We the People: Stories from the Community Rights Movement in the United States

We the People offers powerful portraits of communities across the United States that have faced threats from environmentally destructive corporate projects and responded by successfully banning those projects at a local level. We hear the inspiring voices of ordinary citizens and activists practicing a cutting-edge form of organizing developed by the nonprofit law firm, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). Their methodology is an answer for the frustrations of untold numbers of activists who have been defeated time and again by corporate political power and legal entitlement. Instead of fighting against what we don’t want, this book can teach us to create from the ground up what we do want, basing our vision in local control and law. This work is about finishing the American Revolution by giving up the illusion of democracy and forging a system of true self-governance. In addition, this is about recognizing in law, for the first time in history, that nature possesses legally enforceable rights of its own.

Anneke Campbell is a writer and documentary filmmaker who has worked for many years to advance the causes of justice and respect for all humanity and the environment. She is the coauthor of Moonrise. Thomas Linzey is an attorney and the executive director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. He is the coauthor of YES! magazine’s "This Changes Everything."