Water

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. ...

Featured image by Michelle McCarron Editor’s note: This is the latest installment from Will Falk as he follows the Colorado River from headwaters to delta, before heading to court to argue for the Colorado River to be recognized as having inherent rights. More details on the lawsuit are here. The index of dispatches is here. by Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition Water is life. But, water is also death. Water brings pleasant taste to the parched tongue, but water also brings stinging numbness to the warm blooded. Water taken through the esophagus brings hydration. Water taken through the lungs brings suffocation. Water may be disrespected for a time, but the longer the passage of water is hampered, the angrier water becomes. Water has a long memory and, where others forget, water carries pollutants and poisons for decades. ...

Featured image by Michelle McCarron Editor’s note: This is the latest installment from Will Falk as he follows the Colorado River from headwaters to delta, before heading to court to argue for the Colorado River to be recognized as having inherent rights. More details on the lawsuit are here. The index of dispatches is here. by Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition Tuesday, I stood on the steps of the Alfred A. Arraj Federal Courthouse in Denver before a crowd gathered to hear my thoughts as one of the “next friends” in our lawsuit seeking personhood for the Colorado River. We were supposed to have a hearing, but the court postponed it at the last minute. With so many of us traveling to Denver from across the Colorado River Basin, we decided to proceed with the press conference anyway. ...

Featured image by Michelle McCarron Editor’s note: This is the latest installment from Will Falk as he follows the Colorado River from headwaters to delta, before heading to court to argue for the Colorado River to be recognized as having inherent rights. More details on the lawsuit are here. The index of dispatches is here. by Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition In most places, Life protects the modern human’s fragile sense of self-importance by veiling the weight of time in the soft accumulation of soil, by disguising the vastness of the universe in the reassuring consistency of an undisturbed horizon, and by salving existential angst with a diversity of nonhuman companions. There are places, however, where Life refuses to disguise herself and human self-importance disintegrates. ...

Featured image by Michelle McCarron Editor’s note: This is the latest installment from Will Falk as he follows the Colorado River from headwaters to delta, before heading to court to argue for the Colorado River to be recognized as having inherent rights. More details on the lawsuit are here. The index of dispatches is here. by Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition To truly understand someone, you must begin at her birth. So, Michelle and I spent the last two days looking for the Colorado River’s headwaters in the cold and snow above La Poudre Pass on the north edge of Rocky Mountain National Park. The pass is accessible by Long Draw Road off of Colorado Highway 14. Long Draw Road is an unpaved, winding, pot-holed trek that takes you fourteen miles through pine and fir forests and past the frigid Long Draw Reservoir before ending abruptly in a willow’d flat. ...

Featured image by Michelle McCarron Editor’s note: This is the latest installment from Will Falk as he follows the Colorado River from headwaters to delta, before heading to court to argue for the Colorado River to be recognized as having inherent rights. More details on the lawsuit are here. The index of dispatches is here. by Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition When I agreed to serve as a “next friend” to the Colorado River in a first-ever federal lawsuit seeking personhood and rights of nature for the river, I agreed to represent the river’s interests in court. On a general level, it’s not difficult to conceptualize the Colorado River’s interests: pollution kills the river’s inhabitants, climate change threatens the snowpack that provides much of the river’s water, and dams prevent the river from flowing to the sea in the Gulf of California. ...

by Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition 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. ...

Featured image: Lake Powell, photographed April 12, 2017. The white ‘bathtub ring’ at the cliff base indicates how much higher the lake reached at its peak, nearly 100 feet above the current level. Patti Weeks by Brad Udall, Colorado State University and Jonathan Overpeck, University of Arizona / The Conversation The nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead on the Arizona/Nevada border and Lake Powell on the Arizona/Utah border, were brim full in the year 2000. Four short years later, they had lost enough water to supply California its legally apportioned share of Colorado River water for more than five years. Now, 17 years later, they still have not recovered. ...

Featured image: International Solidarity Mission delegates listen to testimonies by Tumandok men and women in Barangay Agcalaga, Calinog. Photo Credits: Jalaur River for the People Movement. By Karlo Mikhail Mongaya, GlobalVoices The Tumandok ( Panay-Bukidnon) indigenous peoples of the central Philippine Island of Panay are facing the real possibility of being forced from their homes due to the construction of the Jalaur Mega Dam, which will leave indigenous communities in the municipality of Calinog, Iloilo underwater. ...