Earth Democracy at the Democracy Convention!

Alliance for Democracy is convening the Earth Democracy Conference at this year's Democracy Convention, and you're invited!

The Earth Democracy Conference is one of nine conferences taking place at this year's Democracy Convention, August 7-11 in Madison, Wisconsin.

 Registration is open now, and early registration is a great way to get on the list for first news about convention logistics.


The Earth Democracy Conference builds on the declaration adopted by the Ecojustice People's Movement Assembly at the 2010 US Social Forum: "We support the conclusion that only by 'living well', in harmony with each other and with Mother Earth, rather than 'living better,' based on an economic system of unlimited growth, dominance and exploitation, will the people of this planet not only survive but thrive, and the ecosystems on which all life depends will flourish."



The Earth Democracy Conference is a place to discuss, debate and strategize to ensure that the growing US democracy movement includes those working on the frontlines of eco-justice. 

Join confirmed speakers at the Earth Democracy Conference who are working to make the declaration a reality:



• Arthur Stamoulis, Citizens Trade Campaign
• 
Michael Vickerman, Renew Wisconsin

• David Newby, Pres. Emeritus, Wisconsin State AFL-CIO and Pres. Wisconsin Fair Trade Coalition

• Linda Sheehan, Earth Law Center

• Jane M. Goddard, Center for Earth Jurisprudence, Barry School of Law

• Carolyn Raffensperger, Science and Environmental Health Network

• Jill Stein, Green Party Presidential Candidate

• The Pachamama Alliance
• 
John Peck, Family Farm Defenders

• Speakers from Indigenous tribal and local communities on the front lines of resistance to Big Energy, Industry and Ag, and from the Sierra Club John Muir Chapter (Madison)
• others to be announced as confirmed.



These are just some of our planned workshops and sessions:

• Climate and Planet Earth Emergency: Big Energy and Industry/ Big Pollution/Big Resistance: learn the issues and non violent resistance strategies from Indigenous tribal and local communities on the front lines in the fights against the XL Pipeline, fracking sand pits, the Penokee Hills Taconite Mine, and high-capacity water pumping.
• The Pachamama’s Alliance Awakening the Dreamer Symposium: a transformational educational workshop to “change the dream of the modern world" and empower participants to investigate their unique role in transforming humanity’s future.


• Earth Democracy Workshop: Teach-In/Teach-Back: interactive discussion of  community initiatives to protect public health and ecosystems: the Precautionary Principle, rights of nature, guardianship, and more. 
• 

Bees, Butterflies and GMO Crops: Say No to Monsanto and Dow Chemical: challenging corporate-controlled agriculture/creating healthy farmer-controlled food systems, including ordinances to protect local food. 
• 

Hands off Mother Earth: Writing Earth Rights into Law: local, national, and international movements and success stories. Local initiatives to protect springs and rivers.
• 

Declare your Community a TPP-Free Zone to establish local democracy and nature’s rights.  The Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement will accelerate plunder of the earth and seriously harm the health of all beings. Learn the TPP basics; how the TPP protects corporate wealth and property, and why the TPP must be stopped.

In our plenary session we'll debunk carbon markets and the neo-liberal “green” economy and discuss how to create a true green economy grounded in climate and environmental justice for all.

Special activities include a food fair featuring produce and products from local farmers, an urban agriculture bike tour, act activism for children, and more.

About the 2013 Democracy Convention
If you want to strengthen democracy where it matters to you… in your community, school, workplace, economy, military, government, media or the Constitution… you will find inspiration in Madison this August at the second national Democracy Convention.
 
The Democracy Convention houses at least nine conferences under one roof, recognizing the importance of each of these separate struggles, as well as the need to unite them all in a common, deeply rooted, broad based democracy movement.

Please register, sign up your organization, business or union as a sponsor, and spread the word by sharing this post on social media and posting this convention button on your website.

Thank you, and see you in Madison!
Nancy Price, Co-Chair
Alliance for Democracy

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Video from Madison's Democracy Convention

You can click on the links below to see video of some of the panels and workshops that AfD co-chair Nancy Price organized at the Democracy Convention last week.

The video was shot by Justice Rising editor Jim Tarbell, who was also a participant in panel discussions on community radio and building community economics.

Eco-Climate Justice: A Revolution of Values for People and Nature, featuring Alberto Saldamando, Ashley Anderson, Carolyn Raffensperger, Rachel Smolker, and Ronnie Cummins; introduced by AfD co-chair Nancy Price. This was the opening plenary of the eco-justice/earth democracy conference, one of eight that made up the full convention program. Since this was the first event, Nancy runs through the full lineup of workshops and plenaries--there was a lot going on!

Climate/Earth Justice: Debunking Climate Markets and the Neoliberal Green Economy, with Ruth Caplan, AfD vice co-chair and director of our Defending Water for Life campaign, Daphne Wysham and Rachel Smolker.

Water: A Fundamental Right for People and Nature, with Alberto Saldamando, Nancy Price and Ruth Caplan

And part two of Teaching Earth Democracy, with Nancy Price, Riki Ott, and Bob Peterson. Nancy gives a demonstration of the Tapestry of the Commons interactive project.

We hope to have more video up here and on our Youtube channel soon.

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Time for a corporate death penalty

Bruce Dixon writes, "There are more than 40 federal offenses for which the death penalty can be applied to human beings, most of them connected to homicide of one kind or another. But countless homicides committed by the artificial persons we call corporations go unpunished every day. Apparently “personal responsibility” applies only to humans who are not operating behind the legal shield of corporate personhood."

by Bruce A. Dixon. Posted June 9 on Black Agenda Report

Over the last hundred or so years, corporations have gained many of the rights previously accorded only to human beings.  Corporations have the right to buy and sell anything or anyone that can be bought or sold.  Corporations have claimed the right to lie in their advertising and PR as "free speech,"  along with the right to help us mere humans choose our judges and elected officials with unlimited amounts of cash, including anonymous cash.  Corporations have been awarded the right to patent genetic sequences of diseases and to monopolize their cures, as well as patent rights to living plants and animals not of their invention.  A whole type of new anti-pollution regulation called "cap and trade" actually enshrines a corporate right to pollute and establishes exchanges upon which speculators can bid, trade and capture rents for those alleged rights.  And unlike a working person, who has no right to next month's let alone next year's wages, legal scholars working for corporations have devised and popularized something they call the "regulatory takings" doctrine, under which corporations may claim and recover from the government rights to profits they might have made in years to come.  And let's not even talk about trillions in corporate welfare for banks, military contractors, Wal-Mart and others.

While many argue that corporations have too many rights as it is, this might be a good time to extend them at least one more right we humans have kept for ourselves until now; the right to be put to death for serious crimes.  Right now federal statutes alone offer individuals more than 40 different ways to earn the death penalty, including kidnapping, treason, aircraft hijacking, espionage and many varieties of murder, conspiracy, threatening murder and some drug crimes.  Individual states offer the death penalty for a host of similar offenses.

Putting bad corporate actors down the way we do rabid dogs and serial killers is not a new or even a radical idea.  Corporations are created by the charters of individual states, so states DO have the power to revoke them.  Early in this country's history, corporate charters used to limit a company's existence to a set number of years, to confine their operations to manufacturing a certain item, building a specific road or canal and prohibit them from changing ownership, dumping or concealing their assets or engaging in other kinds of business.  These are legal powers that our governments have not used in a long, long time, but which it's high time to reclaim.

Homicidal profit-seeking on the part of corporations has become an everyday fact of modern life.  Whether it's employers cutting health and safety corners, marketers pushing unsafe drugs, food and products of all kinds, or the deadly industrial fouling of the planet's air, soil, oceans and climate we are living in the midst of a corporate crime wave of murderous and epic proportions.  If we value human life, it only makes sense to treat corporate serial killers like, well, corporate serial killers, to confiscate their ill-gotten assets, to revoke their corporate charters and sentence the artificial personae of corporate malefactors to death.  If corporations are legal persons, it's time to enforce some personal responsibility upon them with a corporate death penalty.

After we accomplish that, it will be time to think about extending a little of that personal responsibility to the actual humans who operate behind the legal shield of the corporations.  But right now, as the saying goes, a corporation can't even get arrested in this country, which, come to think of it is still another right we humans ought to bestow upon them.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor of Black Agenda Report. This article is also available as a podcast on the BAR website; follow the link in the heading.

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'Protest and Rally outside of the Carbon Trading Summit

Video from Wednesday's rally and protest action outside of the 2nd Annual Carbon Trading Summit--protesting pollution for profit, with statements from organizers, singing, and testimony from Rev. Billy and the Church of Shop Shopping--"Somebody give me an Earthalulia!" The New York action capped five days of action and teaching as a followup to the failure of the Cophenhagen summit.

More at Mobilization for Climate Justice.



Follow the "read more" link for a press release.

In the wake of a controversial outcome at the Copenhagen climate talks, a diverse crowd of scientists, Faith congregation, activists, students, and concerned citizens converged in confrontation and protest at the 2nd Annual IGlobalForum Carbon Trading Summit today. The summit is the largest annual meeting place of corporations, banks, and lobby groups to further the agenda of a carbon trading scheme to address climate change. Activists rallied to oppose market-based trading of greenhouse gas emissions credits and call for real solutions to the climate crisis. Dr. Maggie Zhou of Secure Green Future Massachusetts was among the demonstrators who engaged in in nonviolent direct action and risked arrest in attempt to blockade a portion of the venue’s revolving doors to display a banner decrying carbon trading as a false solution.

“The same Wall Street bankers who gave us the global climate crisis are trying to own the sky,” stated Brian Tokar, director of the Institute for Social Ecology and an organizer of this week’s protest events. “Carbon trading is unjust, it will not work, and it is a false solution. It is a dangerous distraction from the urgent measures needed to prevent an ever-worsening destabilization of the climate.”

Speakers at the rally included Reverend Billy of the Church of Life After Shopping, who delivered a critique with the fire and brimstone of a televangelist; Bhaia Heller, Professor of Womens Studies at Mount Holyoke University and Father Paul Mayer, co-founder of the Climate Crisis Coalition and religious community leader.

Participants inside the Carbon Trading Summit will include executives from JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Duke Energy and more.

“I don’t trust these people to make decisions about the future of humanity,” said one young participant, who wished not to give her name because she will be risking arrest today. “If we follow through with market-based solutions like carbon trading, everyone will regret it. We need to stop believing the corporations’ false solutions and put all our collective energy into getting this conversation onto a track that’s useful.”

Dr. James Hansen, renowned climate scientist, was present outside the Carbon Trading Summit yesterday to voice his opposition to carbon trading schemes.

“Cap-and-trade is not a smart approach,” wrote Hansen his book Storms of My Grandchildren. Hansen has stated that current US climate legislation is “worse than nothing” because it relies on risky and ineffective cap-and-trade. He also declared that the failure to reach an agreement in Copenhagen was a better outcome than adopting the carbon-trade-based approach that was being negotiated.

“Carbon trade, which includes cap and trade and offsets are a dangerous distraction, economically risky, and prone to gaming and speculation,” stated Dr. Maggie Zhou, from Secure Green Future and Climate SOS stated. “Offsets allow polluters to simply pay someone else somewhere else to reduce their emissions on your behalf, which in the end does nothing to actually reduce emissions. The climate crisis simply can’t wait!

“Carbon trade is an insidious threat to human rights,” stated Dr. Rachel Smolker from Biofuelwatch and Climate SOS. “It turns rights to pollute the atmosphere, as well as forests, soils and agriculture practices that store carbon into commodities to be bought and sold as excuses for polluters. This is the greatest corporate grab on the “global commons” ever! It is disastrous for most of humanity.

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