FROM THE BOTTOM UP
The now essentially complete corporate control and dominance of US government has brought, and will continue to bring increasing poverty and suffering, around the World, and in this country, unless it can be changed. We've run many articles about this here, and will continue to, from time to time. Of course, it is essential to understand a problem, before it can be fixed, but if there is to be any hope for a more just and sustainable society, here and abroad, we need to identify and share any possible solutions. One such glimmer of hope was given recently, by this article, describing how local governments are getting involved by passing ordinances to put citizens rights and environmental protections, ahead of corporate interests. It's a slow, and fragmented process, but these are hopeful steps, and if enough of us can support them, they will expand. See what you think:
Corporate Control? Not in These Communities
Can local laws have a real effect on the power of giant corporations?
Mt. Shasta, a small northern California town of 3,500 residents nestled in the foothills of magnificent Mount Shasta, is taking on corporate power through an unusual process-democracy.
The citizens of Mt. Shasta have developed an extraordinary ordinance, set to be voted on in the next special or general election, that would prohibit corporations such as Nestle and Coca-Cola from extracting water from the local aquifer. But this is only the beginning. The ordinance would also ban energy giant PG&E, and any other corporation, from regional cloud seeding, a process that disrupts weather patterns through the use of toxic chemicals such as silver iodide. More generally, it would refuse to recognize corporate personhood, explicitly place the rights of community and local government above the economic interests of multinational corporations, and recognize the rights of nature to exist, flourish, and evolve.
Mt. Shasta is not alone. Rather, it is part of a (so far) quiet municipal movement making its way across the United States in which communities are directly defying corporate rule and affirming the sovereignty of local government.
Since 1998, more than 125 municipalities have passed ordinances that explicitly put their citizens' rights ahead of corporate interests, despite the existence of state and federal laws to the contrary. These communities have banned corporations from dumping toxic sludge, building factory farms, mining, and extracting water for bottling. Many have explicitly refused to recognize corporate personhood. Over a dozen townships in Pennsylvania, Maine, and New Hampshire have recognized the right of nature to exist and flourish (as Ecuador just did in its new national constitution). Four municipalities, including Halifax in Virginia, and Mahoney, Shrewsbury, and Packer in Pennsylvania, have passed laws imposing penalties on corporations for chemical trespass, the involuntary introduction of toxic chemicals into the human body.
These communities are beginning to band together. When the attorney general of Pennsylvania threatened to sue Packer Township this year for banning sewage sludge within its boundaries, six other Pennsylvania towns adopted similar ordinances and twenty-three others passed resolutions in support of their neighboring community. Many people were outraged when the attorney general proclaimed, "there is no inalienable right to local self-government."
Bigger cities are joining the fray. In November, Pittsburg's city council voted to ban corporations in the city from drilling for natural gas as a result of local concern about an environmentally devastating practice known as "fracking." As city councilman Doug Shields stated in a press release, "Many people think that this is only about gas drilling. It's not-it's about our authority as a municipal community to say 'no' to corporations that will cause damage to our community. It's about our right to community, [to] local self-government."
What has driven these communities to such radical action? The typical story involves a handful of local citizens deciding to oppose a corporate practice, such as toxic sludge dumping, which has taken a huge toll on the health, economy, and natural surroundings of their town. After years of fighting for regulatory change, these citizens discover a bitter truth: the U.S. environmental regulatory system consists of a set of interlocking state and federal laws designed by industry to serve corporate interests. With the deck utterly stacked against them, communities are powerless to prevent corporations from destroying the local environment for the sake of profit.
Enter the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit public interest law firm that champions a different approach. The firm helps communities draft local ordinances that place the rights of municipalities to govern themselves above corporate rights. Through its Democracy School, which offers seminars across the United States, it provides a detailed analysis of the history of corporate law and environmental regulation that shows a need for a complete overhaul of the system. Armed with this knowledge and with their well-crafted ordinances, citizens are able to return to their communities to begin organizing for the passage of laws such as Mt. Shasta's proposed ordinance.
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is collaborating with Global Exchange, an international environmental and workers' rights organization, to help supporters of the Mt. Shasta ordinance organize. In an interview for this article, I asked Shannon Biggs, who directs Global Exchange's Community Rights Program, if she expected ordinances of this type to be upheld in court. Biggs was dubious about judges "seeing the error of their ways" and reversing a centuries-old trend in which courts grant corporations increased power. Rather, she sees these ordinances as powerful educational and organizing tools that can lead to the major changes necessary to reduce corporate power, put decision-making back in the hands of real people rather than corporate "persons," and open up whole new areas of rights, such as those of ecosystems and natural communities. Biggs connects the current municipal defiance of existing state and federal law to a long tradition of civil disobedience in the United States, harkening back to Susan B. Anthony illegally casting her ballot, the Underground Railroad flouting slave laws, and civil rights protesters purposely breaking segregation laws.
But the nascent municipal rights movement offers something new in the way of political action. These communities are adopting laws that, taken together, are forming an alternative structure to the global corporate economy. The principles behind these laws can be applied broadly to any area where corporate rights override local self-government or the well-being of the local ecology. The best place to start, I would suggest, is with banning corporations from making campaign contributions to local elections.
The municipal movement could provide one of the most effective routes to building nationwide support for an Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the movement is already expanding. In Pennsylvania, people are now organizing on the state level and similar stirrings have been reported in New Hampshire.
What about your community?
I'm always reminded of this when venturing into our high country, which surrounds Anchorage, but also protects it. The "Anchorage Bowl" and Susitna valley, to the north, as well as the western side of the Kenai Peninsula, to the south, are probably the most favourable climatic areas in Alaska for human habitation and agriculture (such as it is in AK). Mountains on all sides generally limit strong winds from occurring, except during certain rare weather patterns. Annual precipitation in Anchorage is only 38-51 cm (15-20 inches), depending on how close to the Chugach Front you are. Just around the corner, to the east up Turnagain Arm, this increases rapidly to two and three times that, and all along the outer coast of the Gulf of Alaska, it is many times what we get in Anchorage, and much windier. And of course, to our north, on the other side of the Alaska Range, winters are much, much colder, dimmer with lower sun angles, and a little longer.
So we always make sure to check the weather situation before venturing into our high country, because it can be quite vicious there, and change rapidly.
Our latest outing drove this home very well. We just did a six-hour, 24 km snowshoe from the Glen Alps Trailhead, on the hillside in South Anchorage, up to a pass between two aptly named peaks in the Chugach Mtns., "the Wedge", and "the Ramp", 1450, and 1600 metres high, respectively, yesterday.
The first 6 km just follows the Powerline Trail, in the valley of the South Fork of Campbell Creek. This valley is already around 800 metres elevation, so only small groves of wind-swept mountain hemlock are present, our highest-elevation tree species here. The small Hidden Lake trail then goes north, up a slope, then divides, one branch to Hidden Lake, the other, here, up this narrow valley between the Wedge, on the right, and the Ramp, on the left, in the far distance.
You can see already, at only 850 metres elevation here, that only a few very small hemlocks are able to make it, and how wind-swept the landscape is. Fortunately, on this day, it was only about -10C the whole time, with just a light northeast breeze.
Just before the pass between the two peaks, here at about 1150 metres elevation (3800 feet), all signs of life are gone. Not a blade of grass, shrub, or anything, sticking up through the snow and ice. This pass must get exceedingly strong winds from the north through east, judging by the huge drifts we saw in the lee of ridges, and how on many slopes, the snow was blown clean away, leaving an ice crust, or bare rock. And there were even small rocks on some slopes, that had been blown there, in previous storms. This would happen when there is a strong low pressure system in the Gulf of Alaska, and cold, Arctic air present, over the interior. Not the time to be here, or anywhere in our high country then!
We only got up to about 1350 metres on the Wedge before turning back. My snowshoes had good grip on the ice, but Homer's back legs kept slipping, he has some arthritis there. So we turned back, and it was getting on toward 3 pm.
But not before savouring the view, on the other side of the pass! A Shangri-La of alpine terrain, surrounding the deep valley of Ship Creek, at the bottom of which, small trees re-appear.
Mattie was just as captivated as I was by this alpine panorama.
A seemingly endless expanse of sharp, snowy, and glaciated peaks. But there are non-technical routes through all these areas, which we will be traversing, as time allows, winter and summer. Winter allows faster travel, when skiing is possible, without the possible complications of stream crossings.
But, of course, the longer, warmer days, and greenery in the lower reaches of this alpine expanse, can't be beat.
I'm not even sure which peak this was, shining in the distance. But it quite possibly could be one of the 3000-4000 metre highest peaks in the Chugach Range, which are at least 80 KM to the east. It takes elevations of over 2300 metres (7500 ft) to see that much snow/ice cover on the peaks.
The view back, toward the Anchorage Bowl, as we headed down from the pass, shows our route. We started at the base of the smallest hump, there in the middle of the valley, where it seemingly drops off. It's always amazing how small Anchorage looks from these heights, you'd never guess there's a big city (at least by our standards!), with all it's attendant activity, down there.
And even though we always wish we had more time to spend in these places, we at least are rewarded at the end, with our view of Denali and Foraker, shining in the evening sun, across the Susitna Valley. Why would we want to be anywhere else? Cheers.
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