For Immediate Release:

Lafayette Citizens Launch Class Action Lawsuit to Protect Community Rights Ban on Fracking

Contact:

Cliff Willmeng 303 478 6613

East Boulder County United: EastBoCoUnited@gmail.com

Lafayette citizens have filed a class action lawsuit against the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, the State of Colorado, and Colorado Governor Hickenlooper, requesting immediate enforcement of the Lafayette Community Rights Amendment to Ban Fracking. The Community Rights Amendment was enacted in November of 2013 by a 60% majority of Lafayette voters, who asserted their rights to protect the health, welfare, and safety of Lafayette residents. It is the position of the Lafayette citizens that the oil and gas industry, aided by Governor Hickenlooper and the State of Colorado, interferes with those fundamental rights, that are described and protected by the charter amendment and the Colorado and United States Constitutions.

Following the passage of the Lafayette Community Rights Amendment, the city of Lafayette was sued by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, who claims that their powers under the Colorado Oil and Gas Act are superior to the democratic will of Lafayette people, and that do not recognize people’s right to self determination. The local organization, writing and successfully campaigning for the Lafayette Community Rights Amendment, East Boulder County United, attempted to join that lawsuit. They were rejected from becoming part of that lawsuit after the court determined that arguments about people’s fundamental rights were extrinsic to that court case.

Long time Lafayette resident and East Boulder County United member Ann Griffin stated, “I stand with the people of Lafayette who voiced their support for this charter amendment by an overwhelming majority. What is democracy without this voice?”. Ann worked on the campaign for enactment of the Lafayette Community Rights Amendment, and currently enjoys its provisions detailing her right to clean air and water, the right to self-determination, and the right to be free from chemical trespass. In a city that neighbors the thousands of oil and gas wells in Weld County, the Community Rights Amendment is what stands between a massive industrialization of her community and the preservation of quality of life and public safety.

“Lafayette will take enforcement action on their fundamental rights, which are being directly threatened by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association”, said Cliff Willmeng, registered nurse, Lafayette resident and father of two. “We had to take action to protect this community, its families and property, and will continue to establish our rights to health, safety and welfare. These are not subordinate to corporate privilege, and they are not the property of the Governor or the State of Colorado to either give away or to overrule.”

Cliff Willmeng is also a proponent on ballot initiative 75, the Colorado Community Rights Amendment, The Amendment, which is in its signature gathering phase, will clarify Colorado’s community’s right to local self government, and a community’s authority to protect its fundamental rights from corporate and industrial interference.

 

Coalition of Politicians and Corporations Moves Statewide Effort to Ban Democracy in Colorado.

By Cliff Willmeng

April, 2014

Undaunted by the power and special interests of nearly five million Colorado citizens, a coalition of politicians and industrial and corporate leaders are steadily advancing a bold campaign to ban democracy and community rights in the hotly contested state. Democracy, a long-debated idea between multinationals and common human beings, has increasingly become a household discussion in the mountain state, giving rise to corporate fears that perhaps the concentrations of democratic decision making statewide may pose too great of a risk to vulnerable living standards of CEOs and shareholders. Through their statewide campaign, the grassroots network of State and corporate interests will seek to protect what they consider their fundamental rights, and move beyond the regulation of democracy, so as to eliminate it from public life altogether.

The industrial movement has added incentive and urgency this year, as controversial state ballot measure number 75, the “Colorado Community Rights Amendment”, heads ever closer toward the signature gathering effort needed to place it to a direct vote of the Colorado people in 2014.  The measure, advanced by regular, unpaid citizens, threatens the very fabric of corporate power, and goes so far as to grant communities and individuals, “…the power to enact local laws protecting health, safety, and welfare by establishing the fundamental rights of individuals, their communities, and nature...”. The measure goes further, and grants these same individuals and communities, “…the power to enact local laws establishing, defining, altering, or eliminating the rights, powers, and duties of corporations…”, an assertion seen a contradictory to the established interests of CEOs and their friends in government.

For industry, the perceived threats to corporate rights have recently been on the rise in the Colorado. Exemplified by the incursion of front-range communities in the most recent elections, people and communities took advantage of Colorado law using local ballot measures to delay or prohibit the relatively powerless clientele of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association from drilling within their city limits. Prior to the elections of November, 2013, the Colorado Mining Association found itself under similar threat, as Summit, Gilpin, Conejos, Castillo, and Gunnison Counties all enacted local laws prohibiting the use of cyanide in mining there. In the view of these small but passionate corporations, it was only the determination and leverage of the Colorado Supreme Court that could restore justice and right the situation. In the case of Summit County, the ban on cyanide was found offensive to State authority, and in a 2009 ruling, was fully overturned. Attempting to build on that victory, the Colorado Oil and Gas Association has filed similar lawsuits against the communities of Longmont, Lafayette and Fort Collins. The results of that litigation are still pending.

  Among the major concerns for today’s CEOs is what they believe to be a direct relationship between democracy and community rights, a belief they feel is exemplified by opposition documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the speeches of the powerful Martin Luther King Jr..  Drawing from historic examples, industry leaders point to what they consider to be America’s dark past, where the freedoms of wealthy entrepreneurs and individuals came under perceived threat by efforts ranging from the abolitionist movement to strikes and marches by fringe elements like working people in the 1930s. If left to themselves, the CEOs and politicians contend, people may eventually have the power to make informed decisions, and communities may eventually grow so bold as to create entire sustainable economies, all at the cost of the common Goldman Sachs Chief Economic Officer, or even Wall Street itself.

  House Majority Leader Dicky Lee Hullinghorst, D – Boulder was quoted by the Denver Post on January 21^st of this year, speaking to the growing problem of democracy in her state. “When you do things at the ballot box, I think you frequently make a lot of mistakes that create difficulties in the future.” This view was shared by some of the founding fathers themselves like John Adams, for example, who stated that democracy is, “the tyranny of the majority”, and James Madison who asserted that government, “…ought to be constituted so as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority”. These are the traces of a true Corporate Rights Movement, according to transnational organizers, who seek to embody its historical traditions.

  These are truly days of shifting and dynamic politics in the State of Colorado, and only time and the changing grounds of political allegiance will tell what is next on the Forture 500’s horizon. Organizers say that regardless of the power of common people, and the relatively unpopular idea of a full Corporate State, they will forge on, overturning local ordinances, consuming vast sections of the environment and economy, and keeping the commoners far from any perceived rights to health, safety, welfare, self determination or other such inherently dangerous ideas.

The Colorado Community Rights Amendment #75

The Colorado Community Rights Amendment #75

On Wednesday, April 2, ballot initiative number 75, the Colorado Community Rights Amendment, passed the legal requirements set by the State of Colorado to begin the process to be placed on the 2014 ballot. There still exist major hurdles, including a possible challenge to the Colorado Supreme Court that various corporate interests could resort to, and at minimum, over 86,000 verified signatures that still need to be gathered before August of this year. But Wednesday’s decision from the Secretary of State Title Board showed that the text and intent behind the measure reflect the cohesion necessary to bring its ideas into public life. 

The Colorado Community Rights Amendment is perhaps the most encompassing measure that Colorado voters could have before them this year.  The measure has relevance to all areas, demographics, and geographies of Colorado, and the reason behind this is that the Amendment acknowledges rights that can be asserted against any threat, not just a single one. The Colorado Community Rights Amendment, instead, is a measure that addresses democracy itself and gives voters a direct vote on who or what should be the highest authority over the definition, protection, and advancement of our most basic and fundamental rights. The amendment’s opposition claims that the protection of our rights is secondary to the authority of corporate interests. It is the contention of the Colorado Community Rights Network that corporate power should be the subordinate of our democracy, and not the other way around. And this is the fulcrum that the Colorado Community Rights Amendment will rest upon. 

For years, the people of Colorado, like in many regions of the United States, have found themselves in a profound legal knot with immediate, far-reaching, and occasionally, life-threatening implications. Because as the forces have lined up in our state, it has become clear that communities, in attempting to protect their health, safety, and welfare, are running into a well-crafted system of corporate law that subordinates us to the will of everything from transnational mining interests, to the same fossil fuel industry set to propel our people and planet over the edge of global environmental collapse. This system of corporate law has very tangible implications to communities. For example, if you live in places like Longmont, Lafayette, or Fort Collins, it means that your vote to protect your community from oil and gas development is threatened with being overturned by the litigation of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, claiming that their mineral interests are of higher importance and legal standing than your health, safety, welfare, or even your right to democratic self determination. It’s the same dynamic that forced Summit County to accept the industrial use of cyanide for gold mining there in 2009 when the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Colorado Mining Association over that municipality, stating that Summit County had no right to protection from what is an obvious and well established poison. The decision had immediate effect for Gunnison, Conejo, Gilpin, and Costillo Counties as well and eradicated local protective laws on cyanide use established for those communities. 

These are just a few examples of how corporations, through the use of our State government and Colorado courts, are advancing their interests, and how these advances can only be made at the expense of democracy itself. In the course of it, our fundamental community rights are discarded, and our very lives relegated to an afterthought of legal inconsequence. It is a legal paradigm that sometimes is only experienced when people or communities attempt to assert themselves and protect what they consider to be their inherent right to health, safety and welfare. 
But as corporations continue to accrue greater and more comprehensive power over our lives, there needs to be a strategy, and a general movement to establish real democracy so that our fundamental rights, as we the people define them, are advanced and recognized. The Colorado Community Rights Amendment begins that process and delivers a tangible, living choice to the people of Colorado.  It is a choice between community rights and corporate power, and for the first time after many years of retreat, it would appear that we may have the chance to turn the tide against the inherently unequal, unjust, and fully unsustainable offensive of the corporate system. 

Ballot initiative number 75, the Colorado Community Rights Amendment, is assured to drive the debate between democracy and corporate power. And we at the Colorado Community Rights Network have found agreement with the Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico when they call these ideas, “…the beginning of a social movement that is greater than the oil and gas industry, it is a potential game changer for all of corporate America”. Because our rights, our democracy, and our future are what is at stake in this game, and it is our aim to change the rules so that those rights and ideas are recognized and given their full legitimate authority. 

Help us organize and build the Community Rights movement and the campaign for enactment of the Colorado Community Rights Amendment. In the process, consider what you believe to be your fundamental rights now and what those rights should include in the future. This may be banning an unwanted corporate project the creation of a right to living wage, or to health care and education. We are the people, and the decisions that affect our communities, our lives, and our world need to be ours to make. If it was ever a time for a game change, that time is now. Amendment 75 gives Colorado voters the opportunity to define the rules. .  

Cliff Willmeng
Colorado Community Rights Network
Website: Cocrn.org
FB: https://www.facebook.com/COCommunityRights
Email: CoCommRights@gmail.com
Twitter:@CoCommRights