Introductory Resources

CELDF Website
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 Additional Resources:
"Join The Movement" (CELDF)


Quotations from CELDF website:

"Learn why the law stops us from protecting our communities, the environment, and our rights, and how you can organize your community to change those rules."

CELDF:   Community Environmental
               Legal Defense Fund

- Locally aligned with "Coal Free Bellingham"
    and the "Transition" movement
- Offers "Democracy School" that teaches that
    "rights of nature" should be higher than
    individual human rights

Folks have been training locally to transform (scuttle) American democracy and business as we know it - and that's no exaggeration.   There's a movement afoot to retire outdated and wrongheaded constitutional ideas and legal concepts about the individual rights of (human) citizens.

CELDF has accepted the most extreme anti-capitalist position in its quest to create an environmental Shangri-la. It has also recruited and trained its members to engage in partisan politics. 

The progressive concept is that communities and the environment should have constitutional rights, above the troublesome personal rights of humans.  When these folks talk about constitutional Rights of Nature it seems they mean that literally. They talk about nature having official "guardians."  Here's an excerpt from the CELDF public website that's a real eye opener:

          "In the U.S., title to property carries with it the legal authority to destroy the natural communities and ecosystems that depend upon that property for survival.  In fact, environmental laws in the U.S. were passed under the authority of the Commerce Clause, which grants exclusive authority over “interstate commerce” to Congress.  Treating nature as commerce has meant that all existing environmental law frameworks in the U.S. are anchored in the concept of nature as property. 

            The Legal Defense Fund has assisted communities to craft and adopt new laws that change the status of natural communities and ecosystems from being regarded as property under the law to being recognized as rights-bearing entities.  

            Those local laws recognize that natural communities and ecosystems possess an inalienable and fundamental right to exist and flourish, and that residents of those communities possess the legal authority to enforce those rights on behalf of those ecosystems.  In addition, these laws require the governmental apparatus to remedy violations of those ecosystem rights.

        The Rights of Nature Ordinance, which originally began as a separate, stand-alone ordinance, has now been integrated into all of the other substantive ordinances generated by the Legal Defense Fund. "

This school was been a big hit with the extreme-left in Bellingham, offered at Sustainable Connections' digs.  And then it was offered through the Whatcom Folk School  2011 summer session.

The national Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDFhttp://celdf.org/how-we-work/education/rights-of-nature/) has been targeting "home rule charter" counties like ours which they say are easier to transition.   Spokane has been a focus area for their "community organizing."   Recently, a group of high-ranking City of Bellingham and Whatcom County elected officials took their course.

2016 Update:    A contributor recently shared this quote from Linzey, their founder:   "If enough of these cases get in front of a judge, there is a chance we could start to have an impact within the judiciary," said Linzey. "And if a town goes bankrupt trying to defend one of our ordinances, well, perhaps that's exactly what is needed to trigger a national movement." [Energy In Depth] [Reuters]  "If your current government isn't working to protect you, don't be afraid to create a new governmental framework." ("Be the Change" book, author Linzey/Campbell ISBN 978142805614 published Oct 2009, pp 102) ISBN 13: 978-1-4236-0561-4 ...and there are numerous places in the book that make reference to changing or reframing 'governmental framework', by amending city Charters and local, state, and federal Constitutions.

These people mean to do serious harm, willful harm, to others.  They say, "It's a free country," but only if you think their way.  It's a real cult.