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