By Tench Phillips, Naro Cinema
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
— R. Buckminster Fuller
Many of us are now waking up to the cold hard truth that there’s no one coming to save us. Not a progressive leader like Bernie, not Hillary, not Obama and the Democratic Party, not enlightened capitalism, not an environmental group like Sierra Club, not the U.N. Climate Change Summit, and most probably not a supernatural intervention by a benevolent Creator. As much as we want otherwise, no one is coming to save us from ourselves.
Mankind has created our own karmic mess–global warming, deforestation, species extinction, overpopulation, corporate pollution, oceanic overfishing, war, government corruption–and we are to be accountable for it. If there’s any redemption for our species then it will be through our efforts to extricate ourselves from centuries of patriarchy, and to figure out a new way of sustaining life on mother earth. But the clock is ticking. In the limited time remaining we will have to set our sights on the most efficient and effective plan of action available.
First of all, we are realizing that the traditional methods of confronting power and protecting nature are not working: contacting our Congressperson, voting (for the lesser of two evils), lobbying the government to protect the environment. Turns out that these strategies have been an orchestrated distraction and have only given us a semblance of democracy.
Let’s look at the record. Citizen-engaged environmental activism has grown exponentially over the last fifty years, and yet greenhouse gas emissions keep rising, the world’s ecosystems are breaking down, and corporate power continues to consolidate. Although we’ve trusted in the EPA, the best that we can expect from the regulators has been a slowing down of the rate of destruction. And on many issues, government agencies mainly regulate the environmentalists, not the corporate polluters.
In the meantime, our rural communities are being fracked, sludged by toxic animal wastes, factory farmed, dumped on with coal fly ash, sprayed with toxic herbicides and insecticides, blown up for mountain top coal removal, contaminated by chemicals, and crisscrossed with leaking fossil fuel pipelines. Concerned citizens and elected officials don’t want all these poisons dumped in their own backyards but their legal fights are too often futile. They are considered ‘sacrifice zones’ by industry.
And the reason for this failure of democracy? State laws like the Dillon Rule have been structured to ensure that the sovereign rights of community self-government is not recognized by the state as legitimate law. The Constitution was written to centralize federal power and to protect the rights of property owners and of corporations. The last 200 years of adjudicated law in our court system has constructed a legal fortress that champions corporate rights over those of communities and of nature.
The result is that the legal actions of rural communities are severely limited by state and federal legislation that pre-empts local self-governance. In so doing, the corporate state protects the predatory practices of big business. Our state legislators and state supreme courts have disempowered the struggle for a sustainable future and essentially made it illegal.
Over the last year, Bernie’s campaign effectively used the mass media to educate and raise awareness about big money and politics, corporate power, and income inequality. Millions of Americans responded to this message but his presidential campaign was doomed from the start. The two corporate political parties and the establishment will not allow a true progressive agenda in our country.
So what can The People’s Revolution do now? Politics seems so bleak on the national level. And only a few green candidates have run successful campaigns for public office on the local level. It’s time for citizen activists to go back to school and learn new tactics for successfully implementing local rule.
Democracy School was established for this very purpose. It’s a citizen workshop produced by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), an organization co-founded by Tom Linzey and Stacey Schmader. CELDF assists communities to develop first-in-the-nation, groundbreaking laws to protect local rights and limit the unwanted intrusions of corporations into local jurisdictions.
There is a growing movement worldwide to defend the sovereign rights of people, of communities, and of natural ecosystems against the tyranny of the corporate state. CELDF’s activism began twenty years ago in rural Pennsylvania by a small group of activist lawyers with a knowledge of Constitutional law and the challenge of stopping corporate assaults on rural communities.
CELDF explodes the myths taught to Americans about their government. It’s become apparent that democracy in this country is a convenient fiction. Linzey asserts, “If you live in a corporate state there’s only one option left for you. To dismantle it and form something new.”
And that’s the grand plan. Through the guidance of CELDF, more than 200 communities throughout the country have organized to pass local ordinances that strip corporations of personhood rights within their jurisdictions. Most of these are rural areas but Pittsburgh is an example of an urban center where the city council has legally banned the petrochemical industry from fracking within their city.
Aren’t these local ordinances being challenged by corporate suits in the courts? Some of them are, but it’s difficult for judges to rule so publicly for business interests over the will of the majority of local residents. And corporations are reluctant to make their nefarious actions so visible. Many local ordinances go unchallenged by the perpetrators. It would only take a few key court decisions against corporations to establish a legal precedence. And the house of cards that has been constructed over the last two centuries of adjudicated law protecting corporations could begin to shake and quake.
Many of these local governments tutored by CELDF have formed statewide networks within six forward-looking states including Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. These groups are organizing to pass state constitutional amendments that establish the sovereignty of local self-governance as well as the rights of nature.
CELDF and their Democracy School are working to educate political leaders and inspire ordinary citizens to run for public office. The organizing principle behind their successful campaigns is the ability to articulate the underlying legal obstacles to sustainability and community self-rule. They offer the only viable solution in combating corporate assaults.
The Naro will screen a new documentary about the work of the CELDF titled We The People 2.0: The Second American Revolution on Wednesday, Oct 12 in our ‘New Non-Fiction Film’ series. We will host Tammy Belinsky to speak following the showing. She is on the National Board of Directors of CELDF. I hope that you can join us for this important film event. It will be like attending an abbreviated Democracy School without having to leave town.
As more people become aware of the systemic cause of our growing environmental crisis, a democratic movement is slowly building to someday convene a second Constitutional Convention so as to reinvent an American government that specifies rights for people, rights for natural systems, and the right of community self-governance. If progressive movements can present these principles effectively then we will also find allies on the right from conservative movements.
But first of all we must build strong local community action. Hampton Roads residents and their political leaders may be a little slower to catch the wave. There’s not an immediate new corporate threat to our area and the big polluters have been fouling our nest for years: Norfolk Southern railroad car coal dust, the port’s coal shipments and their contribution to sea level rise, pollution from the numerous local military bases, and the dumping of fly ash by Dominion Power. But in other parts of the country where citizens are actively participating in local government, the shift is happening now. Our area can learn much from community movements in other parts of the country. Visit www.celdf.org for more information.
Upcoming Film Events at Naro Cinema
MEASURE FOR MEASURE
This new series is staged in the reconstructed Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in London. In the first play of the series, the Duke of Vienna, disgusted by the immorality in his city, announces his withdrawal from public life and leaves his deputy, the puritanical Angelo, in charge. Shakespeare’s most searching exploration of sexual politics and social justice. Shows Tues, Sept 13. ‘Globe On Screen’ is a new series hosted by Tom Ellis.
THE BEATLES: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK
Acclaimed director Ron Howard’s documentary is based on the first part of The Beatles career (1962-1966), the period in which they toured and captured the world’s acclaim. The film features their last concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 1966 and the famous Shea Stadium concert in NYC is included. Opens Thurs, September 15.
FlickIt! Fridays
Once a month a local non-profit will have the run of the theater for the evening of celebration. Proceeds from beer sales will support their cause. The Fifth Element shows Friday, Sept 16 and The Return of the Living Dead shows Friday, Oct 14.
THE INNOCENTS
In December 1945 the Second World War has finally come to an end. In Warsaw, Poland, French nurse Mathilde (Lou de Laage) is treating the last of the French survivors of the German camps. When a panicked Benedictine nun appears at the clinic one night begging Mathilde to follow her back to the convent, what she finds there is shocking: a holy sister about to give birth and several more in advanced stages of pregnancy. Fearing the shame of exposure, the hostility of the new anti-Catholic Communist government, and
facing an unprecedented crisis of faith, the nuns increasingly turn to Mathilde for protection and guidance. In French and Polish with subtitles. Shows Tues, Sept 20. ’Faith In Film’ is hosted by Scott Hennessy.
INCARCERATING US
With 2.3 million people behind bars, the U.S. has the largest prison population in the history of the world. The film presents a long overdue critique of such essential issues as the failure of the War on Drugs, mandatory minimum sentences, and corporately owned prisons-for-profit. Shows Wed, Sept 21. Presented with Virginia NORML and Virginia Organizing.
AN ART THAT NATURE MAKES
Artist Rosamond Purcell creates collages of natural objects like bones, feathers, leaves, fossils and found old industrial objects. She imbues them with life through her photography. Among her many books are three with scientist Stephen Jay Gould, in which her visuals and his words complement one another. Filmmaker Molly Bernstein’s portrait reveals an artist whose work celebrates the beauty of decay, the poetry of destruction, and the ineffable effects of time. Shows Tues, Sept 27. Presented with Chrysler Museum.
AUTHOR: THE J.T. LEROY STORY
Celebrity author J.T. LeRoy was actually an elaborate hoax fabricated by the books’ real author, Laura Albert and her girlfriend who posed as LeRoy. Their massive deception lasted for a decade and still infuriates many. But according to Albert, only by channeling her brilliant fiction through another identity was she able to realize her full self-expression as an author. Shows Wed, Sept 28. Psycho Cinema is hosted by Tim Sanderson.
MANHATTAN SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
This 19th annual worldwide festival of short films drew an unprecedented 844 entries from 52 countries this year. This program showcases the 10 finalists selected by a panel of judges. The selection for this year’s Best Short Film will be voted on by cinema audiences viewing the film in 250 cities worldwide. The Festival will be held throughout the world during the week of Sept 23 to Oct 2.
FirstLook Film Forum – Fall Season 2016
This subscription based Sunday morning preview film series starts Oct 2 and runs for seven designated Sundays. Join a discriminating group of cinephiles to share brunch and conversation, and critique an advance screening of a critically acclaimed new film.
WHEN TWO WORLDS COLLIDE
In this tense and immersive tour de force, we are given a glimpse of earth’s future – the battle to protect biological life from the corporate state’s siege of nature. The viewer is brought directly into the line of fire between the Peruvian government and the Amazonian indigenous peoples trying to protect their homeland. Shows Wed, Oct 5.
PAINTING THE MODERN GARDEN: MONET TO MATISSE
Many great artists including Claude Monet, Van Gogh, Bonnard, Sorolla, Sargent, Pissarro and Matisse all saw the garden as a powerful subject for their art. They were recently featured in a major exhibition at The Cleveland Museum of Art and The Royal Academy, London. The film travels from the exhibition in London to visit the actual beautiful gardens that inspired the work of these artists. Presented with Chrysler Museum. Shows Tues, Oct 11.
WE THE PEOPLE 2.0 – The Second American Revolution
Small towns and rural communities throughout the U.S. and around the world have been besieged by the predatory practices of corporations. They are able to claim personhood rights so as to shield their nefarious activities from civil actions. To combat these threats, many communities have organized resistance by passing ordinances that strip corporations of their personhood rights and of their capability to pollute within local jurisdictions. Filmmaker Leila Conners’ new documentary traces the history of this growing movement to re-establish democracy and local community rights through the work of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). Shows Wed, Oct 12. Tammy Belinsky is on the National Board of Directors of CELDF and will speak after the showing.