by DGR News Service | Jan 22, 2020 | Direct Action
By Will Falk
Featured image: Harmful algae blooms in Lake Erie in 2017. Public domain photo via NASA.
On Tuesday, January 28, at 10 AM, a hearing will be held in the United States District Courthouse in Toledo, OH in the case Drewes Farms Partnership v. City of Toledo. At stake in this case is the constitutionality of the Lake Erie Bill of Rights. It is possible – likely, even – that the Lake Erie Bill of Rights (LEBOR), democratically enacted by the people of Toledo, will be struck down by United States District Judge Jack Zouhary at this hearing.
If Zouhary strikes LEBOR down, he will do so despite a clear expression of the people of Toledo’s political will. LEBOR, after all was enacted with a 61% majority of the 15,000 Toledoans who voted on it. If Zouhary strikes LEBOR down, he will do so despite the ongoing harm current industrial and agricultural processes are causing to Lake Erie and all those who depend on Lake Erie’s water. If Zouhary strikes LEBOR down, he will do so despite the intensifying danger that once again a toxic algae bloom will get so bad that hundreds of thousands of Toledoans will be left without drinking water. And, perhaps the worst if of all, if Zouhary strikes LEBOR down, all those who worked so hard to see LEBOR enacted will be tempted to despair, to give up.
Do not despair. Do not give up. LEBOR represents only one of many tactics that can be used to protect Lake Erie.
To date, we have only employed indirect methods for protecting Lake Erie. We have asked the government and the courts to protect Lake Erie and they have consistently refused to do so. We have asked Zouhary to validate a democratically enacted local law. Hell, we asked Zouhary for permission to simply argue on Lake Erie’s and LEBOR’s behalf in Drewes Farms Partnership v. City of Toledo and he wouldn’t even grant us that. It is time we stop asking. It is time we stop using merely persuasive means for change. It is time we act directly to protect Lake Erie.
What would it mean to “act directly” to protect Lake Erie? The term “direct action” has been used so often in environmental and social movements in so many different contexts that it is in danger of losing its meaning. It is difficult to locate a clear definition of direct action in activist or academic literature rooted in a radical analysis, so I have formed my own. My definition has three parts: First, direct action involves a clearly-defined and obtainable goal. Second, the success of that goal is demonstrable by a quantifiable reduction in the opposition’s physical power. Third, it is primarily the actions of those engaging in the direct action that produce the desired goal.
It is important that a proposed action begins with a clearly-defined and obtainable goal because an action involving a poorly-defined goal makes it difficult to determine the scope of the action. And, proposed actions with unobtainable goals will be, by definition, ineffective. Planning to change the world through an educational program designed to illustrate the evils of the fossil fuel industry, for example, is neither clearly-defined nor obtainable. What does it mean “to change the world?” And, how will you possibly reach enough people to effect this change? Planning to disable a factory farm producing manure runoff into the Lake Erie watershed, however, is both clearly-defined and obtainable. Direct actionists can, without too much imagination, envision a successful action.
Once a clearly-defined and obtainable goal is established, the direct action must be designed to materially affect the opposition’s physical power. Let’s say activists come up with a plan to drop a banner that says “Rights for Lake Erie!” from the rafters of the Ohio State Capitol Building. The plan is both clearly-defined, and with some clever security dodging, obtainable. This action, however, is not direct action because there is no way to quantify how, or even if, the banner affects Lake Erie’s polluters ability to pollute.
Let’s consider another hypothetical plan: Activists plan to blockade trucks transporting manure through northern Ohio where the manure will be spread on farms. And, they plan to blockade these trucks for 24 hours. This plan has a clearly-defined and obtainable goal. The goal also reflects an understanding of power. Trucks transporting manure is one of the primary methods agricultural corporations use to pollute. Depriving these corporations of their manure for one day may not be a big hit to corporate power, but it is quantifiable.
It is primarily the actions of those engaging in the direct action that produce the desired goal. Another way to say this is: There is a clear causal link between the direct action and the desired goal. If the goal is to restrict the movement of trucks transporting manure, for example, then the planned action must literally restrict the trucks. Yet another way to say this is: direct action does not leave it to external decision-makers (governmental, judicial, or otherwise) to produce the desired goal. Direct action is not an appeal to those in power. It does not rely solely on moral persuasion, shame, or economic cost-benefit analyses.
This chart, excerpted from the book “Deep Green Resistance,” shows a taxonomy of action: a broad classification of different types of resistance actions that can be taken, including various types of direct action.
Viewed through this lens, the efforts to enact LEBOR, while heroic, are not direct action. LEBOR was a response to the toxic algae bloom that occurred in August, 2014 and left 500,000 Toledoans without drinking water during the hottest time of year. Toxic algae blooms, which have become a regular occurrence in Lake Erie, are primarily fed by agricultural runoff and are exacerbated by climate change. To stop the algae blooms requires stopping the agricultural runoff. In order for citizens to use LEBOR to stop agricultural runoff, first requires the federal courts to rule that LEBOR is constitutional and valid. Not only do we need Zouhary to rule in favor of LEBOR, but, if Zouhary rules in favor of LEBOR, it’s likely that Drewes Farms Partnership and the State of Ohio would appeal Zouhary’s decision to the Sixth Circuit. Then, if the Sixth Circuit ruled in favor of LEBOR, Drewes Farms Partnership and the State of Ohio, would likely appeal to the Supreme Court.
So, before we could ever use LEBOR to bring actions against agricultural polluters for violating Lake Erie’s rights, we’d have to convince three different courts to uphold LEBOR. Even if we succeeded in convincing each level of the federal courts to rule in favor of LEBOR, we would then, in each case brought against agricultural polluters under LEBOR, need to convince a judge that the actions of agricultural polluters violate Lake Erie’s rights. In other words, LEBOR is not direct action because it relies on external decision makers – the courts – to produce the desired goal.
I am not in any way suggesting that the tremendous efforts Toledoans have put into LEBOR have been a waste. They have not been. The efforts to enact LEBOR placed the question of rights of nature before the people of Toledo and secured a clear, democratic expression that the people of Toledo do, in fact, support rights of nature. This strengthens the moral superiority of our claims. Not only are we justified in stopping agricultural polluters because they are poisoning Toledo’s drinking water, we are justified because the majority of the community believes Lake Erie should have rights to be free from this pollution.
In many ways, it would be easier if we could convince the courts to uphold Lake Erie’s rights. If the courts recognized LEBOR, we could sue polluters. And, in those lawsuits, after finding that the polluters have violated Lake Erie’s rights, judges could order armed men and women (the police) to force polluters to stop polluting. The important thing to recognize though is that the police do not own a monopoly on power. We have the power to stop polluters from polluting, too. Factory farms can be occupied. Access to manure can be limited. The capacity to distribute manure can be impaired.
It is true that those who effectively engage in direct action to protect Lake Erie will place themselves in danger. It is possible that direct actionists will be arrested, that the police will respond violently, and that the media and members of the public will criticize and ostracize us. But the truth is violence is already being used against us. Poisoning a city’s drinking water is violence. And, if we don’t succeed in stopping this poisoning, more nonhumans will be murdered, more humans (especially the most vulnerable among us such as children and the elderly) will get sick and may even die, too. If we don’t succeed in stopping this poisoning, in other words, the violence will only intensify.
Fear in the face of these dangers is understandable. The question is: How do we overcome the fear? Bravery is a personal thing. It is something each individual must find for her or himself. No one can find it for you.
Personally, I find my courage on Lake Erie’s shore. I find it witnessing the sick, pale bellies of dead perch floating through the thick, green scum that forms on Lake Erie’s surface and suffocates fish every summer. I find it in the scent of the rotting corpses of dogs, deer, foxes, gulls, eagles, herons, and the many other animals who drink and feed from Lake Erie. I find it in the looks on the faces of children who arrive cheerfully on Lake Erie’s beaches in the heat of summer only to find the lake is too dangerous to swim in. I find it in the rashes that form on the skin of children who were unaware of the danger toxic algae blooms pose. I find it in the vomit of those unlucky enough to unknowingly drink toxic Lake Erie water. I find it when I read studies about the cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and other illnesses toxic algae blooms cause. I find it when I remember that only a few short centuries ago, indigenous peoples bathed on Lake Erie’s shores, celebrated the deliciousness of Lake Erie’s fish, and drank freely of Lake Erie’s waters with no inkling of the destruction to come.
I find my courage when I realize that all of this is only going to get worse if we don’t act, directly and decisively, to protect Lake Erie’s life-giving water.
Will Falk is a writer, lawyer, and environmental activist. The natural world speaks and Will’s work is how he listens. He believes the ongoing destruction of the natural world is the most pressing issue confronting us today. For Will, writing is a tool to be used in resistance.
Will graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School and practiced as a public defender in Kenosha, WI. He left the public defender office to pursue frontline environmental activism. So far, activism has taken him to the Unist’ot’en Camp – an indigenous cultural center and pipeline blockade on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory in so-called British Columbia, Canada, to a construction blockade on Mauna Kea in Hawai’i, and to endangered pinyon-juniper forests in the Great Basin.
His writing has been published by CounterPunch, Earth Island Journal, CATALYST Magazine, Whole Terrain, Dark Mountain Project, the San Diego Free Press, and Deep Green Resistance News Service among others. His first book How Dams Fall: Stories the Colorado River Told Me was published in August, 2019 by Homebound Publications.
http://willfalk.org/
by DGR News Service | Jun 18, 2019 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, The Solution: Resistance, Toxification
By Will Falk and Sean Butler
Photo: 2009 algae bloom in western Lake Erie. Photo by Tom Archer.
It should be clear to anyone following the events surrounding attempts by the citizens of Toledo, OH, with help from nonprofit law firm the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), to protect Lake Erie with the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, that the American legal system and all levels of government in their current form exist to protect corporations’ ability to destroy nature in the name of profit and protect those corporations from outraged citizens injured by corporate activities.
In the scorching summer heat of August 2014, nearly half a million people in Toledo, OH were told not to use tap water for drinking, cooking, or bathing for three days because a harmful algae bloom poisoned Lake Erie. Harmful algae blooms on Lake Erie have become a regular phenomenon. They produce microcystin, a dangerous toxin. Microcystin “causes diarrhea, vomiting, and liver-functioning problems, and readily kills dogs and other small animals that drink contaminated water.” The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency reports that mere skin contact with microcystin-laden harmful algae blooms can cause “numbness, and dizziness, nausea…skin irritation or rashes.” Scientists have also discovered that harmful algae blooms produce a neurotoxin, BMAA, that causes neurodegenerative illness, and is associated with an increased risk of ALS, and possibly even Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. In 2018, a federal judge found that the principal causes of Lake Erie’s perennial harmful algae blooms are “phosphorus runoff from fertilizer, farmland manure, and, to a lesser extent, industrial sources and sewage treatment plant discharges.”
The Environmental Working Group and Environmental Law and Policy Center report that, not surprisingly, between 2005 and 2018 the number of factory farms in the Maumee river watershed – a river that flows into Lake Erie and boasts the largest drainage area of any Great Lakes river
“exploded from 545 to 775, a 42 percent increase. The number of animals in the watershed more than doubled, from 9 million to 20.4 million. The amount of manure produced and applied to farmland in the watershed swelled from 3.9 million tons each year to 5.5 million tons.”
The groups also state that “[t]he amount of phosphorus added to the watershed from manure increased by a staggering 67 percent between 2005 and 2018.” And, “69 percent of all the phosphorus added to the watershed each year comes from factory farms in Ohio.”
Many Americans believe regulatory laws like the Clean Water Act and regulatory agencies like the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) exist to protect against phenomena like harmful algae blooms. But, Senior US District Court Judge James G. Carr recently described how regulatory laws and agencies have failed to protect Lake Erie. In a 2018 decision in a case brought by the Environmental Law and Policy Center under the Clean Water Act for the failures of the US and Ohio EPAs, Carr described, “Ohio’s long-standing, persistent reluctance and, on occasion, refusal, to comply with the [Clean Water Act].” He also wrote:
“As a result of the State’s inattention to the need, too long manifest, to take effective steps to ensure that Lake Erie (the Lake) will dependably provide clean, healthful water, the risk remains that sometime in the future, upwards of 500,000 Northwest Ohio residents will again, as they did in August 2014, be deprived of clean, safe water for drinking, bathing, and other normal and necessary uses.”
Despite Carr explaining that he “appreciate[s] plaintiffs’ frustration with Ohio’s possible continuation of its inaction,” he ruled that he could not expedite Ohio’s compliance with the Clean Water Act because he could not determine that Ohio had “clearly and unambiguously” abandoned its obligations under the Clean Water Act.
In response to the regulatory framework’s failure to stop harmful algae blooms, on Tuesday, February 26, 2019, citizens in Toledo, OH voted to protect Lake Erie with the Lake Erie Bill of Rights (“LEBOR” or “the Bill”). The Bill “establishes irrevocable rights for the Lake Erie Ecosystem to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve, a right to a healthy environment for the residents of Toledo” and “elevates the rights of the community and its natural environment over powers claimed by certain corporations.”
Toledoans for Safe Water (TSW) is the grassroots coalition of local Toledo citizens who ushered the Bill through Ohio’s constitutional citizen initiative process. Ohio’s citizen initiative process allows citizens to draft and propose laws and to place those laws on a ballot so citizens can directly vote on the law’s enactment. Typically, laws are drafted, proposed, and voted on solely by legislators. Initiative processes like Ohio’s are some of the only avenues American citizens have for directly proposing and enacting laws and providing a direct check and balance on an “out of touch” or corrupt legislature. It is important to understand, however, that, even with citizen initiative processes, it is incredibly difficult to not only democratically enact laws that would actually protect the natural world, but it is incredibly difficult to even place rights of nature laws on the ballot in the first place.
Toledoans for Safe Water’s experience is enlightening. Formed after the harmful algae bloom of August 2014, TSW worked tirelessly to pass an initiative protecting their water source including overcoming efforts by the Lucas County Board of Elections and BP North America to keep such an initiative off the ballot. First, TSW had to gather 5,244 signatures to place LEBOR on the ballot. They far exceeded that total by gathering approximately 10,500 signatures. Despite gathering much more than the necessary signatures, the Lucas County Board of Elections voted against putting the initiative on the November 2018 ballot.
Toledoans for Safe Water members sought an order from the Ohio Supreme Court to put the measure on the ballot, but the Court denied the request in September 2018. Fortunately, in October 2018, in another case involving a different charter initiative, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that city councils may force county boards of election to place charter amendment initiatives on the ballot. This ruling expressly overruled precedent previously relied on to prevent Toledo citizens from voting on LEBOR. Armed with this new ruling, TSW successfully asked the Toledo City Council to put LEBOR on the ballot. However, in December 2018, a Toledo citizen sought a writ of prohibition from the Ohio Supreme Court to block LEBOR. TSW found themselves in front of the Ohio Supreme Court once again. This time TSW won.
After ensuring LEBOR made it to the ballot, Toledoans for Safe Water had to convince enough voters to vote for the Bill before it could be enacted. In the weeks leading up to the election, BP North America wired $302,000 to the Toledo Coalition for Jobs and Growth, the primary group opposing LEBOR. In the end, TSW spent $7,762 in support of LEBOR, while Toledo Coalition for Jobs and Growth, with the massive donation from BP North America, spent $313, 205 to stop LEBOR. Despite this disparity, LEBOR passed with 61 percent of the 15,000 Toledoans who voted.
But, mere hours after the City of Toledo certified LEBOR’s election results, Drewes Farms Partnership sued the City seeking an injunction against enforcing LEBOR and a court ruling that LEBOR is unconstitutional. Several Toledo city-council members spoke out against the enactment of LEBOR before the election, and it appears that the City will not enforce LEBOR. Yes, you read that correctly: After LEBOR won with 61% of the vote (nearly two-thirds of those who voted), the City of Toledo agreed to an injunction prohibiting them from enforcing the law.
In response to such bald face tactics, we must ask, if a local city government agrees not to enforce the will of its citizens, then what really is left of the notion of a government for and by the people? And the inevitable answer must be, nothing. Indeed, as environmental author Derrick Jensen explains in his book Endgame:
“Surely by now there can be few here who still believe the purpose of government is to protect us from the destructive activities of corporations. At last most of us must understand that the opposite is true: that the primary purpose of government is to protect those who run the economy from the outrage of injured citizens.”
Jensen’s conclusion eerily reflects the very plain statement by Attorney General Richard Olney, who served under President Grover Cleveland in 1894 about the newly-formed Interstate Commerce Commission. The ICC was the very first federal regulatory agency, created to ‘regulate’ the railroad industry, but as Olney (a former railroad attorney, himself) said:
“The Commission…is, or can be, made of great use to the railroads. It satisfies the popular clamor for a government supervision of railroads, at the same time that that supervision is almost entirely nominal. Further, the older such a commission gets to be, the more inclined it will be found to take the business and railroad view of things.”
Nearly 200 years later, Jensen’s observation reflects the reality that not only does our regulatory system not protect the interests of the people of this country; it was never intended to. It was created to protect industry.
And so the parade of horribles that Toledoans for Safe Water have encountered should come as no surprise. A little over two months after the lawsuit was filed by the agriculture industry to strike down LEBOR, the State of Ohio requested, and was granted, the right to intervene to argue with Drewes Farms Partnership that LEBOR should be invalidated. TSW also tried to intervene on behalf of Lake Erie, exercising their new rights under LEBOR and arguing that the City is not an adequate representative of LEBOR. The City neither opposed TSW’s intervention in the case, nor denied that it would be an inadequate representative of LEBOR. Regardless, on Tuesday, May 7, Judge Jack Zouhary, a U.S. District Judge in the Northern District of Ohio, Western Division denied Toledoans for Safe Water’s intervention. Lake Erie and TSW asked the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to stay (legalese for postpone) the case while they appealed Zouhary’s denial of their intervention. But, the Sixth Circuit refused to stay the case.
Because Zouhary has denied Toledoans for Safe Water’s intervention and the Sixth Circuit did not grant Lake Erie’s and TSW’s request to stay the case, it will proceed with no one who supports LEBOR present to argue on behalf of Lake Erie or the citizens of Toledo for the remainder of a case that will decide the fate of a law enacted by the citizens of Toledo. To be clear, the City government, popularly assumed to represent the will of the City’s people, is specifically not representing the will of the people.
About an hour after denying Lake Erie and Toledoans for Safe Water’s intervention, Zouhary scheduled a phone conference for Friday, May 17 while ordering the parties to the lawsuit to send him letters regarding a Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings. Typically, parties to a lawsuit file motions and briefs describing their arguments and these motions and briefs become part of the public record so that the public can see why legal decisions are made. In specifically asking for letters, Zouhary shielded Drewes Farms Partnership’s, the State of Ohio’s, and the City of Toledo’s arguments from public scrutiny. Here we see how the will of the people, expressed through the legislative process, can be effectively silenced by the judicial process. The courts, commonly thought of as a check on abuses of power by the legislative branch of government that encroach on fundamental rights of individuals, have now been unmasked as a vehicle to silence and overturn the will of the people and to legitimize further violations of fundamental rights of the people – in this case the simple and essential right to clean water.
And to round out the evidence that we do not live in a democracy, on Thursday, May 9, the Ohio House of Representatives adopted its 2020-2021 budget with provisions that prohibit anyone, including local governments, from enforcing rights of nature laws. The State of Ohio is using its power of preemption – a long-established legal doctrine that defines the relationship of municipal governments to state and federal governments as one of parent to a child – to prevent Ohio residents from protecting the natural world with rights of nature at any time in the future.
This is a perfect example of why CELDF lawyer and executive director Thomas Linzey often states that, “Sustainability itself has been rendered illegal under our system of law.” And:
“Under our system of law, you see, it doesn’t matter how many people mobilize or who we elect – simply because the levers of law can’t be directly exercised by them. And even when they do manage to swing the smallest of those levers, they get swung back (either through the legislature or the courts) by a corporate minority who claimed control over them a long time ago.”
Toledoans for Safe Water swung “the smallest of those levers” and now they have been “swung back” by both the legislature and the courts in favor of the corporate minority. We see then, that under our current system of laws, there is no government actor that validates and protects the will of the people. In the case of Lake Erie, the City of Toledo, the State of Ohio, two levels of federal courts (the District Court for the District of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals), have all actively undermined the health and welfare and the express political will of the citizens of Toledo – all in the name of preserving and protecting the freedom of agricultural interests to continue polluting Lake Erie for the sake of their own profits.
***
With it being all but certain that the Lake Erie Bill of Rights will soon be officially invalidated, has Toledoans for Safe Water’s work been in vain?
Not entirely.
“Unquestioned beliefs are the real authorities of a culture,” critic Robert Coombs tells us. Right now, the culture of profit in our country, sanctioned by the legal system is destroying the planet. Informing this dominant culture is a collection of unquestioned beliefs that authorize and allow the massive environmental destruction we currently witness. Stopping the destruction requires changing the dominant culture and changing the dominant culture requires publicly challenging unquestioned beliefs so those unquestioned beliefs are exposed to the light where they can be seen, understood, and condemned.
Perhaps surprisingly, one of the unquestioned beliefs authorizing ecocide is the belief that we live in a democracy and, because we live in a democracy, that our government reflects the will of the governed. This mistaken belief leads to more mistaken beliefs including a belief that the best way to make change is to petition your elected representatives, and if they won’t listen, to elect new ones who will. This misconception includes the further mistaken belief that the American regulatory framework exists to protect the natural world and the humans who depend on Her and that therefore filing lawsuits under the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts can stop the destruction of endangered species, our habitat, and the air and water we require.
We should all know the truth, by now. We do not live in a democracy, and our government was never intended to reflect the will of the governed. Our elected representatives only listen to us when the corporations they’re beholden to aren’t telling them what to do. The regulatory framework does not exist primarily to protect the natural world; it exists to issue permits, to give permission, to legalize the harm corporate projects wreak on the natural world, and to make it near impossible for the citizenry to oppose those projects.
Even some of the current government’s most sacred documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, the Ohio State Constitution, as well as many other state constitutions, declare that people have a right to reform, alter, or even abolish the very governments those documents create when those governments fail to reflect the will of the people. The people of Toledo tried to exercise that right by passing LEBOR. Regardless, the very institutions supposedly tasked with honoring these documents are preventing the people from exercising the rights asserted in the Declaration of Independence and protected by the Ohio State Constitution.
We should all know the truth, by now, but most people still don’t. It’s one thing to tell people the truth. And, it’s another to show them. A major question, then, for social and environmental justice advocates is: How do we show people the truth?
One way is through acts of civil disobedience like enacting the Lake Erie Bill of Rights. A primary purpose of civil disobedience is to expose unquestioned beliefs for what they really are. In the case of the regulatory fallacy described above, these unquestioned beliefs serve as propaganda intended to pacify the people. Civil disobedience can stage the truth of our situation for the public to behold. Properly applied, civil disobedience can illuminate unquestioned beliefs and unveil their falsehoods.
CELDF attacks unquestioned beliefs through what it calls “organizing jujitsu.” CELDF helps communities suffering from destructive corporate projects (like fracking, factory farms, and toxic waste storage) ban those projects by passing local laws establishing rights of nature and invalidating judicially-created corporate rights. These laws, however, are currently illegal under American law and are, inevitably, struck down by the courts.
So, why does CELDF keep helping communities pass laws that are almost always struck down? This is where the organizing jujitsu happens. The laws that CELDF helps communities pass are frontal challenges to long-settled legal doctrines. When judges rule against local laws, judges’ rulings can be used as proof of how the structure actually operates. In CELDF’s words:
“Much like using single matches to illuminate a painting in a dark room, enough matches need to be struck simultaneously (and burn long enough) so that the painting can be viewed in its entirety. Each municipality is a match, and each instance of a law being overturned as violative of these legal doctrines is an opportunity for people to see how the structure actually functions. This does the necessary work of penetrating the denial, piercing the illusion of democracy, and removing the blinders that prevent a large majority of people from seeing the reality on the ground.”
With the indicators of ecological collapse constantly intensifying, it is imperative that we penetrate the denial, pierce the illusion of democracy, and remove the blinders that prevent people from seeing reality as quickly as possible. Due to the thoroughness of American indoctrination, the education civil disobedience can provide needs to be supported by real-time commentary that highlights why a specific tactic failed. This real-time commentary will help the public see the truth.
Toledoans for Safe Water has used every legal means at their disposal to protect Lake Erie and, yet, the Lake Erie Bill of Rights is not being enforced and is almost certain to be invalidated in court. Meanwhile, the poisoning of Lake Erie intensifies. Toledoans for Safe Water’s civil disobedience, despite challenging a widespread faith in the American legal system, has failed to physically protect Lake Erie. Breaking this faith is a necessary, but not sufficient, step towards dismantling the dominant culture and replacing it with a new culture rooted in a humble recognition of our dependency on the natural world. For those who see the truth that neither the legal system nor the government will protect us, the question becomes: What are we willing to do to protect ourselves?
—
Will Falk is a biophilic writer and lawyer. He believes the natural world speaks. And, his work is an attempt to listen. In 2017, he helped to file the first-ever federal lawsuit seeking rights of nature for a major ecosystem, the Colorado River. His book How Dams Fall which chronicles his experiences representing the Colorado River in the lawsuit, will be published by HomeBound Publications in October, 2019. You can follow Will’s work at willfalk.org.
Sean Butler is a technology lawyer and environmental activist based in Sequim, WA. In addition to his practice supporting venture-backed startups he is working to advance the rights of nature.
