Hands Across the Sand

Surfrider Foundation – Newport Chapter

May 16, Hands Across the Sand. Gather at Don Davis Park in Newport, Oregon to say NO to offshore oil drilling and YES to clean energy. This gathering will be one of hundreds of synchronized events taking place globally to raise awareness about the dangers of fossil fuels and the need to speed the transition to clean energy solutions.

Surfrider Formation of the human ‘line in the sand’ at 11:30, then at noon, join hands for 15 minutes.

Please RSVP… Details.

This gathering will be one of hundreds of synchronized events taking place globally to raise awareness about the dangers of fossil fuels and the need to speed the transition to clean energy solutions. ands Across the Sand is about embracing energy sources that will sustain our planet. A clean energy policy is the path to job growth, a vibrant economic future, and long-term energy independence. New clean energy, in combination with reduced consumption, will help us break our addiction to fossil fuels.

Corporate Pesticide Use is More Protected than People’s Health

Every year in Oregon, including here in Lincoln County, millions of pounds of toxic chemicals are sprayed on our forests despite of the impacts to the health and quality of life for people and ecosystems.

Come learn why this is legal, how the state protects the rights of corporations over those of people and nature, and most importantly, how communities in Oregon and other states are changing the rules of the game. They are squaring up against the corporate harms and taking back their rights to health, resiliency, and greater democracy for people and nature.

Join us for a 90-minute presentation and discussion with Kai Huschke, Northwest Organizer, of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

Location: Yachats Commons, Room 3
Wednesday, April 1, 2015, 6:30 P.M.

Workshop Provides Tools and Insight

Kai Huschke, Northwest Organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund led nearly twenty participants through a 3 hour Democracy School at the Newport Public Library.

Hour 1 – Audio Download – MP3

Hour 2 – Audio Download – MP3

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is a non-profit, public interest law firm providing free and affordable legal services to communities facing threats to their local environment, local agriculture, the local economy, and quality of life.  CELDF’s mission is to build sustainable communities by assisting people to assert their right to local self-government and the rights of nature.

The primary focus of the condensed workshop included:

  • Why we have a corporate dominated, state-assisted structure of law
  • How it looks when communities try to find remedy within that system
  • What communities are doing to reclaim their rights for the sake of health and democracy for people, communities, and nature
  • How Oregon counties are moving “community bills of rights” to protect communities and move them towards sustainability


Please let us know if you are interested in further discussion of the workshop by contacting María Sause at mkrausster@gmail.com, or by calling 541-961-6385.

Democracy School is dedicated to the memory of Daniel Pennock, a 17-year-old boy from Berks County, Pennsylvania, who died in 1995 after being exposed involuntarily to land applied sewage sludge. Daniel’s parents, Antoinette and Russell Pennock, have traveled across Pennsylvania to end the practice of sludge disposal by which waste management corporations reap massive profits hauling and spreading sludge on farmland. Their work has inspired ours. (CELDF)

Democracy School Workshop

Democracy School Workshop
February 2, 2015, 6:00 – 9:00 P.M.,
Newport Public Library

Communities across the country and Oregon trying to stop a wide range of threats – such as GMO’s, pesticides, fracking, factory farming, sewage sludging, water privatization – all run into the same problem: they don’t have the legal authority to say “NO” to what is harming them.

This 3-hour Democracy School workshop will lead you through the following:

• Why we have a corporate dominated, state-assisted structure of law
• How it looks when communities try to find remedy within that system
• What communities are doing to reclaim their rights for the sake of health and democracy for people, communities, and nature
• How Oregon counties are moving “community bills of rights” to protect communities and move them towards sustainability

Presented by: Kai Huschke, Northwest Organizer
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Free of charge, but donations are gladly accepted to cover the instructor’s travel and our publication expenses.

To register, and to obtain further details, call María Sause at 541 961 6385, or e-mail mkrausster@gmail.com

Community Rights Movement

The Community Rights movement seeks to protect the right of communities to make local decisions, and people’s rights at the community level. It is a movement that is spreading nation-wide as one community after another confronts situations in which it has to defend itself from unwanted action by corporations claiming the right to do business in them against the will of the local population, based on laws dictated at the federal and state levels. Since corporations are granted the constitutional rights of persons, and are additionally protected by federal contract and commerce laws and by state preemption laws, their claimed rights are guaranteed more securely than the rights of common people. Today corporations establish themselves forcefully in communities to frack, extract water, extract oil, dump sewage sludge, install factory farms, spray pesticides, all against the wishes of the community in which they operate, in spite of causing severe environmental damage to it.

The Community Rights movement seeks to empower communities to take their destinies into their own hands by passing ordinances that prohibit the harms which corporations are poised to inflict on them. In the legal battles that ensue, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), founded by attorney Thomas Linsey, provides legal support to the community in question. 160 communities in 8 States nationwide have so far passed such ordinances, thus freeing themselves from the corporate-driven harms listed above. In Oregon, there are at this point 9 counties with Community Rights groups working on these local ordinances, grouped together in the Oregon Community Rights Network (OCRN), in which people from the various groups are cooperating on crafting an amendment to the Oregon Constitution that would establish the fundamental rights of natural persons, their communities and nature, giving them the power to enact local laws that protect health, safety, and welfare. – Maria Kraus