Are the actions we commonly take to try to influence our governments largely futile? Our petitions, protests, testimonies before boards and commissions, letters and calls to politicians- what do they really amount to? Community rights proponent, Paul Cienfuegos, likens this work to the actions of pedals, stops, and keys that are attached to ... nothing.

Cienfuegos, who works full-time in a national movement to reign in corporate power at the local level, spoke this week at Sabathani Center in Minneapolis. His thesis is that local control can be regained through Community Rights. A growing number of communities across the nation are passing ordinances that ban activities that are harmful, although legal. Factory farms/CAFO’s, water withdrawal for bottling, planting GMO’s, fracking, mining, and other corporate endeavors have been pre-empted by local fiat.

Recognizing that state and federal government is largely in thrall to corporations, citizens in over 200 towns, cities and counties have abandoned traditional activism and have instead passed laws aimed at protecting themselves. Wells Township, in a conservative area of Pennsylvania, wanted to stop a 15,000 unit hog farm, so the township passed a law to ban factory farming. Their action was potentially illegal according to Pennsy State law and Dylan’s law, but the people of Wells Township prevailed instead on the constitution: the factory farm violated their constitutional rights. Within one year, 20 other communities passed laws against factory farms.

People in the states of Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine, New York, Colorado, New Mexico, California, Texas and Ohio have passed such legislation. Mendocino County is the first in CA to adopt an anti-fracking law. Colombia County in Oregon is soon to pass an ordinance banning fossil fuel exports to China. Cienfuegos suggests that localities can enact laws to nullify the effects of trade agreements such as the proposed TPP. 

These communities are conservative and liberal, rural and urban, small and large. What they are doing in common is standing up and stripping corporations of their so-called constitutional “rights” while ensuring the right of the people to govern themselves. 95% of these local ordinances have not been contested and none have been overturned.

Throughout time, it’s been ordinary people who have called out major crises and eventuated change. Examples abound. At the corner of a block I lived on in Germantown in Philadelphia PA sat a large bronze plaque acknowledging that in 1688, German Quakers submitted a treatise explaining that equal human rights were for everyone and slavery was wrong. It was the first written recognition of the crisis of slavery in the colonies and the beginning of the abolitionist movement. Suffrage, the civil rights movement, tearing down the walls of apartheid: all are examples of people-led movements. 

The majority of people, but too few politicians, see climate change as a crisis. Naomi Klein sees it as a justice fight- a fight for a new economy, indigenous rights, water and food sovereignty. Cienfuegos finds people across the globe who are fighting the climate crisis at the local level. Both Frankfurt and Munich in Germany plan a huge switch to renewable energy within a couple decades. He gave as examples places as far flung as Greenburg, KS; Austin, TX; Sacramento, CA, communities in Greece, Costa Rica, France, etc. as taking  climate change solutions into their own hands.

By 2030, it’s estimated that all energy could be from solar, wind and other renewable resources, but to accomplish this change would require an effort similar to the Apollo Moon program. According to Cienfuegos, the two main stumbling blocks are 1) politicians with other priorities, and 2) us, i.e. the people, waiting.

He recounted times in US history when everyone became an activist: during the depression, the civil rights era, the Vietnam War, and that’s what he anticipates will happen with the climate crisis in our faces. “What it will take is municipal civil disobedience. The object of our government is for the security and protection of the people. Who can reform government for the public good, but the people?....Local laws can take away the rights of corporations......People can pass an ordinance where corporations cannot be involved in local decision making.....Many Minnesota laws are illegitimate.” He spoke of Josephine County, Oregon that has passed an ordinance stating that acts of civil disobedience will be legal if corporations violate Josephine County laws. When asked what if the corporations counter with propaganda, Cienfuegos said that then we need to question their right to propaganda.

Next, he ticked off a list of 

ordinance ideas to locally combat

climate change, including: 

- requiring local banks to provide

 low interest loans for renewables

- exacting local gas taxes for public 

transit

- prohibiting corporations from 

donating to local politicians

- enforcing native rights

- legislating steep carbon taxes

- locally taxing the affluent to 

improve infrastructure

- prohibiting local media from 

showing ads for fossil fuels

Cienfuegos was an encyclopedia of ideas, information and good energy. Much more about his work can be found at PaulCienfuegos.com    

including information about his radio show, newsletters, articles, and info about the upcoming Economics of Happiness Conference to be held in March in his hometown of Portland OR