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TechnoratiSpokane Considers Community Bill of Rights
Thousands of people voted to protect nine basic rights, ranging from the right of the environment to exist and flourish to the rights of residents to have a locally based economy and to determine the future of their neighborhoods.
Of all the candidates, bills, and proposals on ballots around the country yesterday, one of the most exciting is a proposition that didn't pass.
In Spokane, Washington, despite intense opposition from business interests, a coalition of residents succeeded in bringing an innovative "Community Bill of Rights" to the ballot. Proposition 4 would have amended the city's Home Rule Charter (akin to a local constitution) to recognize nine basic rights, ranging from the right of the environment to exist and flourish to the rights of residents to have a locally based economy and to determine the future of their neighborhoods.
A coalition of the city's residents drafted the amendments after finding that they didn't have the legal authority to make decisions about their own neighborhoods; the amendments were debated and fine-tuned in town hall meetings.
Although the proposition failed to pass, it garnered approximately 25 percent of the vote--despite the fact that opponents of the proposal (developers, the local Chamber of Commerce, and the Spokane Homebuilders) outspent supporters by more than four to one. In particular, they targeted the Sixth Amendment, which would have given residents the ability, for the very first time, to make legally binding, enforceable decisions about what development would be appropriate for their own neighborhood. If a developer sought to build a big-box store, for example, it would need to conform to the neighborhood's plans.
Nor is development the only issue in which resident would have gained a voice. The drafters and supporters of Proposition 4 sought to build a "healthy, sustainable, and democratic Spokane" by expanding and creating rights for neighborhoods, residents, workers, and the natural environment.
Legal Rights for Communities
Patty Norton, a longtime neighborhood advocate who lives in the Peaceful Valley neighborhood of Spokane, and her neighbors spent years fighting a proposed condominium development that would loom 200 feet high, casting a literal shadow over Peaceful Valley's historic homes.
Proposition 4 would ensure that "decisions about our neighborhoods are made by the people living there, not big developers," Patty said.
For years, she and her neighbors have participated in protests, spoke at City Council hearings, attended meetings, and educated their neighbors. But, as with other neighborhoods in Spokane who've come together to fight off Wal-Mart stores and other unwanted developments, the residents of Peaceful Valley found that they didn't seem to have the legal authority to make a decision about something that would have a significant impact on their neighborhood.
Then, in 2007, Patty and several of her neighbors went to a Democracy School in Spokane. Democracy Schools--run by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund--are weekend workshops in which communities examine why the structure of law often gives corporations more power to make decisions than the communities in which they seek to do business. Participants look at why our system of government seems to hamper our efforts to protect the places where we live, rather than to help us protect them.
Because the U.S. Constitution legalized slavery, abolitionists had to change existing law in order to end it. Democracy School students study this and other examples of people's movements fighting unjust laws, recognizing that sometimes legal changes are the only way to protect their communities and the environment.
Patty and other Spokane graduates of Democracy School began talking with one another about how they might address their concerns about the future of their neighborhoods, the health of the local economy, the heavily polluted Spokane River, and a host of other issues.
A Community Bill of Rights
In the spring of 2008, grassroots organizations, labor unions, neighborhood councils, and other groups across the city began meeting together as part of a coalition they called Envision Spokane. Over the spring and summer, they drafted a series of ideas for addressing the needs of residents, workers, neighborhoods, and the environment. These ideas formed a draft "Community Bill of Rights" for the city.
During the winter, Envision Spokane held a series of 12 Town Halls across the city to engage the community in a conversation about the proposed Bill of Rights.
Taking the community's feedback, the board of Envision Spokane revised the Bill of Rights and, in March of 2009, began to collect signatures. Despite opposition from the Spokane City Council and a concerted effort by business interests to block the Bill of Rights from reaching the ballot, Envision Spokane collected over 5,000 signatures from voters, successfully qualifying the Community Bill of Rights for the November ballot.
The Community Bill of Rights proposed nine amendments, written to address some very real needs in Spokane, to the city's Home Rule Charter. By recognizing broad rights instead of proposing specific legislation, the amendments were written to change the fundamental structure of Spokane's legal system so that it would prioritize the protection of the local environment, economy, neighborhoods and residents.
- First. Residents have the right to a locally-based economy. Recognizes the rights of residents to protect their local economy by denying permits to big-box and chain stores.
- Second. Residents have the right to affordable preventive health care. Creates a fee-for-service program for the thousands of Spokane residents who lack health insurance and currently rely on the emergency room for health care.
- Third. Residents have the right to affordable housing. In response to the loss of thousands of units of affordable housing in Spokane over the past few years, the city would have been obliged, through incentives or other measures, to ensure that an adequate supply of affordable housing is available for those most in need.
- Fourth. Residents have the right to affordable and renewable energy. Requires the city and local utilities to make renewable energy accessible to residents.
- Fifth. The natural environment has the right to exist and flourish. Under current law, nature has no legal standing--to prove environmental damage, a person has to prove that he or she has been harmed. The Fifth Amendment would have protected the Spokane River, one of the most polluted in the nation following years of mining and toxic dumping, would have been protected under the Bill of Rights.
- Sixth. Residents have the right to determine the future of their neighborhoods. Patty Norton and her neighbors--and other residents of Spokane--would have been able to enforce their decisions about what's best for them. (The condominium complex hasn't been built yet, but it is approved. The Sixth Amendment would have done what years of protesting haven't been able to: allow the residents to say, "No.")
- Seventh. Workers have the right to be paid the prevailing wage and to work as apprentices on certain construction projects. As skilled labor leaves Spokane, the Bill of Rights would have protected workers' right to competitive wages and created apprenticeship opportunities so that young people could learn a trade and stay in the city.
- Eighth. Workers have the right to employer neutrality when unionizing, and the right to constitutional protections within the workplace. Workers would have been free from interference by employers when seeking to form a labor union, as well as from having to attend "captive audience" meetings.
- Ninth. Residents, workers, neighborhoods, neighborhood councils, and the city of Spokane shall have the right to enforce the Community Bill of Rights. For the first time, residents would have the legal authority to enforce their own decisions.
While Spokane is the largest city to attempt these legal changes, and the first whose adoption would have meant a change to a city constitution, other communities have already succeeded in securing similar rights. Towns in Maine, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Virginia have passed ordinances recognizing the rights of nature, prohibiting corporate mining and water extraction, and stripping corporations of constitutional protections and the right to contribute to political campaigns.
The board of directors of Envision Spokane recognizes that fundamental change doesn't come easily or quickly, and will be meeting in the next few weeks to discuss how to continue the work that they've started. Other communities are now reaching out to learn from Spokane about how they might do something similar.
Mari Margil wrote this article for YES! Magazine,
a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with
practical actions. Mari, the first associate director of the Community
Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), teaches Democracy Schools
across the country. She also advised Ecuador's Constituent Assembly in its decision
to recognize the "rights of nature" in the nation's new constitution.
(This article originally appeared in YES! Magazine on Nov. 4th.)
34 Comments so far
Show AllIf you're looking for books on the subject, try:
Bridge at the Edge of the world, by Gus Speth
Blessed Unrest, by Paul Hawken
every book by Thom Hartmann, Noam Chomsky, David Korten, Greg Palast, John Perkins.
CORP IS BORG.
CORP IS ANTI-HUMAN, and if you're into allegory/cultural-anthropology, CORPORATIONS are the Anti-Christ...fits most of the descriptions...
A complete overhaul of the corporate business form is an absolute requirement for survival.
In a truly democratic society this would not have been needed. But alas...money talks loud and reigns.
Some of the comments here mirror the tensions of the campaign. I voted for Envision Spokane. I am appalled at the level of opposition funded from outside the community. AND I think it was basically poor legislation and I am completely unconvinced that matters of this sort can be resolved with legislation.
For me a deeper question is how can the 25% of the people who voted for Envision Spokane reach out further with conversational leadership to the 75% who voted against it? What are the appreciative processes which engage the community in collectively envisioning a different future and acting on it, not with legislation and policies but with new actions, practices and principles?
How do we keep something like this from being locked within politics and instead released into the future.
By-in-large, governments do not create alternative futures. They manage as best they can within the constraints of current realities and rarely change or challenge those realities. It is not surprising that transformative change -- change which changes the basic shape of things -- is typically nurtured outside the corridors of existing power.
Envision Spokane became an adversarial process. It needs to reach beyond that if it is to be able to assist the community in charting new directions.
I am very sorry to see that this did not pass.
Spokane is a city close to my heart, as I grew up not far away. Over the past nearly 20 years since I left the US I have returned to visit friends there and have felt that until fairly recently, it was probably the most livable small city left there.
Over the past few years a number of corporations moved to Spokane--especially techie corps--for the lower tax base and all that jazz--and an explosion of condo construction took place. It's been a lethal combo. Many of the condos were caught in the economic crunch and did not sell--in fact when I was there in July one complex was even promising a new car to anyone who bought a condo unit--and have in fact become hotbeds of low roller shitkicker violence. (A friend had to move out abruptly a couple of months ago after the complex where she was renting was sold and gangs moved in to rob and rowdy.)
Too bad--I had great hopes that the people of Spokane would be able to reverse the recent negatice trend.
Great work, citizens of Spokane!
Progress can begin with one person. Patty Norton, her neighbors and 25% at least, of Spokane, are investing in their neighborhoods through their efforts.
I hope they try again with their initiative and more people vote yes!
It's inspiring for other towns to see what can be possible.
Even though the amendments did not pass this time, YES magazine and Common Dreams should also be commended for making the citizens of Spokane's good work known.
THANK YOU, Democracy School and citizens of Spokane!
This is what the future looks like.
And thank you for recognizing that it is sometimes very worthwhile to fight a battle that you know you will probably lose the first time.
By the way, a friend of mine in Berkeley spent a considerable amount of time developing an "Urban Bill of Rights" that is an excellent general model that other communities may want to follow, in addition to your wonderful proposal. I will ask her to post this document, perhaps as an article in its own right.
By the way, the reason that there is such interest in this concept among local activists in Berkeley is that, contrary to our city's national reputation as an enlightened democracy, the real truth is that our city government, led by Mayor Tom Bates (Democrat) and the members of the City Council (almost all Democrats) is as corrupt and secretive as you can possibly imagine. (Think Tammany Hall in NY, or Chicago and the Daley machine and you would not be far off the mark.)
This outright (and documented) corruption has mostly been in the service of (guess who?) large developers who have been allowed to devastate entire neighborhoods and seriuosly degrade the quality of life there. The largest and most irresponsible developer by far--and the biggest beneficiary of the city's unethical largesse is (sorry if I damage any more idealistic myths) the University of California at Berkeley. They have occupied and destroyed neighborhoods all around the campus, with little regard for the needs or preferences of the residents living there. When we try to share this story with people from other cities and states (or countries) we are often met with scepticism--but it's all true.
Thank you, Spokane, for doing the right thing.
Let's all join the!
I mean to say:
Let's all join them!
Bravo Democracy School!
Nanoo
This is what is needed most everywhere. Just why is it that in most communities that the public residents are consulted last, for example new development? Even then, it seems like a token good deed and look how fair we're being.
The Corporate takeover of congress is leading to the Balkanization of America.
If at first we don't secede then ...
"A right and true system of human culture is capable of constantly restoring itself only because, in such a system, the principle of accountability is universally intact.
When the principle of accountability is universally discarded--as corrently is the case-- the would be system of order breaks down.
When any system breaks down, a new system must emerge--to replace it."
From the essay Two is not Peace, from the book and online book, "Not Two is Peace": www.da-peace.org
Have a read; a brilliant blueprint for change based on fundamentals.............
The principles of the Community Bill of Rights are good. And because that's so, it boggles the mind that 75 percent of the voters would vote against it.
Why wouldn't any citizen affirm their own autonomy and political powers?
Sometimes, you wonder if voting isn't rigged across the country. Are people so uneducated and witless? Perhaps people are influenced by negative ads. I can't think of a really good reason for its failing, though.
I know the bill's advocates are still trying to get it passed. People are cheering that it even got on the ballot. But why is it always so easy for horrible corporate special interest legislation to get passed, while public-interest legislation nearly always fails?
My guess is that the so-called liberal wing of the duopoly - the Democratic Party - often confuses these issues for its political base. It's another reason to build an alternative - a strong third party to help focus these kinds of campaigns.
-TIA
Corporations have rights, although no vote gave them any rights. After Congress packed the court, a supreme court justice simply declared to a law clerk that corporations have rights. These are the activist judges your great grandfather may have told you about.
So why can't communities have rights?
The west is perhaps like joe blitsphlkq in líl abner - the storm cloud brewing perpetually around the ears
MichaelC
As I remember, and Wickopedia confirms, it was spelled: Schmoo.
I agree, the Good folks of Spokane are on to something. And Thanks to Yes magazine
Grant
More urgent than anything else, it seems to me, is to curtail the ability of local officials to indebt their neighbors by allowing conglomerates to buy monopolies on basic services such as water and sewer utilities.
They do this by selling municipal bonds that then may be owned by groups such as Gold in Sacks.
I was astonished to find that a city councilor can authorize billions in contracts and bonds without so much as a hearing.
The people indebted only find out about it when their water and sewer bills rise un-payably, especially for those who have lost jobs.
What's worse, in earthquake territory, is that they then contract with conglomerate engineering and construction conglomerates to build concrete central-processing plants of the type that have failed and caused massive sickness in particular cities.
So, a city can be indebted to build something that puts their water at grave risk of operator error (think Homer Simpson), decreasing the quality and safety of their water and impoverishing them in a major way at the same time.
Nice, huh?
We in the West have special risk, but see Kristof on Colbert if you want an example of a fouled water back east (the Potomac, naturally).
It's the 11th hour for us on the west, but it's past that in spots in the east.
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
This is what we all need to pass in every county, town, city, and state in the nation. Hell, let's add it to the Bill of RIghts!!!!!!
Stop the corporatists!!! Love live the revolution!!
Unlimited growth is impossible.
Great idea. I live in Cincinnati, OH, if someone is interested in passing a similar measure in this city, I am ready to work on this.
Thanks,
What an uplifting article! This country is so taken over by the corporate thugs, and their boot-licking Republican lackeys, that we, the people, have very little power left. Yet if we organize, and persist, we can take our country back. "There are a lot more of us, than there are of them." Let the revolution begin!
Hurray for the smart 25% of the citizens of Spokane. Keep going back to the ballot until you get it passed.
It's a good start. How can we get this going nationally? Should we enlist MoveOn.org?
Oh, for crying out loud! Stop thinking that some outside organization, no matter how progressive it may be, can do the work for you! Get out and organize yourself! This bill of rights is about local communities getting control of their lives. Who knows better what the community wants than those who live there!!
George Soros is MoveOn.Org's principle patron. Do you think he would back localization? I doubt it, although if you google his recent lectures (last week)at the European Central University, you too might be surprised at how outspoken he is against the unregulated markets and greed (he gives away most of his gelt).
Yes, it is a good start. They need to insulate the following words from corporate lawyers:
1) affordable
2) prevailing
3) care
4) future
If not, the whole thing sweeps the country like a great populist reform, only to be castrated by corporate lawyers.
I like these Spokaners' progressive spirit.
But if enacted into municipal ordinance, and then contested in court, several of these "rights" would easily be found unconstitutional.
Not to say they should give up. They're just gonna need a lot more help, is all.
This is truly wonderful news. The people of Spokane have come up with a workable set of rules to be voted on. Unfortunately, only 25% of the population are smart enough to vote for their own good. We have too many shmues in America. [I don't remember the spelling of the word for the creatures from L'il Abner comics who got pleasure from being kicked - anybody remember?] The folks who put this together should be honored by us all. And we should all try for this in our own cities and towns.
This idea kicks ass, keep going till it passes!
We need to take this movement national...watch, conservatives will call us socialiats...haha. What a compliment!
Nice try! I say keep going until you get it.
they should first of all PUT IN THE TOP of the list of "RIGHTS"
ONE RIGHT:
to be FREE of Corporations.
in fact , simply disallow corporatISM . one community at a time...and that community deals with another like it and they create a new system .
simple. what are corporations going to do? FORCE people in the streets to BUY ? or WORK if people find a different means of living decently and get the fruits of their own labor MINUS the corporate smoochers ?
I think you are on to something there. How about only allowing charitable trusts and trading trusts (i.e. non-profit corporations)? I would direct you towards Chapter 14 of Bill Mollison's Permaculture: A Designer's Manual.
Bravo to this approach! It seems like the 'decision-makers' act mainly for the benefit of the highest bidders, so it's time to find another way to protect the interests of the people. And how might the fascists adopt this approach as their own? They will try, no doubt, but it is hard to argue with these community-minded amendments (other than the usual, "It's bad for business"). The opposite version could include: buy from Chamber of Commerce members only; health care, housing, and energy for the wealthiest only; the natural environment is a commons to be plundered for the benefit of the few; etc . . .
I commend the residents of Spokane for their efforts.
I thank YES! Magazine for the Creative Commons License. I will share this article.
Now if they could just do something about their nearby Hanford Nuclear waste dump.
You betcha! All of us Atomic Farmgirls who grew up in Eastern Washington--which Hanford turned into a big waste dump in 1944--at least the few of us who are still alive and living with our immune deficiency diseases--certainly agree....