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Turmoil in Lane County Again!

As if making them split their Charter Amendment into TWO seperate Amendments wasn’t enough, Lane County Commissioners are trying to become the gatekeepers of democracy. The goal is to end aerial herbicide spraying, while securing rights to clean air, water, and soil, and bodies free from chemical tresspass. This Charter Amendment would also secure Lane County’s right to Direct Democracy, free from interference by large Corporations. However Lane County Judge Calrson saw that as two seperate issues. So they are collecting for both an aerial spray ban, and the Right of Local Community Self-Government. That’s almost 22,000 signatures needed! So if you’re a registered voter in Lane County, please visit their website and download the online signatures sheet and send it in.

And if that isn’t enough, the Lane County Commissioners, at the urging of Corporate Timber interests, are trying to block the voters from ever having a say in that issue. They are trying to give themselves the power to veto Initiatives, before they go to a vote of the people. This is an unconstitutional move on their part, and Attorney Ann Kneeland is on the case! There is an Open Letter to the Lane County Commissions that you can sign. You don’t have to be a Lane County resident to sign. Don’t let the Commissioners of your County become the Gatekeepers of your local democracy!

GMOs Have More Rights Than the People of Josephine County

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Mary Geddry
541-551-1492
[email protected]

Judge overturns ban on GMOs; state preemption used once again to deny right of local self-government

Corvallis, Oregon — May 17, 2016
Yesterday a Josephine County Circuit Court judge denied the will of the people of Josephine County by ruling that their prohibition on GMO crops, adopted at the ballot in May 2014, is unenforceable because a conflict with state law.

The basis of the judge’s decision was SB863, adopted by the state legislature in the fall of 2013 which places all authority over GMO seed in the hands of the state and prohibits local governments from interfering with that state authority. SB863, modeled after similar laws adopted in other states, is intended to protect corporate industrial agricultural practices over that of local, sustainable agriculture.

“It hurts to say so but yesterday’s decision is not surprising”, says Dana Allen, board member of the Oregon Community Rights Network. “So long as we allow the laws that favor corporate interests over people and nature we can expect our communities to be treated as wards of the state.”

“State preemption is but one of a number of corporate powers, privileges, and “rights” used to keep communities in a subordinate position to both state government and corporate interests”, says Kai Huschke, CELDF Northwest Organizer. “Oregon has a long history of preemption whether in agriculture, the timber industry, land use, minimum wage, housing, or health care such that the recognized conventional legal arrangement is that anything of commercial interest is kept in the hands of the corporate state leaving communities unable to make critical decisions about health, safety, welfare, and their future viability.”

Because of SB863 and decisions like the one coming out of Josephine County, a number of local community rights actions have emerged in different parts of the state (Columbia, Coos, Lane, Lincoln) in order to assert and protect the right of the people to govern in their own communities. The mobilizing issues have varied from pesticide use to LNG pipelines to methanol plants, but foundationally each effort is about asserting, through lawmaking, the right of local community self-government both in protection of fundamental rights and the rejection of imposed corporate projects.

“We need to realize that we are all in the same boat and that boat is sinking quickly”, says Michelle Holman, member of Community Rights Lane County. “Whether our issue is human rights, economic rights, protecting the environment, or stopping unwanted development, we have a structure of law that favors corporations over living breathing beings and that has to change.”

Oregonians for Community Rights, the political arm to the Oregon Community Rights Network, is moving a state constitutional amendment to secure and protect the Right of Local Community Self-Government such that authority to adopt law at the community level regarding sustainable agriculture, sustainable energy, sustainable economies, etc. cannot be preempted by the state. The law is a oneway valve allowing communities the ability to increase rights and protections not remove them as recognized by state, federal, or international law. Oregon’s Right of Local Community Self-Government amendment initiative is currently involved in a legal challenge with the state regarding broader petition circulation.

Additional Information
www.oregoncommunityrights.org , www.orcrn.org , and www.celdf.org
https://www.facebook.com/OR4CR , https://www.facebook.com/ORCRN , and
https://www.facebook.com/Community-Environmental-Legal-Defense-Fund-112830808767534/

Let the People Decide

Submitted by Lincoln County Community Rights

Right now, the right of the people of Lincoln County to decide is under attack.

A judge of the Lincoln County Circuit Court will soon determine whether or not to allow gathering signatures for an initiative petition, based on arguments heard in court, representing the profit-driven interests of industry invested in aerial spraying of pesticides in our county on the one hand, vs. the right of the people to use the initiative petition process to propose new law to protect their safety and that of the environment on the other. The answer should be clear – let the people decide.

The initiative petition in question is titled “Freedom from Aerially Sprayed Pesticides of Lincoln County” and has been put forward by Citizens for a Healthy County. It asks the people of Lincoln County if they want to ban the practice of aerial spraying of pesticides (a practice that has already been banned in federal forests for 30 years) in order to protect our right to clean air, water, and soil and to stop our continued exposure to toxic chemicals.

The judge is not considering whether aerial spraying of pesticides should or should not be banned, but whether the people of Lincoln County can be asked that question through circulation of a petition which could only become a ballot measure if it receives the required number of signatures.

The government of Lincoln County already decided that asking the question is reasonable and should happen. However, on February 29th, the attorney for the party opposing circulation of the petition argued in court that wanting clean air, water, and soil somehow entails a hidden threat to voters; that questioning the authority of industry profiting from aerial spraying of pesticides and the state to force toxic chemicals on our forests, watersheds, and people also entails that threat. Perhaps worst of all, the opposing attorney argued that people wanting to defend their constitutionally-guaranteed rights, even when our government and the courts may fail to do so, is again a threat that voters need to be protected from.

We must let the people decide. The petition must go out for signatures. With enough signatures the initiative becomes a ballot measure. Then the people – not vested interests – and not a single judge – decide. What is at stake here is much bigger than the question of aerial spraying of pesticides. The real issue is our right, as the people of Lincoln County, to govern in matters that pertain to our fundamental rights.

People of all political stripes are sick and tired of having money influence how we vote. If the judge stops circulation of the petition for signatures, thereby supporting the opinion of the attorney opposing our initiative, it means that money can influence not only how we vote, but whether we get to vote at all.

We believe in Article I, Section 1 of the Oregon Constitution, where it declares : “All power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness; and they have at all times a right to alter, reform, or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.”

We look forward to the judge in this case doing the right thing – letting the people decide. Otherwise, those constitutional words aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.

María Sause and other members of
Lincoln County Community Rights

Join ORCRN at PIELC 2016

Join Oregon Community Rights Network for this panel…

Following Nature’s Lead for Civil Disobedience: Building a New Direct Action Movement Community by Community
(LAW 142) 2:20 – 3:35

As nature goes on the offense with ever increasing catastrophic
climatic events, our activism stays stuck in the 1970s. Our organizing has refused to confront a structure of law that protects environmentally destructive corporate behavior.This panel is about the growing Community Rights movement and how communities are “occupying the law” to dismantle the corporate state, legalize sustainability and secure nature’s rights, and the convergence of community rights with direct action aimed at physically stopping harmful corporate projects.

Panelists:
Kai Huschke, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund Organizer
Rob Dickinson, Organizer, Oregonians for Community Rights
Mary Grace Hickok, Organizer, Cascadia Forest Defenders

Oregon 2015 Community Rights Tour with Thomas Linzey Presents:

“As a people of ‘we the people’ fame we have become either ahistorical, amazingly obedient, exceedingly stupid, or all three. We can stay that way if we choose – either denying the corporate state or resigning ourselves to it – with the understanding that every day we fail to challenge the corporate state is another day that the planet falls down around us.”
-Thomas Linzey

Tour Poster

Information also on the Calendar!

October 1st – Salem
Truman Wesley Collins Legal Center – Rm. 218
Willamette University College of Law
245 Winter Street SE, Salem
7:00pm to 9:00pm |Free event (donations accepted)

October 4th – Corvallis
Locally co-hosted by: Benton County Community Rights Coalition (BentonCCRC.org), Ten Rivers Food Web, Linn-Benton Pacific Green Party
Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis
2945 NW Circle Blvd., Corvallis | 6:30pm to 8:30pm | Free event (donations accepted)
Contact: Dana Allen [email protected] (541) 757-8658

October 5th – Newport
Locally co-hosted by: Lincoln County Community Rights (lincolncountycommunityrights.com )
Newport Senior Center – 20 SE 2nd Street, Newport.
Time: 7-9 | Free event (donations accepted)
Contact info: [email protected] | 541 961 6385

October 6th – Coos Bay
Locally co-hosted by: Coos Commons Protection Council (www.cooscommons.org)
Egyptian Theatre | 229 S Broadway, Coos Bay
7:00pm to 9:00pm | Free Event (donations accepted)
Contact info: [email protected] | 541-551-1492

October 7th – Eugene
Locally co-hosted by Community Rights Lane County (communityrightslanecounty.org) | Lane Peace Center |
LCC Downtown Conference Center – 7:00 to 9:00pm | Free Event (donations accepted)
WATCH Live Streaming: https://www.lanecc.edu/it/media/live-streaming
Contact info: [email protected]

October 8th – Columbia City
Locally co-hosted by Columbia County Sustainable Action for Green Energy (ccsage.org)
Caples House | 1925 First Street | 7:00 to 9:00pm | Free (donations accepted)
Contact: [email protected]