Culture and Law

Does culture shape law? Or does law shape culture? I say both. It's not an either/or scenario. People sometimes comment and ask this important question when learning about the rights-based Community Right's organizing and lawmaking strategy: You can make all the laws you want, but how are you going to make sure they're enforced?

My answer usually is that depends on the values of our culture. Here is an example, let's say you form a citizen majority and make a law giving a local river rights. If the majority of the people in the culture don't value the health and self-determination of the river the laws will mean nothing. It will eventually be killed or survive until this insane culture kills itself.

So I recommend to those concerned about the dance of law and culture my favorite two booklets available on the subject. They're the best tools that I know of to change both. Here are two quotes from them that I think offer us a good vision.

From On Community Civil Disobedience: "We can choose to be hospice workers to dying planet--seeking to ease its transition--or we can choose to be mid-wives to a different system waiting to be born." (pg. 49)

From The Book of the Damned: "Every creature born in the biological of the earth belongs to that community. Nothing lives in isolation from the rest; nothing can live in isolation from the rest. Nothing lives only in itself, needing nothing from the community. Nothing lives only for itself, owing nothing to the community. Nothing is untouchable or untouched." (Daniel Quinn, pg. 23)

U.S District Judge Overturns First County In U.S To Ban Fracking And Oil Drilling

The first county in the United States to ban fracking and oil drilling to protect their water had their local law overturned by a U.S District Judge recently. You can read the article HERE. This makes it clear to me the difference between minority and majority rule. As it stands right now we are ruled by a corporate minority. We don't have the right or the power in our communities to stop corporate harms when they are imposed upon us.

If you want to see how mean-spirited some writers can get about Community Rights and some of the leaders involved take a look at this article. Calling Thomas Linzey, Stalinist, self-serving, and narcissistic is just crazy. All for just standing up for communities to have the right to govern themselves. Thomas Jefferson is probably rolling his grave.

Occupying our Local Governments

This article lays out some of the basic strategies of the Community Right's movement. One of them is to create local laws that end up breaking state and federal laws. As it stands right now state and federal laws create a ceiling in which citizens who wish to improve upon those laws by making better laws at the local level cannot because, well, it's against the law. In other words, state and federal law trump local law. It's governing from the top-down instead of from the bottom-up. That's not how I imagine democracy. And that's why we fought the American Revolution: The central authority (The King) refused "to recognize local laws enacted as an exercise of the people’s right to local self-government."(Mazda)

"We must use our cities and towns to drive upwards against state and federal frameworks of law that protect decision-making authority by the one percent. It means that, in each of the cities where we live, we need to start working together to define the rights we need and then use those municipal structures to obtain them."--Thomas Linzey

The Box of Allowable Activism

This is a very important video describing how We The People can step out of the box of allowable activism, quit participating in what Jane Anne Morris calls our Democracy Theme Park, and stand up for our right to govern ourselves at the local level.

Good Video on Right's-Based Organizing

This video is the best introduction that I've seen yet on what Community Rights and "rights-based" organizing is all about.

"Communities, municipal officials, environmental and social justice organizations, and others engages in this "rights-based" organizing have come to a shared conclusion--we can't achieve local self-governance or sustainability under the existing structure of law.

"And further, that in order to drive necessary structural change into our legal system, they must begin by making legal change at the local level, and then drive it upward."--Thomas Linzey from "New Frontiers: Building a Grassroots Movement for Community Rights and the Rights of Nature" video

The Pinch of Pain

This morning I find myself sitting next to the fire reading through material that I've been asked to read for a community rights workshop I'm interested in attending next weekend. The paragraph below hit me hard:

"Corporations and their owners have learned quite well that when you control the law, you can rise swiftly to power and wealth by shedding -- and shredding -- bothersome laws adopted by communities. By configuring and perpetuating a corporate culture -- that embeds corporate values into the culture: government bad, free enterprise good; jobs vs. the environment; efficiency and modernization good, leisure time bad -- people are slowly colonized to believe the unbelievable."--Thomas Linzey

We live in a corporate state. Corporations run our country. We simply go along without resisting real heavily. And if we do we know the consequences. I've known this for well over a decade now. But for some odd reason it hurts more this morning. I think the psychologist Thomas Moore referred to it as the "pinch of pain."

I don't know why. My only guess is that if one is going to stare this corporate state in the face one is going to feel pain and grief. I've learned that much on this path so far. To hold back these feelings takes more energy and just creates flatness.

The only thing I can say to myself is welcome to adulthood. You're not a child anymore. Welcome to the pain and grief of manhood. Real men know grief. Real men know how, as Robert Bly says, to go down in the ashes.

I continue on down the path from laws to legends.

We're all on it whether we like it or not.

Resistance Radio and Rights-Based Organizing

Spent time with Derrick Jensen and Thomas Linzey on the mail route yesterday. I highly recommend this interview to anyone concerned about our children's future. With the planet warming faster than most expected we are going to be faced with the issue of whether or not Nature has the right to exist and flourish sooner than we think. Atleast that is my humble opinion. Or maybe I'm being too hopeful.

Q & A With Thomas Linzey

I learned a few interesting things in this Q & A yesterday. Did you know that once you cross through the door to work for a private employer you no longer have constitutional rights. So watch what you say at work.

Another thing that stuck out was the statement that progressives and liberals will not be the constituency to carry the community rights work forward; they'll be the ones to stop it. That doesn't surprise me. I've always found it peculiar that Derrick Jensen has received well over 900 negative emails from folks on the left and less than handful from folks on the right.

"They [Move To Amend] think the progressive/liberal community is actually the constituency that's going to do this work, and we've been convinced otherwise. They're actually the folks that are going to stop the work for happening, but they're not necessarily the folks that are going to move it forward. And that always sounds harsh too, but we have a limited number of hours in our day from waking to quitting work at night and I'm not spending one more iota of time with liberal/progressive groups trying to convince them that their work that they're doing is not achieving results. And so you're looking at generating new people. There is not an existing natural constituency for this work."--Thomas Linzey at 12:40 in the Q & A

If I Had More Money

I donated $25 to the making of this film this morning. If I had more money I'd donate more. Thomas Linzey's work is truly inspiring. It has inspired me to do what I can to help challenge illegitimate structure of law that keeps communities from moving in the direction of sustainability.

A Pennsylvania Judge Holds That Corporations Are Not “Persons”

I usually don't post news, but this brief news clip is truly inspiring.

"These communities believe that if ten thousand other localities do the same, that those tremors will begin to shake loose a new system of law – a system in which courts and legislatures begin to elevate community rights above corporate rights, and thus, begin to liberate cities and towns to build economically and environmentally sustainable communities free from corporate interference."--Thomas Linzey