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Colorado and Washington as states with community rights networks, all receiving assistance from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

Where we’re going…

ORCRN is currently focused primarily on two activities.  One is getting the Oregon State Constitutional Amendment on the ballot and passed, the other is assisting with the creation of many more rights based organizations across Oregon.
Our goals are to:

  • Create a strong rights based movement across the state, and
  • Change the laws at the highest levels of both the State of Oregon and eventually, the U.S. Government.

Very important to the achievement of these goals is the spread of rights based organizations.

Both ORCRN and CELDF are ready to assist individuals and groups with getting a rights based organization started in their area.  This usually works best when there are tangible ways in which your community’s fundamental rights are being violated.  These violations can have to do with a variety of issues such as pesticides, giant polluting pig and tree farms, transportation and extraction of fossil fuels, contamination of agriculture by GMO agriculture, toxic mining practices, wages that are not livable, union issues, and other rights violations.