www.fosters.com/news/20190102/support-community-rights
Posted Jan 2, 2019 at 9:56 AM Updated Jan 2, 2019 at 9:56 AM
  To the Editor:
State Rep. Ellen Read has reintroduced the NH Community Rights Amendment, a state constitutional amendment that expands and protects the rights of people and natural environments in their communities. The NH Community Rights Amendment was drafted by the NH Community Rights Network, with assistance from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a non-profit public interest law firm. Rep. Read said she is committed to sponsoring this legislation again because, “our quality of life, indeed our very lives and those of our children and future generations, depend on it.” Projects such as pipelines and compressor stations, transmission lines, ridgeline industrial wind ventures, and water extraction projects are authorized by state officials and state agencies, without townspeople’s consent. Efforts to protect people and ecosystems have been denied by state and federal governments in partnership with corporate special interests, leading to this legislation.
The NH Community Rights Amendment would add Article 40. Right of Local Community Self-Government to the New Hampshire Constitution’s Bill of Rights, and has three key components:
Right to Local Self-Government: specifically recognizing the right of people in communities across the state to local community self-government.
Rights of People, Communities, and Natural Environments: people, communities and natural environments have rights to health, safety and well-being, and the authority to prohibit business activities that violate those rights.

Expanding and Protecting Fundamental Rights: people can use their collective local lawmaking power to enact local laws that protect and expand fundamental rights – any efforts to restrict or weaken fundamental rights under this Amendment are prohibited.
The NH Community Rights Amendment has bipartisan support from representative co-sponsors: Vincent Migliore, Janice Schmidt, Skip Cleaver, Wendy Thomas, Nancy Murphy, William Pearson, Kathryn Stack, David Meuse, and Joshua Adjutant.
Jennifer Dube, NHCRN Legislative Coordinator

https://www.fosters.com/news/20181229/another-view-good-bad-news-for-newmarket-rights-based-ordinance

Good news: Newmarket’s Town Council Water Rights Subcommittee members are recommending Newmarket’s Town Council seriously consider future resident-proposed Rights-based Ordinances (RBOs). Bad news: They’re not recommending adoption of the current resident-proposed RBO, the Newmarket Freedom From Chemical Trespass Rights-based Ordinance that seeks to protect Newmarket’s people and its Lamprey River & Great Bay Estuary watershed. Here are responses to the committee members’ assertions made during their final meeting considering the RBO.

“The RBO is an exciting, progressive approach to change.” True, but because RBOs are based on rights affirmed in NH’s Bill of Rights, they’re also conservatively unifying—a phenomenon covered in UNH sociologist Cliff Brown’s 2016 “Water Concerns Unite Citizen Activists: A Community Rights Movement Transcends Party, Age, and Gender.”

“We don’t know what unintended consequences RBOs will cause.” True, but 15 RBOs adopted by 11 NH towns haven’t had any, whereas the CDC reported in July 2018 the unintended consequences of water contamination: NH has the country’s highest rate of pediatric cancers, including state and federally recognized clusters of rare cancers in Seacoast areas contaminated by PFAS, PFOS/PFOAS, and PFCs.

“We should wait until an amendment to NH’s Bill of Rights officially recognizes RBO-making so we’ve authority to instate them.” Last year, the NH Community Rights Amendment received support from 1/3 NH’s House. In 2019, Newmarket’s Representative Ellen Read will sponsor it again. If it passes NH’s House and Senate and is voted in by NH’s people, it’ll protect RBOs by recognizing people’s right to adopt them, but it won’t make RBOs official. What makes RBOs official is each individual’s inherent and inalienable right to self-determine, exercised collectively in a vote of the townspeople. Newmarket’s Town Charter doesn’t allow residents to vote on non-budgetary matters, leaving them dependent on Town Council members to adopt RBOs according to their oath to uphold Newmarketers’ rights as enumerated in NH’s Bill of Rights. Outside Newmarket, NH townspeople who can make a RBO vote haven’t waited for the amendment because they and their ecosystems cannot afford to and because they already have the inherent and inalienable authority to adopt RBOS as affirmed by NH’s Bill of Rights Articles 1, 2, 3, 8, 10 and 32.

“Change has always been achieved by moving through governmental process.” Systematic change in every large people’s movement has always required moving outside governmental process in order to right legal wrongs. In NH, even with legislation trying to address the matter, it’s legal to release PFAS, PFOS/PFOAS, and PFCs into our water at ‘safe’ limits that yet bio-accumulate and cause cancer. If the people’s Community Rights movement sticks to governmental process without including RBOs, we’ll be apologizing to future generations: “Sorry, water contamination was legal.”

“We shouldn’t be a fiefdom telling other towns what they can/can’t do.” Protecting water is basic survival. It’s not about controlling and regulating other towns. It’s about recognizing rights of water and people everywhere. If other towns approve use of chemicals that end up in Newmarket water, and if Newmarket’s Town Council adopts an RBO banning those chemicals, then the people of other towns would deal with the RBO like they must deal with any other differing ordinances NH towns have on various issues.

“What’s the point of this RBO? We’ve no direct threat.” The direct threat is that Newmarket’s people are un-empowered to vote on local governing decisions that afford greater protection than harms legalized by the state. The RBO would empower Newmarketers, their community, and their ecosystems with local governing authority to address harmful activities, even to the point of saying, “No amount of harm is okay.” So the proposed RBO’s point is its proactivity. For instance, and according to a Newmarket Conservation Commission member, town gravel pits are potentially destined to be landfills. The RBO would help Newmarketers avoid finding out decades from now, like Greenlanders have with their Coakley Landfill, that landfill leeching poisoned their water. The RBO would also help Newmarketers avoid fight after fight over harms already in town, including PFAS in their car wash’s Teflon shine service and the Town’s use of the cancer-causing Glysophate for weed control.  Furthermore, Eversource’s Seacoast Reliability Project will stir up 100s of years of industry toxins in Little Bay to mix with Pease PFAS contamination already in Great Bay. While the U.S. Geological Survey and EPA determined the porousness of the bay’s bedrock, which allows chemicals to drain into groundwater from which Newmarket draws drinking water, the SEC, per NHDES recommendation, determined the project’s toxins are not concerning for surrounding watersheds.

“We should just work through the regulatory agencies.” Evidenced by NHDES’s Seacoast Reliability Project approval, regulatory agencies facilitate corporate projects and allow certain amounts of harm; they don’t protect people or ecosystems. If they did, agency regulations wouldn’t require, for example, that Saint-Gobain merely provide water filters for Merrimack residents; they’d require complete cessation of the company’s PFAS poisoning of Merrimack’s people and ecosystems. But regulatory agencies won’t ban contamination because it’s neither their job nor legal place to. The people will do so because our lives depend on it and we have the right to.

To learn more about Newmarket’s RBO, email monica.christofili@gmail.com or visit Alliance for Newmarket Citizen & Ecosystem Rights (ANCER) on Facebook. To learn more about 2019’s NH Community Rights Amendment, email info@nhcommunityrights.org or visit www.nhcommunityrights.org.
Monica Christofili, ANCER co-founder / NHCRN board member

​www.laconiadailysun.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/what-s-the-point-of-local-government-when-we-can/article_ad3c5116-e8f4-11e8-a45b-b78f8be947dc.html
Nov 15, 2018 Updated 4 hrs ago​To The Daily Sun,
Did you know that our individual right to collectively come together and cast a vote on matters that actually mean something to our everyday lives is simply rendered illegal here in New Hampshire unless the state specifically enables legislation granting local authority to pass such a law?
What’s the point of local government when we don’t get to decide what is best for our health, safety, and welfare at the local level? Why bother serving for a local public office when you can be penalized and held personally liable? Laws created by the NH State Legislature are supposed to protect its people, yet truth be told, laws coming from the state legislature are denying protections for Granite State people, communities, and ecosystems.
Specifically, issues of clean air, water, soil; acceptance of all human beings no matter where they are from or how they got here; food sovereignty, election integrity, waste management practices, sustainable energy choices, water quality and access, labor practices, farming practices; among many other issues, are all governed beyond our local communities while at the same time, through preemption, the state denies us any local decision-making authority over these issues, rendering us powerless to enact local laws that might help our economy or protect people and natural ecosystems.
And now, it seems it is not enough to be rendered powerless at the local level to protect our health, safety, and welfare for the NH Legislature has felt it necessary to consider legislation meant to penalize local officials and hold them personally liable for acting contrary to the State in matters of local lawmaking that afford greater protections for the local community than the State allows.
First introduced in 2018, HB1749 sought to penalize and hold local officials personally liable for any local legislation regarding firearms and knives that have not been authorized by the State. In House Calendar 5, page 24, Rep. McCarthy suggested that restricting such penalties to only firearms and knives is not broad enough and that local elected officials should be penalized for any and all local legislation not specifically authorized by the state. During the October 10th executive session of the Municipal & County Government committee, an amendment (2018-2139h, by Rep. McClean) was proposed that rewrote HB1749 to do just that. The amendment was not taken up by the committee this year, but don’t be surprised to see this as a new bill in the future.
All of this might seem out of character for the Granite state since New Hampshire has a long history of believing we have “local control”, however, the reality of local control is far from the belief. As a colonial state, the reality of local control existed long before the state or federal governments were created. New Hampshire was the first to adopt a form of government independent of British rule in January of 1776 — six months before the Declaration of Independence was signed. However, the current state constitution adopted in June of 1784 created an entirely new form of government. One that mirrors the British rule we initially separated ourselves from.
In the first part of the NH State Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Article 10. [Right of Revolution] says that whenever the ends of government are perverted and publicly liberty is manifestly endangered, the people may and of right ought to reform the old or establish a new government. It even goes so far as to say, “The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.”
It isn’t enough to have the right to change our form of government if we don’t have the recognized authority to do so. People across the Granite State are coming together to push back against such arbitrary power and oppression with a peoples’ state constitutional amendment that would specifically recognize the right of local community self-government — the right to a system of local government founded on the consent of the people of the municipality; the right to a system of local government that secures their rights; and the right to alter any system of local government that lacks consent or fails to secure and protect the people’s rights, health, safety, and welfare.
The NH Community Rights Network (NHCRN) is a grassroots, statewide nonprofit that informs communities and elected officials about our right of local self-government 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. To learn more about how you can get involved email info@nhcommunityrights.org and visit www.nhcommunityrights.org.
Michelle Sanborn
Serving president of NHCRN
Alexandria

​www.laconiadailysun.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/community-rights-amendment-will-be-before-lawmaker-again/article_32a269e0-de09-11e8-b413-23fe45c6e965.html
Nov 1, 2018 Updated 4 hrs agoTo The Daily Sun,
In early October, and in anticipation of election day on November 6, NHCRN sent surveys to all 2018 N.H. election candidates running for governor, Executive Council, state senator, or state representative.
The survey asked candidates for their positions on local choice, including whether or not they will support the people of N.H.’s call for the N.H. Community Rights Amendment, which last year earned support from one-third of N.H.’s House. Of the candidates who responded to the survey’s question on the amendment, 77 percent said they would support it, 23 percent that they would not.
The N.H. Community Rights Amendment seeks to codify in our N.H. Constitution's Bill of Rights the community right to local decision-making authority regarding social and environmental issues that affect the health, safety, and well-being of individuals, communities, and ecosystems. While this right and authority is already affirmed in Articles 1, 2, 3, 8, 10, and 32 of our N.H. Constitution’s Bill of Rights, it is not yet specifically recognized.
Enumerating this right to local self-government in our Bill of Rights would address an underlying civil rights problem in two main ways. Firstly, it would recognize that local self-determination is an inherent and unalienable right. Secondly, it would nullify the corporate use of state preemption and permitting bodies to override the collective will of a community to adopt local laws that protect people and ecosystems. Importantly, the amendment could not be used to protect local laws that restrict or weaken existing state and federal rights and protections for people.
This amendment will be introduced again this coming legislative season, and as a non-profit, grassroots organization, part of NHCRN’s work will be to educate the people of N.H. and their elected officials about our individual and collective right of local self-governance that this amendment would enumerate in our N.H. Bill of Rights.
The goal of this education is to help secure and protect the inherent and unalienable rights of all inhabitants of New Hampshire to economic, social, and environmental justice — including securing the rights of nature.
For both summarized and full-text survey responses from the candidates, or to learn more about the community rights movement in the Granite State, please visit NHCRN at www.nhcommunityrights.org or email info@nhcommunityrights.org.
Michelle Sanborn
NHCRN President
Alexandria 

​www.laconiadailysun.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/we-can-t-tolerate-local-issues-being-labeled-beyond-our/article_5e5d3422-d88f-11e8-a9df-03e898600468.html

Oct 25, 2018 Updated 19 hrs To The Daily Sun,
With the midterm elections upon us, we are all acutely aware of the party lines that exist, "the blue wave"and the lack of bipartisanship on both sides of the aisle. However in New Hampshire there is another wave intensifying as it reaches communities across our state. It is for the benefit of all people. It is about democracy in its purest form. It is about bringing forth a Community Rights Amendment and it has been gaining momentum.
Communities in our state have been targeted by corporations seeking profit over protection of people and the natural environment. Whether it be energy companies wanting to trample across our state, others dumping toxic waste and poisoning our water, water extraction, industrial wind or other harms targeting communities, the people are routinely restricted as to what they are allowed to do. They are often told by lawmakers that "we're beyond their authority" or that "it is a state issue not a local issue." This is unacceptable. This should not be tolerated.
Why do large corporations possess more rights than the communities that they are doing business in?
Communities need to be able to say "no" to harmful projects and "yes" to sustainability in our state. A Community Rights Amendment would elevate the rights of communities above the claimed "rights" of corporations and the governing structures that support them. It will secure the right of local self government. It will free communities from legislative ceiling pre-emption that prevents how much you are allowed to protect the health, safety and welfare of your community.
This would not and is not intended to limit already protected state and federal rights of individuals. This is democracy that is rooted in equal rights for all and special privileges or advantages for none.
In 2018 the proposed Community Rights Amendment garnered one-third House support and will be back in 2019. I am optimistic that in the coming year the proposed amendment will gather even more support. I believe that regardless of people's political affiliation we can agree that we live in a flawed democracy which demands that change be made to secure the rights of all people.
If you would like to learn more, I encourage reader's to contact New Hampshire Community Rights Network (NHCRN) by email at info@nhcommunityrights.org or through their website at www.nhcommunityrights.org. NHCRN is a statewide, grass roots nonprofit that informs citizens and legislators about the inalienable right we have to local self government.
Sue Ozkan
NHCRN Board Member

​www.fosters.com/news/20181009/another-view-corporate-personhood-dilutes-nhs-bill-of-rights

By Douglas Darrell
Posted Oct 9, 2018 at 10:06 AMUpdated Oct 9, 2018 at 10:06 AM
  All people are born with inalienable rights — the right to practice one’s chosen religion, to exercise free speech, etc. These rights define our personhood and cannot be transferred from person to person; they are inherent. They are also the core of our country’s founding principles and the riveting power behind the phrase “We the People”: each person is created equal and deserves the same human and legal rights.
However, courts have dictated that corporations have the same ‘personhood.’ Their rulings have applied the rights of a single human to the conglomerate of individuals who make up a corporation. In other words, by virtue of individuals in a corporation having inalienable rights, the corporation has these same rights, even though, by definition, inalienable rights aren’t transferable.
These claimed corporate ‘rights’ were first recognized in 1886′s State of California vs. Southern Pacific Railroad Supreme Court decision. Despite dissenting opinions, presiding Justice Waite stated that corporations “are guaranteed the property right written in the 14th Amendment.” Over the next 30 years, the 14th amendment was used less than 20 times to defend the rights of freed slaves and over 200 times to defend the property rights of corporations.
So even though corporations are man-made, they are court-recognized as having “God-given” or “Creator-given” or “DNA-given” (fill in your worldview) rights, i.e. we have given the power of individual personhood to a special class. This reality is unseemly considering that both our federal and state Bill of Rights were written for the protection of the rights of sovereign individuals, not for a special class of people (e.g. those in a corporation) who are unified in the pursuit of special privilege, which is different than rights.
Nonetheless, the recognition of corporate personhood has created special privilege that pits class against class and draws to mind the quote “a house divided against itself will fall.” Corporate personhood creates division in our country by impeding citizen sovereignty to seek public good via government that is incorporated—to quote NH Bill of Rights Article 1 — “through the consent of the governed,” meaning through the consent of individuals, not through the consent of corporations court-recognized as individuals.
This division has been sowed via authoritarianism exercised under the mantle of democracy — democracy swayed in function by corporate influence. What sounds like conspiracy theory is just the people’s lobster unknowingly boiling in the corporate ‘rights’ pot. Namely, court-appointed corporate personhood has been strengthened through subsequent court rulings like Citizen’s United and Dillon’s Rule, the latter of the two generating the function of New Hampshire’s state preemption, i.e. New Hampshire municipalities and the residents in them cannot make laws unless the state says they can.

Put another way, we don’t live free or die because despite our New Hampshire Bill of Rights declaring the unconstitutionality of it, the reality of New Hampshire residents is that corporations now have equal and even more standing than we do: 1) state preemption disallows citizens from elevating their rights above those of corporate claimed rights; 2) if citizens sue a corporation for harms its project has exacted on their community, the corporation’s project permit is recognized as an individual’s legal property, and corporate ‘personhood’ is allowed to undermine our attempt to collectively exercise individual rights in the municipalities where we live.
But New Hampshire communities have pushed back with rights-based ordinances (RBOs) based on our inalienable right to self-govern. According to New Hampshire Bill of Rights Article 10, these RBOs reform our government, rewriting our social contract with the state by providing our communities with protection when our government is not doing so for us as it says it must in NH Bill of Rights Article 2. Almost a dozen New Hampshire towns and counting have adopted these RBOs, turning off the heat on themselves in the boiling pot of claimed corporate ‘rights’ by envisioning communities in which the rights of people and ecosystems are not subjugated to the ‘rights’ of corporations and in which corporations are welcome if they are forward thinking and innovative enough to recognize the need for and rightness of this paradigm shift.
Residents up and down New Hampshire have called for a state constitutional amendment to recognize citizens’ right to self-govern for the protection of our and our ecosystems’ health, safety, and welfare. The resulting NH Community Rights Amendment earned 1/3 the NH House’s support in 2018 and will be back some time again after September’s election season. Visit http://www.nhcommunityrights.org/ or email info@nhcommunityrights.org to learn more.
— Douglas Darrell is a New Hampshire Community Rights Network board member

 Encourage your district's 2018 general election candidates to take this local choice survey!  
​
Inform them that before voting on their candidacy, you want
to know their stance on our inherent and inalienable
right to local self-government and on the
NH Community Rights People's Amendment.

Primary Election Survey Results
In early August, NHCRN published the results  of a survey sent to NH's state primary candidates running for Governor, Executive Council, and for State Representative or Senator. The survey asked them for their positions on local choice, including whether or not they will support the people of NH’s call for the NH Community Rights People's Amendment, which in 2018’s legislative season earned support from one third of NH’s House. Of the candidates who responded to the survey on local choice and the amendment, 71% said they would support the amendment, 29% that they would not.

General Election Survey 
With general elections taking place this November 6th, NHCRN is sending out thislocal choice survey to NH candidates still in the running to gain positions that will afford them a deciding say on whether or not you and your fellow people of NH will get the chance to cast a vote on the people's call for the NH Community Rights People's Amendment.
Be on the look out for 2019's reintroduction of the
NH Community Rights People's Amendment
We hope to see your engagement with it at the State House and in letters to the editor!

What The Amendment Would Do
The NH Community Rights People's Amendment seeks to codify in our NH Constitution's Bill of Rights the community right to local decision-making authority regarding social and environmental issues that affect the health, safety, and well-being of individuals, communities, and ecosystems. While this right and authority is already affirmed in Articles 1, 2, 8, 10, and 32 of our NH State Constitution’s Bill of Rights, it is not yet specifically recognized.
 
Enumerating this right to local self-government in our Bill of Rights would address an underlying NH civil rights problem in two main ways. Firstly, it would recognize that local self-determination is an inherent and unalienable right. Secondly, it would nullify corporate use of ceiling preemption and permitting bodies to override the collective will of a community to adopt local laws that expand and protect rights of people and ecosystems. Importantly, the amendment could not be used to protect local laws that restrict or weaken existing local, state, or federal rights and protections for people and natural environments.
 
This amendment is an ongoing topic of NHCRN educational outreach to help secure and protect the inherent and unalienable rights of all NH inhabitants to economic, social, and environmental justice—including securing the rights of nature.
 
WELCOME!
As we usher in 2019's legislative season,
please join us in welcoming NHCRN's new Legislative Coordinator, Jennifer Dube!
Jennifer is a NH native who grew up in Concord, NH's state capital. Passionate about social and environmental justice, Jennifer will assist NHCRN in the mission of advancing the
NH Community Rights People's Amendment to secure the inalienable right to local self-government for all NH inhabitants.

Thank you for your continued part in
NH's Community Rights Movement.

In gratitude,
Michelle, Diane, Doug, Monica, Peter, and Sue

NHCRN Board of Directors
info@nhcommunityrights.org

www.seacoastonline.com/news/20181003/locals-talk-strategy-to-stop-granite-bridge-pipeline
By Kathleen D. Bailey / newsletter@seacoastonline.com
Posted Oct 3, 2018 at 10:46 AMUpdated Oct 3, 2018 at 10:46 AM
 
​EPPING -- Michelle Sanborn of Alexandria looked over a roomful of people in the Harvey-Mitchell Library Children’s Room. “Who can define what ‘community rights’ means?” she asked.

One woman said, “to protect the environment,” while a man said, “to protect whatever rights the community may have.” But one woman made it even more succinct, calling out, “it’s the right to say ‘no.’”

About 20 people crammed into the library’s main meeting space last week to learn about their rights as citizens and the rights of property, which can’t speak for itself.

The group assembled to hear what residents of the Route 101 corridor could do to stop the proposed Granite Bridge natural gas pipeline, an initiative of Liberty Utilities that would link natural gas conduits in the Merrimack Valley region with the Seacoast. The pipeline is scheduled to run along a state right-of-way through Candia, Raymond, Brentwood, Epping and Exeter, ending in Stratham. A storage tank is slated for an abandoned quarry in Epping.
Sanborn, president of the New Hampshire Community Rights Network and an organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, was the speaker. The Community Rights Network exists to educate communities and their elected officials on the need to amend the Bill of Rights to recognize and protect the rights of local communities, she explained.

According to Sanborn, those rights are an endangered species. She pointed to two recent efforts in the state Legislature. House Bill 1233 preempts all local regulation of seeds and fertilizer and became law this past August. HB 1749 is still in study and would give the state the authority to regulate or prohibit firearms and knives. “This won’t even be voted on in town meeting,” Sanborn said. “And we are the lawmakers?”

Restrictions and “punishment” are making local government irrelevant, Sanborn argued, and easy to override and ignore.

“What is town meeting for,” Sanborn asked rhetorically, noting the “purest form of democracy” is being superseded by state and federal authorities. And these, she said, are weighted toward corporations and not local needs or opinions.

“The system isn’t broken,” Sanborn said. “It’s fixed. It’s fixed against you and me.”
People can still fight within the system, Sanborn said, though it’s weighted against them. She and her group prefer to work through what she calls a rights-based ordinance.

“It’s a binding local law, passed by the voting body, that makes it illegal to harm the environment or society,” she said. “It’s the right of individuals to enact local laws protecting social and environmental health, safety and welfare.”

Several New Hampshire towns have enacted RBOs, according to Sanborn.

There’s also what she calls the “rights of nature.” She noted “ecosystems as entities have the right to exist and flourish.” A rights of nature ordinance changes the status of ecosystems from right-less to right-bearing, she said, and gives them legal standing to be protected from “unsustainable corporate exploitation.” A dozen Granite State communities are partnered with the CELDF to draft first-in-the-nation laws on the rights of nature.

Sanborn urged people living along the proposed pipeline to get organized, talk to their neighbors and decide what they want. Once a core group is formed, the CELDF is available to help it draft a rights-based ordinance, she said. It can then petition to have its local governing body adopt the RBO.

Mark Vallone, a lifelong Epping resident and intervenor for the project, urged his fellow residents to act quickly. “The awareness of what is going on is still low,” he told the group. “We need to get this into Town Meeting and generate more conversation.”

Resident Joe Perry said a local group has been formed to oppose the storage tank.
​
For more information, email Sanborn at michelle@celdf.org, visit www.celdf.org or www.nhcommunityrights.org.

​
​NHCRN sent surveys to all 2018 state primary candidates for their positions on local choice, including whether or not they will support the people of New Hampshire’s call for the NH Community Rights Amendment, which earned support from 1/3 of New Hampshire’s House. (You can scroll below for the survey questions and candidates’ responses.)

​44 of NH’s 2018 primary candidates responded to the survey. Below are their summarized responses ordered alphabetically by last name for State House candidates and then for State Senate candidates. If you’d like to see a particular candidate’s full response, you can click here  to look it up alphabetically by the candidate’s last name.
 
The NH Community Rights Amendment seeks to codify in our NH Constitution's Bill of Rights the community right to local democratic decision-making authority regarding social and environmental issues that affect the health, safety, and well-being of individuals, communities, and ecosystems. While this right and authority is already supported in Articles 1, 2, 8, 10, and 32 of our N.H. State Constitution’s Bill of Rights, it is not yet specifically recognized. Enumerating this right to local self-government in our Bill of Rights would address our underlying civil rights problems in two main ways. Firstly, it would recognize that local self-determination is an inherent and unalienable right. Secondly, it would nullify corporate use of state preemption and permitting bodies to override the collective will of a community to adopt local laws to protect its municipality’s people and ecosystems. Importantly, the amendment could not be used to adopt local laws attempting to restrict or weaken existing state and federal rights and protections for people.

www.fosters.com/news/20180920/to-editor-having-real-say-about-granite-bridge
Posted at 9:24 AMUpdated at 9:24 AM
  To the Editor:
On Thursday, Sept. 27, from 6-8 p.m. at Epping’s public library, the people of New Hampshire can learn how to have a real say about Granite Bridge. Why would they need to learn this?
Residents of Manchester, Candia, Auburn, Epping, Brentwood, Raymond, Exeter, and Stratham have not been asked if they want the Granite Bridge Pipeline — a 27 mile, high pressure, fracked “natural” gas pipeline.
They have not been asked if they want it running along Route 101, through their towns, near their water supplies and schools and homes, and twice crossing the Lamprey River.
Epping residents have not been asked if they want to host a 200 billion-cubic-foot gas storage tank and plant to move fracked gas from pipe to distribution.
Residents throughout New Hampshire have not been asked if they want to be party to yet more Granite State fossil fuel infrastructure whose heart beat is kept going by the toxic blood-letting of frack fields further south of us in Pennsylvania, across the Midwest, and beyond.
When did Live Free or Die believers find a way to morally defend using unsustainable energy that is killing our fellow Americans? When the harm seemed far off? What about now that we’ve had recent pipeline explosions close to home?
I’ve heard the argument that we already have so many pipelines—why not one more? Because hundreds of wrongs don’t make a right.
Sadly, the Granite Bridge Story is a common one. People all across the country are not asked if they want the corporate projects that are permitted in their communities. To have a voice, they are forced to try fighting projects via the regulatory system or with direction action. But townspeople quickly discover that fighting corporate projects like pipelines via regulation and direct action is blocked by more regulation and court decisions favoring corporations over people’s civil rights.

​www.fosters.com/news/20180907/to-editor-where-candidates-stand

To the Editor:
In early August, the NH Community Rights Network sent surveys to 2018′s state primary candidates running for governor, Executive Council, and for state representative or senator.
The survey asked them for their positions on local choice, including whether or not they will support the people of New Hampshire’s call for the NH Community Rights Amendment, which in 2018′s legislative season earned support from one third of New Hampshire’s House.
Of the candidates who responded to the survey on local choice and the amendment, 71% said they would support the amendment, 29% that they would not.
The NH Community Rights Amendment seeks to codify in our NH Constitution’s Bill of Rights the community right to local decision-making authority regarding social and environmental issues that affect the health, safety, and well-being of individuals, communities, and ecosystems. While this right and authority is already affirmed in Articles 1, 2, 8, 10, and 32 of our NH State Constitution’s Bill of Rights, it is not yet specifically recognized.
Enumerating this right to local self-government in our Bill of Rights would address an underlying civil rights problem in two main ways. Firstly, it would recognize that local self-determination is an inherent and unalienable right. Secondly, it would nullify corporate use of state preemption and permitting bodies to override the collective will of a community to adopt local laws that protect people and ecosystems. Importantly, the amendment could not be used to protect local laws that restrict or weaken existing state and federal rights and protections for people.
This amendment will be introduced again this coming legislative season, and as a non-profit, grassroots organization, part of NHCRN’s work will be to educate the people of NH and their elected officials about our individual and collective right of local self-governance that this amendment would enumerate in our NH Bill of Rights.
The goal of this education is to help secure and protect the inherent and unalienable rights of all inhabitants of New Hampshire to economic, social, and environmental justice—including securing the rights of nature.
For both summarized and full-text survey responses from the candidates, or to learn more about the community rights movement in the Granite State, please visit NHCRN at www.nhcommunityrights.org or email info@nhcommunityrights.org.
Monica Christofili, NHCRN Coordinator, Newmarket

​indepthnh.org/2018/08/26/opinion-community-rights-a-response-to-northern-pass-appeal/
By Michelle Sanborn, NH Community Rights NetworkEversource recently appealed to New Hampshire’s Supreme Court, contesting the Site Evaluation Committee’s (SEC) denial of Northern Pass. This appeal was expected by those in the NH community rights movement because when corporations don’t get the answers they want, they challenge the decision-making system, with only required consideration for the wishes of people affected by a proposed project.
This kind of corporate jockeying is par for the course in a state and federal decision-making system made up of a web of regulatory agencies that operate not to protect people and planet but to facilitate corporate applications like that for Northern Pass. Were the system truly designed to protect rather than to facilitate, local people affected by proposed corporate projects would sit at the decision-making table with real authority, not merely with permission to make token public comments regarding their local needs.
Corporations like Eversource take advantage of this clear imbalance in determining power. In the case of Northern Pass’s SEC process, Eversource condescended to communities all along the way. Anyone opposed was disregarded as biased—as anti-progress, anti-“clean energy,” anti-supposedly reduced energy costs and anti-jobs. Dismissed were the voices of the people on the ground who would feel the real effects of the project where they live—effects including long-term disruption of their human communities and the ecosystems therein.
True, people spoke out against Northern Pass despite their mere advisory capacity, and true, the SEC denied the project application. But the two are not correlated. The SEC did not deny Northern Pass because the people didn’t want it. Nor did the SEC deny it because it wasn’t good for New Hampshire’s people, economy, or environment. Had either been the case, the SEC would have denied Northern Pass long ago, for the people clearly and vocally haven’t wanted it for some 8 years.
The SEC denied the project because the application didn’t meet the required criteria. If the application had met all the criteria, then the SEC would have been legally obligated to approve it because the SEC, like all regulatory agencies, is in place to facilitate the operating of corporate projects. Period.
So, what happens when regulatory bodies like the SEC do in fact stall facilitation of a corporate permit? They are often intimidated by corporate developers who turn to bullying tactics, including using the courts in an attempt to overturn permit denials.  And history and experience show that these bullying tactics will result in the court ruling in favor of the corporation, thereby legislating from the bench on behalf of Eversource.
By embarking on this path, Eversource has demonstrated its willingness to continue ignoring the wishes of the people, and to dig into its pockets to override the SEC, an agency created by the legislature. Clearly, at every juncture, Eversource has shown it doesn’t care about the voices of New Hampshire community members.
What can people do in response? Firstly, we can recognize that we have 1) the inherent and inalienable right to protect our pursuit of life and protect our properties and 2) the moral responsibility to protect both local ecosystems and economies. Secondly, we can exercise this right and responsibility by way of adopting rights-based ordinances (RBOs). Almost a dozen NH communities have done just this to address proposed corporate harm.
According to NH Bill of Rights Article 10, these RBOs reform our government, rewriting our social contract with the corporate-state by protecting our human communities and ecosystems when our government is not doing so as NH Bill of Rights Article 3 says it must.  And by elevating rights of people and ecosystems above the ‘rights’ of corporations, these RBOs signal that business and corporations are welcome in New Hampshire communities, but only if they are innovative enough to recognize the need for this paradigm shift.
Residents up and down New Hampshire understand the need for local governing authority by way of RBOs, and they’ve given rise to a people’s movement calling for a state constitutional amendment to more clearly recognize the people’s right to self-govern for the protection of our human and natural communities’ health, safety, and welfare. The resulting NH Community Rights Amendment earned 1/3 of the New Hampshire House’s support in 2018 and will be back again. Visit www.nhcommunityrights.org or email info@nhcommunityrights.org to learn more.
Michelle Sanborn, serving president of NH Community Rights Network (NHCRN)

​www.eagletimes.com/opinion/readers-forum/article_7ee57d3c-8892-11e8-ba39-4feba76bafac.html

To the Editor,

A year ago, I was a NH parent worried about how to address our statewide problem with PFCs—persistent synthetic chemicals that don’t leave the environment or our bodies and that are especially consequential for those in utero, like the child I am carrying.

A year ago, I would have lauded Governor Sununu for signing into law a pathway for lowering PFC standards to reduce NH water contamination. But I’ve evolved from concerned parent to community rights activist. Today I see the law as a potentially dangerous lateral move toward complacency.

Before I continue, the mothers of Testing for Pease and Greenland SafeWater Action — and NH Representative and now NH Congressional candidate Mindi Messmer — deserve copious praise for making NH’s PFC issue so public and officially recognized. My criticism is not for these tireless advocates, but for our institutionalized minds.

We’re conditioned to celebrate lowered levels of toxic chemicals even when we know that no amount is good for us. To be fair, I’ve heard NHDES scientists genuinely concerned about PFCs state the impracticality of setting a zero standard because of the ubiquitous nature of PFCs. I respectfully can’t accept this.

The CDC just reported that NH has the nation’s highest rate of pediatric cancer. Our children are being poisoned and dying. We must go beyond standards and reductions to elevate people’s and ecosystems’ rights by wholly preventing future contamination by disallowing it.

Problematically, NH and its permitting agencies abide by a regulatory system standardizing “safe” chemical levels, thereby legalizing the claimed “right” of corporations to harm us, favoring corporate profit and toxic consumer choice over health of people and planet.

I believe we rely on this system because we’re not awoken with outrage that we have such little democratic pathway to directly protect ourselves in a state functioning under Dillon’s Rule, meaning that NH is the parent and its municipalities are the children who must obey even if the parent allows harm to come to them.

Enter community rights, a people’s movement of rights-based ordinances. RBOs are local laws NH residents adopt to protect themselves and their ecosystems from corporate harm while not limiting already protected state and federal rights of individuals. Since 2006, RBOs have been adopted in NH towns by individual residents collectively exercising their right to vote yes or no in a town vote on the RBO.

Residents adopting and enforcing RBOs reference a number of NH Bill of Rights Articles, namely Article 1 — all government of right originates from the people, is founded in their consent, and instituted for the general good; and Article 10 — people have the right and duty to reform governments when those governments manifestly endanger public liberty.

This year, a people’s movement of supporters brought forth the NH Community Rights Amendment to recognize and secure the right of NH residents to adopt RBOs, so long as they always expand, not limit, established rights of NH residents. As a constitutional amendment, it needs 2/3 the NH people’s vote, but we can’t cast this vote unless our legislators allow us to by giving the amendment at least 3/5 support in both House and Senate. This year it earned 1/3 House support and will be back. You can learn more from the NH Community Rights Network, a statewide, grassroots non-profit that informs citizens and legislators about their inalienable right to local self-government.

In the meantime, NH towns continue adopting and organizing RBOs, including my town where I co-founded Alliance for Newmarket Citizen & Ecosystem Rights. We’re so new we’ve yet to make a website or Facebook page, but we invite you to these upcoming public events.

Monday July 30, from 7 to 9 p.m., ANCER will host an all-ages fundraiser at Newmarket’s Stone Church, with a brief informational presentation between two sets by local blue-grass duo Green Heron. $5 suggested door donation.

Friday, Aug. 17 from 6 to 9 p.m. and Saturday, Aug. 18 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., ANCER will host Daniel Pennock Democracy School at The Loft in the Newmarket Mills. Given by the nonprofit, public interest Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, Democracy School explores how corporations have hijacked democracy and how NH residents can push back against legalized unsustainable activities that violate the rights of residents, our communities, and nature. Registration is due Aug. 10 on a sliding scale: $30-$50 (scholarships available). Please email monica.christofili@gmail.com for more information.

Monica Christofili
ANCER co-founder
Newmarket, NH

​www.laconiadailysun.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/our-creator-never-granted-unalienable-rights-to-corporations/article_798e2c5c-83a7-11e8-9ce8-23830d5a2d17.html

To The Daily Sun,

Inalienable rights are the rights that all people are born with through the understanding God or our Creator endowed us with. This right and taking this knowledge explains and defines the word of personhood and the meaning of person and personification confirmed in the truth that all of humankind were created equal under the law of right, human rights.

It should be said of course, We the People are all persons, but then to apply that concept that a corporation has personhood, personhood is applied to the plural of persons individual in the corporation. Corporation on the other hand is not a God given right but is man-made and it is unseemly to give the power of individual to a plural separate from the whole of individual citizens. The “Bill of Rights” was written for the protection of the rights of a sovereign individual or state, not a special class of men unified against the whole affording special privilege. Quoting “a house divided against itself will fall,” not maybe.

Personhood of the corporation takes away the sovereignty of the citizen’s public good who are termed as the body, not incorporated though “through the consent of the governed,” citizens of the incorporated, “THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.” The Bill of Rights was written to secure and define and in addition, to strengthen these rights to be self-evident that “All men are created equal.” This is a very founding building block of a “democracy with a republican form of government.”

Putting all this aside, now ponder what is an authoritarian structure of rule. This comes by the contractual agreement not through the usurpation of inalienable rights pretext to all human rights and rights amended to the Constitution.

The Supreme Court decision of 1886, State of California vs. Southern Pacific Railroad created a ruling to a civil law suit in the structuring of language to argue a suite of back taxes on fences that the State of California was seeking to recover from the Southern Union Pacific Corporation. In this case, Article 14 from the U.S. Bill of Rights was used to grant the corporation personhood rights. There was dissent amongst the justices of the 9th district court taking Article 14 that was written to amend Article 13, the rights of freed slaves to uphold the protection of property rights of a disenfranchised people but it was Justice Waite presiding on the district court who stated, “we all agree in this court that corporations are guaranteed the property right written in the 14th Amendment” and was never opened to discussion or debate.

Ever since that time corporate law has empowered itself with private property rights that followed many other corporate privileges like state pre-emption and Dillon’s Rule. Corporations now have equal standing with the power of the state. We the People stand to lose in civil suits in the judicial court to protect ourselves from corporate projects that harm and undermine our rights as a collective body politic of our municipalities in which we live.

Since 2006, starting with Barnstead’s first-in-the-nation Water Rights & Self-Government local law, a growing number of New Hampshire communities have pushed back with rights-based ordinances (RBOs) affirming their inalienable right to self-govern and calling for state constitutional change recognizing local authority to afford greater protections for people and planet where higher government is not doing so. Almost a dozen communities have adopted RBOs, elevating the rights of people and natural environments above corporate claimed “rights” to harm them and use them as resource colonies for profit.

Corporate lobbyists are still seeking to press their corporate privilege against the people for their own profit, backed by a contingent of representatives and senators of an authoritarian ideal of state control over our municipalities. They exert this control by passing bills that infringe upon our sovereign rights as peoples of community, whittling away to create the path for corporate rights over real people — otherwise called the corporate-state.

We the people can’t remain stolid with a laissez-faire attitude. People are needed and to be heard in a civil exchange of ideas that are not innovative but are based on the original principal foundations of our governing body from the American Revolution In New Hampshire we say, “live free or die.” This is not brutish reasoning, it is transcendental.

To understand more about these issues and how to legalize a sustainable vision for your community contact the NHCRN at info@nhcommunityrights.org and visitwww.nhcommunityrights.org. NHCRN is non-profit-volunteer organization educating communities and electeds in how to protect our right to self-determination, empowering them with authority to legalize the vision they have, free from private corporate controls and government overreach.

Douglas Darrell
NHCRN Board Member
Center Barnstead

​
​The NH Community Rights Network is glad to support ANCER's gathering to educate Great Bay towns regarding the resident-proposed Newmarket Freedom From Chemical Trespass RBO. Join us to learn how NH residents are using local democracy to manifest the visions they have for economic, social, and environmental justice.

WHEN
Tuesday June 26th
6:00pm to 8:00pm (extended hours courtesy of library)
WHERE
Newmarket Public Library
1 Elm Street, Newmarket, NH 03857

FREE
Donations gladly accepted to support ANCER's outreach costs.
Contact gstraquair@yahoo.com or send cash or check to ANCER member Glen Traquair, 156A Exeter Road, Newmarket NH, 03857.

RBO Effort for the Great Bay
ANCER's purpose is to educate and organize towns in the area of the Great Bay Estuary regarding their rights in the face of laws that allow unsustainable projects to go forward in our communities. Currently, Durham, Newington, and Newmarket residents are facing effects of Eversource's Seacoast Reliability Project dredging and/or drilling an energy corridor through the Great Bay Estuary's Little Bay, with the potential to stir up 100 year old toxins embedded in the silt. In response, Newmarket residents are organizing around their right to democratically adopt a Newmarket Freedom from Chemical Trespass Rights-Based Ordinance based on their inalienable right and the right of nature to protect their health, safety, and well-being. ANCER hopes that fellow Great Bay area residents--once empowered to raise their voices to declare what kind of social and environmental justice they stand behind--will choose to adopt community rights-based ordinances to elevate their and their ecosystems' rights above the claimed 'rights' of corporations.

What will you learn?

• Who ANCER is and why they joined together
• Why Great Bay towns must proactively protect their water
• What an RBO is and how it would do this
• What you can do to help at both the local and state level

Presenters:
ANCER's co-founders
Michelle Sanborn, NHCRN President & CELDF NH Organizer

Join Us!
FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/2088445108101217/
Hosted by: ANCER
Contact: monica@nhcommunityrights.org
Visit NHCRN's website & follow us on Facebook!​

​Last month, members of Alliance for Newmarket Citizen & Ecosystem Rights (ANCER) made public comment to Newmarket's Town Council on the resident-proposed community 
​rights-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 is also hosting a Tuesday, June 26th, 6-8pm (NOTE: library is making this space available after hours) 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.

Round Table Discussions for
Town Moderators

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, the Trust But Verify bill, which would have provided an opportunity for moderators to assure both themselves and voters of the accuracy of their town's electronic ballot counts. HB1582 proposed to clarify 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, Art. 32 of NH's Constitution and in state law.

The NH Secretary of State opposed this measure saying it would lead to a lack of confidence in the voting systems used in the Granite State. 

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

The Secretary of State is now requesting input on our elections. He has set up a number of Round Table discussions for Town Moderators. 

One of the questions proposed for discussion is: 
"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?"

Conctact your Town Moderators, educate them on why a verification hand count is needed, and ask them to speak out for it at their Round Table. Educate your town Moderator with the TRUST BUT VERIFY FAQ.

ROUND TABLES WILL BE HELD ON

• Wed June 20 in Gorham Town Hall at 10 a.m.
• Wed. June 20 at 2:30 p.m. in Plymouth Town Hall
• Thurs June 21 at 2 pm in Keene, Blastos Community Room, Police Dept.
• Thurs June 21 at 7 p.m. NH Archives in Concord
• Friday June 22 at 10 a.m in Brentwood, Parks and Rec building​​

​​​
FROM ONE MODERATOR TO ANOTHER...

I am the Town Moderator of Derry.  I’m writing to give you some background on a question posed by the Secretary of State in an email to Moderators dated June 1.  The Secretary asked for our viewpoint on requiring hand counts of certain races on the ballot after the polls close on election night.  I believe he is referring to HB 1582.  This bill allowed but did NOT require moderators to verify the machine count after an election.  If the moderator decided to do so, the bill outlined a process for doing so.  Please read the full bill for further background.

I am very concerned that the Accu-vote program we use, in fact, any software can be hacked by a determined and patient hacker.  I am not alone in this conclusion.  Over 100 cybersecurity and computer programming experts have testified to the vulnerability of these ballot counting devices to malfunction or tampering  even when the voting machine is physically disconnected from the internet.  Earlier this year, the U.S. Congress allocated millions of dollars to be distributed among the states to upgrade to a paper ballot system AND to develop a means of auditing the elections results.  

But HB 1582 was not designed to require a post-election audit.  It’s primary purpose was to restore to moderators the authority which I believe is plainly stated in statute to verify the accuracy of the count.  Doing selected hand counts has been used by several moderators over the years when they wanted a check on the machine results.  Until September 2016, the Election Procedures Manual (EPM) stated: “Moderators may use their discretion as to whether or not they will conduct such a (verification) count on election night.” (pg 40 2014-2015 EPM).  This sentence was removed without any explanation in the 2016-17 EPM distributed in October, 2016.

Whether you trust the machine count or not, I hope you will support the right of town moderators, at their discretion, to verify the machine count before certifying the final results.  In the final analysis, this is a local control issue.  Over the past several years, the SoS has been chipping away at the authority moderators to conduct elections in their own district.  This is just one more chip.   If for any reason you were not sure of a vote results, wouldn’t you like the authority to publicly recount the votes without having to get permission from the SoS?

Please join me in asking the Secretary to restore the instructions allowing moderators, at their own discretion, to assure both themselves and voters of the accuracy of their town's electronic ballot counts.

By the way, in September, 2016, I conducted a verification count similar to the one described in HB 1582.  I brought in 4 fresh teams of counters and completed the task in less than one hour, using ballots from one of the 6 machines we use in Derry.  Of course, I was roundly reprimanded by the Secretary for doing so.

Mary Till, former NH State Representative & current Moderator for Derry, NH

It's time to stand up for voting audits, by Gerhard Bedding

www.fosters.com/news/20180621/to-editor-elections-and-community-rights

Posted Jun 21, 2018 at 8:36 AMUpdated Jun 21, 2018 at 8:36 AM
  To the Editor:
How many people are paying attention to the 2018 elections? This November could be a turning point for our state, nation, and planet, so voters better get involved!
We need to elect new State Representatives who work for our communities and our rights! Over 100 Legislators voted this spring for CACR 19, the Community Rights Amendment, to give our towns the right to pass ordinances that protect our citizens and environment from unwanted, dangerous, and destructive development. Unfortunately many more opposed CACR 19 in order to protect greed-driven special interests that hurt our towns.
There will be Congressional elections as well as an election for governor, and you know that corporate PACs (political action committees) will bribe our candidates with legal (but immoral) campaign contributions. If they take PAC bribes, then we should vote them out. We have the best politicians money can buy, but We the People can change that!
All politics are local, so we need to get organized town by town and in our cities. You may contact the NH Community Rights Network (nhcommunityrights.org) to get assistance with local efforts that protect the health, safety, and welfare of people and nature.
Please do your civic duty and support candidates who put our towns and cities and Nation ahead of greedy special interests; do it for our Country, do if for our children, do it for Mother Nature and planet Earth!
Peter A. White, NH Community Rights Network Board Member, Nottingham

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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
Join, Like, & Share NHCRN on Facebook!

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 info@nhcommunityrights.org 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 monica@nhcommunityrights.org 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.

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www.sentinelsource.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/it-s-time-to-stand-up-for-voting-audits-by/article_10955e94-a9bc-5138-b6db-22dd4407db4a.html

It’s time for the city of Keene and The Keene Sentinel to show vision and leadership on the issue of voting system accountability.
I am urging them to make clear to the secretary of state that the city of Keene stands ready to do random audits (verification counts) of computer vote totals.
A citizen petition of 2015, a City Council meeting (September 2015) and several Sentinel editorials show clear public support for auditing of computer vote totals on election night to enhance election integrity.
This is not a new idea: Such audits were recommended by the N.H. Electronic Ballot Counting Device Advisory Committee on Nov. 30, 2009. Laws in 30 states and the District of Columbia — covering about 85 percent of the U.S. population — mandate some form of auditing. New Hampshire is not one of them.
But individual moderators could audit if they chose to do so — Danville and Brookline have done it for many years. In fact, New Hampshire’s Election Procedures Manual stated, year after year: “Moderators may use their discretion as to whether or not they will conduct such a (verification) count on election night.”
This sentence was removed, without any explanation, in the 2016-17 edition, published October 2016, one month after Mary Till, Derry’s moderator, did a random audit of one machine. The secretary of state reprimanded this highly professional moderator for doing so. High-handed? I think so.
Not only is it time to reestablish individual moderators’ rights to do verification counts, it’s time for the city of Keene to question what it was told by the secretary of state: that it was not “statutorily allowed” to do such audits.
In a meeting with me on Dec. 1, 2015, Keene’s city clerk, Patricia Little, stated that, if instructed to audit, she had a clear idea of how she would organize it so that it would not be an additional burden on a team that had worked a long, hard day. Ms. Little also said that, if asked, she would speak in favor of random verification counts.
I expect she will have a chance to do so at a meeting of moderators called by the secretary of state on June 21, at 2 p.m., at the Blastos Room at the Keene police station. I believe this meeting should also be open to the public. I plan to attend and encourage other interested citizens to do the same.
GERHARD BEDDING
Keene, NH

​www.fosters.com/news/20180507/rights-based-ordinance-for-great-bay​
By Monica Christofili

If you want something done, do it with your community. Forty-four years ago, this sentiment rallied Durham residents who protected the Great Bay estuary system from oil refinery development. It’s also one of the sentiments that brought together Alliance for Newmarket Citizen & Ecosystem Rights. ANCER is an ad hoc community group founded in 2017 to empower Newmarket’s residents to protect their water and the Great Bay estuary from future chemical trespass.
But the estuary has already been contaminated by toxic Naval firefighting foam from Portsmouth’s former Pease Air Force Base and by chemicals traveling down tributaries affected by Greenland’s Coakley Landfill. So why try preventing what’s already happened? Because new threats loom over the estuary and Newmarket’s Lamprey River watershed.
Firstly, word is that Pinard Waste Management hopes to transition its Raymond recycling transfer station — approved on the Lamprey near a flood zone — into a solid waste transfer station. Secondly, Liberty Utility has planned its Granite Bridge Pipeline project to twice cross the Lamprey in Raymond. Finally, Eversource’s Seacoast Reliability Project will drill through Little Bay to create a power passage with towering transmission poles alongside the estuary.
Eversource’s project troubles ANCER members and Durham and Newington residents for a number of reasons. For one, its drilling would cause irreparable harm to the estuary’s fragile, recovering oyster bed ecosystem by stirring up 100s of years of toxic industry run-off that has settled and been contained in the bay’s sediment. The documentary Great Bay: Estuary in Peril details this damage Eversource’s “reliability” project would cause.
Nonetheless, this February, the NH Dept. of Environmental Services recommended Eversource’s project to the Site Evaluation Committee in a “lesser evil” buried version to be worked on with “safer” drills than originally proposed — yet still chemically trespassing into the estuary.
NHDES scientists may mean well, but they work in a system designed as a one-stop shop for corporate project applications; in other words, state permitting agencies find ways to at best limit rather than block harm so that applications move forward — they permit harmful projects.
In response, and with assistance from Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), ANCER is organizing a community citizens’ effort to bring forth a rights-based ordinance (RBO) to protect Newmarket’s residents, watershed, and waterways by banning future chemical trespass as a matter of inherent and inalienable rights of people and ecosystems to exist without being poisoned, thereby protecting the Great Bay and surrounding water.
Newmarket would not be the first New Hampshire town to adopt an RBO — some 11 New Hampshire towns adopted RBOs after recognizing that the current structure of law and government is set up to protect neither them nor the environment and that the only remedy left is to protect themselves locally. Consequently, RBOs are based on the collective power of community members exercising their individual right to democratically manifest the social and environmental health and viability they envision for their human residents and surrounding ecosystems.
ANCER encourages other towns on and near the estuary and its tributaries to adopt RBOs of their own, creating a powerful ring of democratic, common sense, and constitutional community ordinances that corporations will have to face if their projects threaten Seacoast water and the human and natural communities depending on it.
In fact, ANCER is part of a statewide local democracy movement working to amend New Hampshire’s Bill of Rights to recognize the right of local self-government in order to empower New Hampshire communities to make local governing decisions that elevate the rights of people and ecosystems above the right that corporations have to harm them.
This 2018, NH Community Rights Network (NHCRN) worked with bi-partisan legislative support to propose such a state constitutional amendment. One third of the N.H. House supported the amendment and the right of NH residents to protect people and ecosystems in the face of corporate harm. To learn more, visit www.nhcommunityrights.org, or email info@nhcommunityrights.org.
— Monica Christofili, of Newmarket, is ANCER co-founder

​indepthnh.org/2018/03/05/opinion-nh-towns-act-to-protect-community-rights/To the Editor: Towns Act To Protect Community Rights
There is a community rights movement in New Hampshire and across the Nation for cities and towns to act to protect their health, safety, and welfare through local ordinances.  This is the right thing for EVERY town to do!
Nottingham passed a Rights Based Ordinance (RBO) in 2008 to ban commercial water extraction when USA Springs wanted to pump us dry – we stopped them and we protected our water supplies.  Barnstead and Barrington did the same thing, and Atkinson also passed a RBO to protect their water supplies.
On March 17, Nottingham residents at Town Meeting will vote on a ban against toxic waste dumping (Article 19).  An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure!
Sugar Hill, Easton, and Plymouth have passed RBO’s prohibiting high voltage transmission lines and that helped to oppose the Northern Pass project.
Grafton, Danbury, Hebron, and Alexandria passed RBO’s to stop commercial wind turbines from sprouting all over their towns.  Sustainable renewable energy must be of, by, and for the people.
Durham is now organizing to stop Great Bay from dredging by Eversource that will cause severe environmental damage, and Newmarket is in the midst of an RBO effort to prevent chemical trespass in the Great Bay and the surrounding watershed.  Act now before they dig it up and poison the water, afterwards will be too late.
Towns are becoming mobilized to stop Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) pipelines and storage facilities.  The Granite Bridge pipeline will endanger every community on its route with highly explosive LNG, especially the Epping area where they want to build a storage tank 140 feet tall.  One spark, one human error, one malfunction, and BOOM the whole region will be affected by that disaster, including Exeter!  Then it will be too late to do anything, as it is for communities being destroyed by gas fracking.
The Legislature is now considering CACR 19 for an Amendment to the NH Constitution’s Bill of Rights that will make it clear that towns and cities have the right to self-protection and control of their destiny.  Please get involved in your town and also call your Representatives to vote against the efforts to kill this crucial piece of Legislation.  We the People must lead to get our leaders to follow!
Sincerely, Peter A. White, Treasurer, NH Community Rights Network

​www.sentinelsource.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/democracy-means-we-decide-for-ourselves-by-deborah-sumner/article_8e2323a9-4821-5358-98b6-5df748030b55.html
​
The legislative subcommittee studying CACR 19 supported (3-2) bringing this constitutional amendment to the people for a vote, but the House Municipal and County Government Committee will recommend (11-8) the House not allow us that opportunity.
I better understand how difficult our legislators’ jobs are and how little time they have to really understand complex issues. Did committee members favor the authoritarian model of government, under the influence of money and lobbyists, or moving toward a more mature (and yes, messy) democratic decision-making process that includes ordinary citizens?
The Legislature believes it is smarter than the people, Rep. Steven Rand, D-Plymouth, said, so have to make that decision for us. He disagreed. “I think the people are smart.”

Rep. Vincent Migliore, R-Bridgewater, chose not to “succumb to fear and doubt” and extensively researched to understand the proposed amendment before signing on in support. He had confidence citizens can do the same.
However, Chair James Belanger, Vice Chairman Frank Sterling and Rep. Frank McCarthy evidently see their job as stopping democratic decision-making at the local level because they don’t trust it: Anarchy, “damage beyond realization,” “devastate,” “abomination,” “234 separate city states.”

Really?

What would this amendment do? It codifies the constitutional right we already have to protect the health, safety and welfare of our communities against corporate harms and their court-bestowed personhood “rights.” Under the current interpretation of courts, those rights trump the civil and political rights of real people trying to protect our communities. That is not what my 12 Revolutionary War ancestors fought for and it is not what our elected officials take an oath to protect.
A sincere thank you to Rep. Bruce Tatro from Swanzey and Rep. David Meader from Keene, who listened to their constituents as well as the two opposing views.

I hope more citizens will do their own research. Why were the gun lobby and Americans for Prosperity (funded by the Koch brothers) opposed? Why did 600 New Hampshire citizens sign a petition supporting it and so many of us travel to Concord more than once to watch “our” government at work?
Contact www.nhcommunityrights.org to begin educating yourselves and become part of the conversation at the local level.
DEBORAH SUMNER
Jaffrey