Courts

by Jason Flores-Williams Denver, CO–In an unprecedented and direct assault on First Amendment rights, Extraction Oil & Gas, the fracking corporation responsible for the massive Bella Wells extraction site–the largest fracking site next to a public school in the United States–filed suit on March 23, 2018 against Cullen Lobe in his personal capacity. Cullen Lobe is a Colorado State University student who participated in non-violent civil disobedience against Extraction Oil and Gas on March 9, 2018. ...

Featured image: Mario Lopez/EPA by Gabriella Rutherford / Intercontinental Cry Indigenous communities know all too well of the potentially devastating risks that the construction of mega-projects can entail. Time and again, such projects have led to irreparable environmental damage that harmed if not destroyed the well-being, culture, economy and traditional ways of local communities. The Raizal Peoples who inhabit the San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina archipelago, Colombia could become one more indigenous community to be affected in this way. Should Nicaragua’s plans to build a canal go ahead, there is the risk that the massive project—that would rival the Panama Canal—would muddy and pollute nearby waters and potentially destroy the reef on which the Raizals depend. ...

Suit Seeks Ban on Mexican Seafood Imports to Prevent Extinction of Vaquita by Center for Biological Diversity WASHINGTON— Conservation groups filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration today for failing to respond to their emergency request to ban certain seafood imports from Mexico’s Gulf of California in order to save the critically endangered vaquita porpoise from extinction. Fewer than 30 vaquita now remain on the planet after the population suffered a 95 percent decline over the past 20 years. Entanglement in fishing gillnets is the sole threat to the species’ survival. Scientists predict that the vaquita will be extinct by 2019 if fishing practices remain unchanged. ...

Featured image: Supporters of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments during a rally Saturday, Dec. 2, 2017 in Salt Lake City. AP Photo/Rick Bowmer by Nicholas Bryner, University of California, Los Angeles; Eric Biber, University of California, Berkeley; Mark Squillace, University of Colorado, and Sean B. Hecht, University of California, Los Angeles / The Conversation On Dec. 4, President Trump traveled to Utah to sign proclamations downsizing Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by nearly 50 percent. “[S]ome people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington,” Trump said. “And guess what? They’re wrong.” ...

Editor’s note: The first Rights of Nature lawsuit in the United States, Colorado River v. Colorado, was filed September 25, 2017, in Denver, Colorado. The full text of the complaint can be found here. by Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition Denver, CO - The Colorado Attorney General has threatened the attorney who filed the first federal rights of nature lawsuit with sanctions if he does not voluntarily withdraw the Complaint. Rights of Nature activists will gather at dusk (4:30 pm) on Friday, December 1st, outside the Alfred A. Arraj Federal Courthouse, 901 19th St, Denver, CO 80294 in a display of creative resistance. They will demand that the Colorado River have her day in court, condemn the Attorney General’s intimidatory tactics, and call for the American legal system to grant the Colorado River Ecosystem the same rights as corporations. ...

IN AN ATTEMPT TO INTIMIDATE US AND SILENCE THE RIGHTS OF NATURE MOVEMENT, THE COLORADO ATTORNEY GENERAL HAS THREATENED SANCTIONS AGAINST OUT LAWSUIT, COLORADO RIVER V. COLORADO. Editor’s note: The first Rights of Nature lawsuit in the United States, Colorado River v. Colorado, was filed September 25, 2017, in Denver, Colorado. The full text of the complaint can be found here. Denver, CO—The Colorado Attorney General has issued an ultimatum to the attorney who filed the first federal rights of nature law suit: voluntarily withdraw the Complaint or face sanctions. ...

Editor’s note: The Rights of Nature movement has arrived in the United States! On September 25, Deep Green Resistance, with noted civil rights attorney Jason Flores-Williams, filed a first-in-the-nation lawsuit - Colorado River v. Colorado - seeking personhood for the Colorado River and recognition of the river’s rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and naturally evolve in the United States District Court, District of Denver. While courts in India, New Zealand, and Ecuador have granted rights to ecosytems, this lawsuit represents the first Rights of Nature action ever brought before a federal court. If the case succeeds, the natural world will gain a powerful new tool in the struggle to stop corporate exploitation. ...

Editor’s note: The first Rights of Nature lawsuit in the US was filed on September 25, 2017, in Denver, Colorado. The full text of the complaint can be found here. by Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance Great Basin In the war for social and environmental justice, even the best lawyers rarely serve as anything more than battlefield medics. They do what they can to stop the bleeding for the people, places, and causes suffering on the front lines, but they do not possess the weapons to return fire in any serious way. Lawyers lack effective weapons because American law functions to protect those in power from the rest of us; effective legal weapons are, quite literally, outlawed. ...

Featured image: The 2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill in the Animas River, in southwest Colorado. The Animas is a tributary to the Colorado River. Editor’s note: The first Rights of Nature lawsuit in the US was filed on September 25, 2017, in Denver, Colorado. The full text of the complaint can be found here. “Contemporary public concern for protecting nature’s ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation.” Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Sierra Club v. Morton (1972) ...

by Michael Bucci / Deep Green Resistance New York Honorable Daniel F. McCarthy, Town Justice Town of Cortlandt Justice Court One Heady Street, Cortlandt Manor, New York 10567 Re: Order to Appear at Violation of Conditional Discharge Hearing-June 29, 2017, Docket # 15110186 Dear Judge McCarthy, Thank you for the opportunity to present our necessity defense during our trial and to explain why we were, on that chilly morning in November, 2015, blockading the construction of Spectra Energy’s Algonquin Incremental Market Project pipeline that runs 400 feet from elementary schools and homes, and 105 feet from critical safety infrastructure at the failed Indian Point nuclear power plant on the Hudson River in Westchester County, NY. ...