NHCRN Newsletter - Quarterly Update

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NHCRN Quarterly Update
A Publication of the New Hampshire Community Rights Network
Educating and empowering communities and elected officials about our individual and collective right of local self-governance in order to secure and protect the inherent and unalienable rights of all inhabitants of New Hampshire to economic, social and environmental justice, including the rights of nature.

Volume 4 / Issue 2
June 2018
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HELP PROTECT RIGHTS OF PEOPLE & NATURE
Your DONATION serves to protect New Hampshire's human and natural communities from social, economic, and environmental injustice.

Consider becoming a sustaining NHCRN supporter today. Your monthly donation will ensure the vitality and growth of NH's Community Rights and Rights of Nature movement.

NHCRN is a 501c3 grassroots non-profit dependent upon private donations and small grants from regional funders. If you feel NHCRN does not empower your community in a manner that inspires you to give, please reach out and share with us how we can do so. 
Email [email protected] with your suggestions.

REMARKABLE ADVANCEMENT OF NH COMMUNITY RIGHTS STATE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
A landmark legislative session was held this winter in NH. It marked the first time a Community Rights state constitutional amendment was debated and voted on by a state House of Representatives. The proposed amendment would recognize the authority of people in towns throughout the state to enact local rights-based laws protecting individual and communities’ rights, free from corporate interference and state preemption. That authority includes the right to protect the natural environment.

Bi-partisan Support
Nine bi-partisan sponsors championed CACR19, known as the NH Community Rights Amendment. It is the first  Community  Rights  amendment  in  the  nation to receive support from a legislative subcommittee with a recommendation of “ought-to-pass.”
The amendment did not receive the 3/5 super-majority vote required to advance a state constitutional amendment to the November ballot. This was not surprising, given that the full committee chair ignored the subcommittee recommendation’s “ought-to-pass.” He allowed a motion of “inexpedient-to-legislate” to stand  and  move to the House floor.
 
Despite this, 1/3 of the New Hampshire House of Representatives demonstrated their support. These legislators recognize the inalienable right of people in their communities to protect themselves from corporations intent on using their communities as sacrifice zones. Community Rights supporters are encouraged both by the  bipartisan support the people’s amendment received in the sub- committee, and the 112 House votes in favor of advancing the amendment to voters.
 
Why Community Rights?
Growing numbers of New Hampshire communities are forced to host parasitic special interest projects such as high voltage transmission lines, oil and gas infrastructure, water withdrawals for resale, landfills, and other harms. They face a structure of law and government that allows corporations to impose these harmful activities into their communities against the will of the people due to corporate claimed “rights” and privileges.
 
In response, New Hampshire communities are partnering with the NH Community Rights Network (NHCRN) and Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund to advance their rights. They are drafting local Community Rights  laws, or rights-based ordinances (RBOs). The RBOs elevate communities’ right of local community self-government and environmental rights to clean air, water, and soil, above corporate claimed “rights” and state preemption.

Over the past decade nearly a dozen communities state-wide have adopted RBOs —not  because  they  expected the New Hampshire legislature to agree  with  them, but because these rights are inherent and inalienable. The NH Community Rights Amendment would guarantee state protection for local RBOs.
 
What it Takes
We know from prior people’s movements that fundamental change takes persistent, unrelenting pressure. As corporate threats grow in the Granite State, more communities are joining the Community Rights movement. These communities and their supporters will reintroduce  the  NH Community Rights Amendment because our quality of life — indeed our very lives and those of our children and future generations — depends on it.

GRASSROOTS RBO ACTION
Members of Alliance for Newmarket Citizen & Ecosystem Rights (ANCER) made public comment to Newmarket's Town Council on the resident-proposed communityrights-based ordinance (RBO). The Newmarket Freedom From Chemical Trespass RBO, a.k.a. "A Rights-Based Ordinance for the Great Bay", would extend protections for Newmarket’s people and natural environments beyond those protections currently in place at the state and federal level. It would make it illegal for corporations to contaminate Newmarket’s watershed, including into the Great Bay Estuary, which would include Eversource’s Seacoast Reliability project crossing through Little Bay.
 
ANCER also has plans to host a Tuesday, June 26th, 6-8pm public informational event at Newmarket's library to inform fellow Newmarket residents about how little local democratic freedom the town's residents actually have to cast votes in order to make decisions about their vision for the safety and well-being of themselves and their surrounding ecosystems--and to discuss what they can do about this.
 
ANCER members' first hand experience of the suppression of local democracy has inspired their continued support of the NH Community Rights Amendment to recognize the need to empower people in their communities with the authority to enact local, common sense laws to protect their economic, social, and environmental well-being from corporate harm.

Bring a NHCRN Fundraiser to Your Community!
NH folk trio Oak & Ivy recognizes that forwarding the community rights movement at both the local and state level requires funding. In light of this, they have extended an open invitatiion to NH communities to partner with them to put on shows to benefitNHCRN's work educating elected officials and communities about the right of local community self-government. If you'd like to bring an event like this to your town, please email [email protected] to find out how a NHCRN fundraiser show can be customized to fit your community's vision.

Stay Connected — Join NHCRN on Facebook!

VERIFY THE VOTE COUNT IN NH
PLEASE REACH OUT TO YOUR
TOWN MODERATOR ASKING
THEM TO COMMIT TO PROTECT
THE PEOPLE'S VOTES BY
SUPPORTING VERIFICATION
HAND COUNTS OF ELECTRONIC
DEVICE-COUNTED BALLOTS. 

This legislative session, NHCRN helped educate legislators on HB1582, theTrust But Verify bill, which would have enabled town Moderators to assure both themselves and voters of the accuracy of their town's electronic ballot counts. HB1582 proposed to do this by clarifying Moderators' authority to randomly and openly conduct a verification count of electronic ballot-counting devices after polls close but prior to attesting to the accuracy of the vote--thereby giving them a method to comply with the duties they take an oath to uphold in both Part 2, Article 32 of NH's Constitution and in state law.

The NH Secretary of State opposed HB1582 saying it would lead to a lack of confidence in the voting systems used in the Granite State. He is now requesting input on our elections and has set up round table discussions for your town Moderator, including the following question:

We would like to hear your viewpoint on attempts to require hand counts of certain races on the ballot after the polls close on election night. Do you feel there is a need for such a check on these machines?

This is your opportunity to educate
your town Moderator with the 
TRUST BUT VERIFY FAQ

Along with educating your Moderator on why a verification hand count is needed, please also ask them to speak out for it at their round table:
Wed. June 20, Gorham Town Hall, 10am
Wed. June 20, Plymouth Town Hall, 2:30pm
Thurs. June 21, Keene Police Dept. Blastos Comm. Rm, 2pm
Thurs. June 21, Concord's NH Archives, 7pm
Fri. June 22, Brentwood Parks and Rec, 10am

GRANITE BRIDGE PIPELINE PROJECT
Liberty Utilities' proposed Granite Bridgepipeline project will be a 27 mile, 16-diameter, high pressure natural gas pipeline spanning state land along Route 101 between Manchester and Stratham. Its currently proposed route will run within 100s of feet of local water sources and could include crossing the Lamprey River twice in Raymond. Liberty Utilities also chose Epping to host a 200 billion cubic foot (160 feet high, 200 feet wide) liquified natural gas storage tank and a plant for reliquification and regasification to move from pipe to distribution.

GOVERNOR TO SIGN PREEMPTION BILL HB1233
This May, the NH Senate passed HB1233. When signed into law, it will give the state full preemptive control over which seeds and fertilizers are allowed in NH. NHCRN educates our elected officials about our inherent and inalienable right to local self-determination. HB1233 violates this right and interferes with the people's collective authority to adopt ordinances concerning seeds and fertilizers that pose a threat to the health, safety, and welfare of NH's human and natural ecosystems. HB1233 supporters argue farmers need it to prevent patchwork laws interfering with farming from town to town. HB1233 opposition argues NH farmers and towns already work together well without issue, i.e. HB1233 is a problem in need of local democratic solutions.
What could possibly be the silver lining in this preemption law coming to the Granite State? Especially considering we will be the 30th state in the nation to have such a law passed via the calculated agenda of big biotech companies and their shareholders, which include fossil fuel moguls? The silver lining is this.

With every push against community rights, communities have reason to push back. NHCRN sees the Governor signing this bill as a call of action to NH communities to adopt local anti-GMO seed and anti-sludge rights-based ordinances--anyway. 

It is also a reminder call for NH communities to support the NH Community Rights Amendment because, with legislation like HB1233 blocking local democracy, our state officials and government have fallen short of protecting NH people and our communities and ecosystems.

HOST A DEMOCRACY SCHOOL
Democracy School explores the limits of conventional regulatory organizing and offers a new organizing model that helps citizens confront the usurpation by corporations of the rights of communities, people, and earth. Lectures cover the history of people’s movements and corporate power, and the dramatic organizing over the last decade in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon by communities confronting agribusiness, the oil and gas industry, corporate hegemony over worker rights, and others. Included with enrollment in the Democracy School is a 300 plus-page book of background reading material.

 YouTube CHANNEL
Community Rights Organizing Webinar: Liberate Yourself from the Activist Hamster Wheel  Only when we realize we are spinning in a fixed system can we begin to create new organizating strategies to work for what communities want, instead of compromising for what we don’t want.

ADDITIONAL MEDIA OF INTEREST . . .
What's Up Eastie? -- Community Rights  NHCRN President Michelle Sanborn and long-term East Boston community leader Mary Ellen Welch are interviewed about Community Rights by Kannan Thiruvengadam—an urban farmer, ecology enthusiast, community organizer, sustainability educator, climate resiliency consultant. community activist, and host of this Zumix radio show on current issues.

Resistance Radio Derrick Jensen interviews CELDF’s Thomas Linzey on the legal structures that block us from protecting our communities and creating sustainability, why we keep participating in those structures, and what some communities are doing differently.

Tell Me a Story: Michelle Holman, Activist  Community Rights Lane County founder Michelle Holman talks to the Register-Guard about the importance of fighting for the health, safety, and welfare of Lane County residents.

When Human Rights Are Not Enough: Defending the Rights of Nature Human rights to a healthy environment are gaining recognition—and today, the rights of nature are growing as well. Here, CELDF’s Mari Margil speaks to how recognizing ecosystem rights is central to tackling environmental degradation.

NEWS FROM OUR PARTNERS, AFFILIATES, & OTHERS
Blog: The Gun Establishment's Weapon of Choice (Preemption) State involvement in the enforcement of preemption laws used to be a rare occurrence. What hasn’t been rare, unfortunately, is state legislators using preemption laws to shield large economic actors from municipal lawmaking. This gives private corporations an additional tool to sue municipal governments who “interfere” with the corporation’s activities.

PGE Continues to Try to Bankrupt Grant Township We have done our research. We know of the dangers posed by fracking and fracking waste. We know that PGE has an awful record of environmental violations. We do not understand how we are the ones that could be punished when we are protecting our civil right to clean air, water, and soil.

Restructuring Ohio State Government Ohioans have firsthand experience of the truth that the very legal and governing structures that we live under—regardless of the individuals in their corporate and government positions—are preventing us from governing ourselves and protecting our communities.

Colorado Sits at Center of the Rights of Nature Debate Colorado environmentalists are gaining ground—and water—in their efforts to secure humanlike rights for nature.

National & State Preemption News Welcome to the Preemption Watch News. We hope you find these links, excerpts, and summaries useful. You can find more information about preemption by using our preemption map, tools, and research

Informed Public Threatens Those in Power, But Our Public No Threat  It is at our own peril that we do not understand why what’s happening in our country is happening. Nor do we understand how our system of government and law not only allows the why, but supports it. When we understand the “why,” we are a dangerous public to those in power. Not knowing the “why” makes us easier to control.

Our Laws Make Slaves of Nature; It's Not Just Humans Who Need Rights Environmental laws regulate the human use and destruction of nature. They legalize fracking, drilling, and even dynamiting the tops off mountains to mine coal. The consequences are proving catastrophic: the die-off crisis of the world's coral reefs, accelerating species extinction, climate change. Finally, though, this is changing.

A Phoenix From the Ashes: Resurrecting a Constitutional Right of Local, Community Self-Government in the Name of Environmental Sustainability This article began as a series of legal briefs filed in various federal courts in defense of several municipal communities who had asserted their local legislative authority to prohibit a variety of harmful corporate projects.

Voters Want Local Control, Not State Takeovers Pushing back against preemption is not just a matter of winning elections. People who feel disenfranchised by what they see as a corrupt, centralized power structure aren’t looking for the next elected official to save the day. They want to save their own day.

How American Corporations Had a 'Hidden' Civil Rights MovementLaw professor Adam Winkler says that in the past 200 years, businesses have gone to court claiming constitutional rights that were originally intended for people. His new book is We the Corporations.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT
HELP PROTECT RIGHTS OF PEOPLE & NATURE
Your DONATION serves to protect New Hampshire's human and natural communities from social, economic, and environmental injustice.
Consider becoming a sustaining NHCRN supporter today. Your monthly donation will ensure the vitality and growth of NH's Community Rights and Rights of Nature movement.

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