On February 1 and 2, the Palouse Environmental Sustainability Coalition, Wild Idaho Rising Tide, and several local conservation and human rights organizations again gratefully welcome to Moscow Kai Huschke, the Spokane-based Northwest organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund and an Envision Spokane activist.  Everyone is invited to participate in his public presentation and meeting in the 1912 Center Fiske Room, 412 East Third Street in Moscow.  On Friday evening, February 1, at 7 pm, Kai will talk about When the Law is on Their Side: What Communities are Doing Differently to Change the Game Against Corporate Domination, describing the legal background and necessity of the 150 community bills of rights codified by cities, counties, and townships as local “declarations of independence” from harmful corporate activities and their government facilitation.

Over the last 150 years, the few people who own and run corporations have perfectly constructed and patented a structure of law seldom understood in its practical applications.  These legal doctrines insulate corporations from community control, grant them greater legal and constitutional rights than community majorities, and routinely preempt and nullify resistance in targeted communities, who almost never win against corporations.  Communities predictably respond by focusing solely on the state-sanctioned destruction wrought by a corporate activity and by trying to convince other people of the need to ban, rather than merely regulate or allow, corporate actions and harms.  But by instead structurally changing the ground rules, people across the country have successfully joined together to organize and use their collective lawmaking powers and non-violent civil disobedience, directly challenging and ultimately liberating themselves from centuries-old corporate domination in everything from factory farms to water privatization to dirty energy, while protecting the health, safety, and welfare of communities and ecosystems.  Moscow and Latah County citizens could similarly offer important leadership and linkage in attaining more critical mass of this authentic democracy. Continue reading →