Home Rule Concept Taking Hold

(posted June 8)

Sustainable Earth President Steve Bonney took the first step on May 31 to plant a seed for democracy in Indiana by inviting Tom Linzey of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund to conduct a mini Democracy Workshop. Approximately 30 people from across the state attended the west side meeting.

Based on his experience as an activist, Bonney has seen how "special interests are controlling every phase of our lives and negatively affecting the quality of life for all citizens. Embedded in the issue of democracy is the need for citizens to control the decision making powers of government. A Democracy School will provide the tools and the strategy for
beginning that process."

In rural Pennsylvania, about 400 local governments passed ordinances in the1990s to prevent corporate farms from taking over the local independent farmer. The communities passed stringent manure management ordinances that regulated manure disposal of intensive farming operations. In essence, the local ordinances acted like a "defacto ban" because it made it too costly to operate the factory farms and meet the ordinance requirements.

The communities created the ordinances to protect their environment and the independent farmer. Linzey explained the vertical integration of factory farms have caused the "economic and cultural bankruptcy" of the independent farmer. He said small farmers are locked into one sided contracts that can be terminated at will by the corporations. The small farmers only receive title to the animals they raise when they die and need to be disposed of. He said suicide now ranks as the number one cause of death among independent farmers, not equipment injuries.

When corporate farms discovered they could not do business, they sought legislative help to challenge the ordinances. Two years ago, the attorney general's office was "authorized" by Pennsylvania legislation "to act as private attorney general" to sue local municipalities on the behalf of agribusiness. The agribusinesses no longer have to hire their own attorney to challenge local ordinances.

The attorney general has carried out the law by filing eight laws suits against local municipalities about six months ago. The attorney general filed a legal brief that stated "there is no unalienable right to local self government." Linzey warned that we don't live in a democracy but in a corporate state.

Linzey explained the state's interference with local government has become the catalyst to prod communities to organize. Local groups are starting to use the Midwest as models for reform. Nebraska, South Dakota and seven other states have passed state wide bans on corporate farming to prevent a few corporations from controlling the food supply. He said Nebraska and South Dakota have inserted the laws into their state constitutions.

Bonney was one of the plaintiffs in the law suit against the Indiana Authority over leasing the Indiana toll roads to a consortium. He is also running for governor as an Independent candidate.

Linzey's lecture broke the paradigm that America is a democracy. His experience has lead him to he believe that America doesn't operate within the framework of a democracy, but within a system where corporations have more rights than the community.

Laws and regulations are designed to put activism on the defense to prove the injustice. The laws favor the corporate entities that are "vacuuming out our resources." He said the regulations are written so the community is deprived of its rights. He called regulations a guaranteed law that gives little room for challenges.

"On the law, we lose. It is that simple because it has been structured to make us lose. We can't control what is happening in our community until we bust this structure of law."

He recommended a grassroots movement to eventually change the US Constitution. He wants to see a "Home Rule" rights based document, rather than a minority powered document. He said the Bill of Rights had to be forced in by anti-federalists.

Linzey's research on corporate rights extends beyond the 1886 court ruling that said corporations are persons, meaning that corporations have the same rights as people. The law has made corporations a "private actor" giving them the ability to violate a person's constitutional rights "at will." This means corporations cannot be held responsible for constitutional violations against people.

The strength of corporate rights came into creation when England was growing as a world power. It created the limited liability company to protect the East India Company. The East India Company was a servant of English Parliament and created an army bigger than England's. "Most of the investors were members of parliament. They were not nice people." The East India Company severed thumbs of Indian master weavers in order to grow the English textile market.

Linzey explained that the Constitution favors minority power because it was entrenched in our founding fathers, who were skilled in English Common Law in the 1500s and 1600s. It was English Common Law that placed the interest of property and commerce above the interest of people, community and nature.

"It should not come as a surprise that 39 white men with property" who drafted the Constitution were based in the same structure of law. "It has very little to do with majority control for democracy," but giving "the minority a decision making authority or a power making role."

The Constitution was drafted with the idea of making the US a world economic power. "The 39 white men wanted to be a world power and they saw a seemingly endless bounty of natural resources." To become a world power, they had to create a structure of law that exploited the resources in an efficient manner to build an economic world power. "We have to give them credit. They did a very good job of writing that structure of law."