Congratulations to the people of Toledo OH, who recently amended their city charter to give legal standing to Lake Erie, the first time such recognition has been accorded to an entire ecosystem.

The victory follows years of collaboration between Toledoans for Safe Water and the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, as well as decades of regulatory failure and recent severe algal blooms. Opponents included big agricultural interests represented by the Chamber of Commerce and the Farm Bureau. The lake is the primary source of drinking water for Toledo, so its health impacts the health of some 300,000 people on its shores. In 2014, more than 100 people were sickened by algae which had proliferated thanks to agricultural run-off. 

The Alliance has also played a role in the movement to gain legal standing for nature. Back in 2005, the Alliance for Democracy's Defending Water for Life campaign brought the CELDF strategy of rights-based ordinances to Barnstead NH where citizens were organizing to prevent bottled water companies from privatizing their water. By the following spring, the citizens passed the first ordinance in the country to declare...

“...We the People of the Town of Barnstead declare that we have the duty to safeguard the water both on and beneath the Earth’s surface, and in the process, safeguard the rights of people within the community of Barnstead, and the rights of the ecosystems of which Barnstead is a part...”

In quick succession three more towns in NH passed similar ordinances and the following year two towns in Maine did so as well. You can read the full Barnstead ordinance here. 

"We praise the residents of Toledo Ohio for expanding this rights-based strategy to apply to the whole Lake Erie ecosystem," said AfD's Ruth Caplan, who brought the rights-based approach to Barnstead.

Alliance members in Oregon and Massachusetts have been working on ballot questions that take on campaign finance reform and Citizens United, and on Election Day, those efforts paid off.
In Portland, the Alliance for Democracy chapter worked to pass a city charter amendment establishing limits on campaign contributions/expenditures. The Honest Elections charter amendment will add donation limits to the city charter, including a $500 limit on donations from individuals, and a limit of $5,000 on loans from candidates to their own campaigns. It also mandates disclosure by name of funders for campaign ads and other communications, along with the industry they represent.

The measure passed 87% to 12%, with about three-quarters of the votes counted as of Wednesday.

This Portland ballot measure is based on an earlier county-wide ballot question, which passed in 2016 with almost 90% support. Unfortunately, implementation of this measure is currently tied up in the court system, where a judge has ruled that the measure's limit on individual donations is a violation of state protection of free speech.

Oregon is a campaign finance cellar-dweller, second only to Mississippi in terms of regulation, and scoring nearly straight Fs in a 2015 study of state anti-corruption initiatives. (The Koch-funded "Institute for Free Speech," on the other hand, gives Oregon an A for having the "best" system of campaign finance regulation, that is to say none).

As a result, it takes a lot of money to run for office in Oregon, with donations coming mostly from developers, timber companies, and finance. Oregon state legislature candidates raise and spend more money, per capita, than candidates in any other state, except for New Jersey.

In Massachusetts, several Alliance members worked on the “Yes on 2” campaign. Proposed by American Promise, Question 2 supports a federal amendment to overturn Citizens United, and creates a "citizen's commission" to "investigate and report on the effects Citizens United and similar court cases have had on our political discourse."

Massachusetts democracy activists remember how their legislature blocked a Clean Elections initiative, and how the state's public banking study commission was quickly dominated by big banks who decided a public bank was unnecessary. Having already passed more than 200 local resolutions for an amendment, they weren't surprised that Question 2 passed—with with 72% of the vote—but they expect the real campaign will be to get a commission appointed quickly, and have it include activists from grassroots groups. Stay tuned!

How will you stop the war machine?

The US has been at war for 93% of its history, not counting covert actions. Its military budget is by far the largest in the world at more than $600 billion, spending supported by Democrats and Republicans alike.

But national and global peace movements are at work too, building broad-based, grassroots, intersectional movements against militarism and its ills. National and international actions include Keep Space for Peace Week, the Women's March on the Pentagon, the November 10 Peace Congress: End the Wars at Home and Abroad, and the First International Conference Against US/NATO Military Bases in Dublin. Alliance co-Chair Nancy Price will be attending both the DC and the Dublin conferences.

We hope to bring you updates and ideas for local organizing. Solidarity events are being planned for the Women's March on the Pentagon. A local event can be as simple as an evening or Saturday afternoon standout at a busy intersection, or a larger event with speakers working for economic justice, better health care and education, or climate protection--all areas seriously impacted by the US addiction to war and big military budgets. Or write a letter to the editor, an excellent way for one person to impact the public consciousness on war and peace.

And if you are attending candidate events, ask these questions:

1. Do you support cutting military spending and redirecting that money toward much-needed domestic programs? What would you cut and how much? Where would you reallocate that funding? 

2. Do you support auditing the Pentagon as outlined in the People's Budget and the Audit the Pentagon Act, in order to reduce waste and fraud?

3. Nuclear weapons stockpiles have shrunk since the height of the Cold War but no nation with nuclear weapons joined in the effort to negotiate and pass the recent UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Do you support nuclear disarmament? Do you think it is achievable? In the meantime, would you support legislation prohibiting the President from using the Armed Forces to conduct a first-use nuclear strike unless expressly authorized by a congressional declaration?

The Common Ground Fair, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardners Association’s huge celebration of all things agricultural and much, much more, takes place every year on the third weekend in September, drawing some 60,000 attendees to the Unity fairgrounds. This year Local Food Rules was there, presenting to a standing-room-only audience.

Their speakers were four of the dozens of town-level organizers who have brought the campaign's Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinances to Selectmen, Town Meetings, or City Councillors. Suzanne Dunham, Jesse Watson, Brooke Isham and Steve DeGoosh each told their stories and inspired listeners with tales of success in varying circumstances, and persistence when confronted by a hostile town government. 

There were many good questions from the audience, and Local Food Rules campaign coordinator and Alliance co-Vice Chair Bonnie Preston expects more ordinances will be passed as a result. The ordinance has now passed in 43 towns with at least one town in 14 of 16 counties in the state of Maine. 

Three of the Common Ground speakers will also take their stories to a November conference on relocalization for economic democracy--look for more info in our next e-newsletter. The Local Food Rules campaign is also organizing individuals who took charge of ordinance campaigns to talk to people in neighboring towns who are interested in the ordinance.

What has started as very local actions in very small towns has grown into a real drive to ensure food sovereignty for Maine people and communities, to protect and expand the state's small-farm economy, and to protect the health of people, environment, and soil. This is how grassroots organizing works, spreading quietly but inexorably from success to success.

​A new trade deal? Not without these non-negotiables
Just a few hours after we hit “send” on our our last e-news, the media reported that US-Mexico negotiations on NAFTA have resulted in a preliminary deal. 

From briefings with labor and trade experts, and statements from Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH and a leader on progressive trade issues), we have some hope that this new NAFTA will be an improvement over the old. 

But we know that multinationals will push hard against a better deal. And we still have demands:

• First, negotiated in secret, until the full text is released, we won't know for sure what's on the table. Three years ago, we joined with activists across the world for a release of the TPP text. NAFTA 2.0 is no different.
• Second, we need to ensure that Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) is out of NAFTA. Corporations are not entitled to their own court system. ISDS allows corporations to attack laws and regulatory decisions that protect the environment and climate, public health, the safety of water, and local economies and ask for sums far in excess of any actual business loss.
• Third, with the climate crisis upon us and millions of workers in low-wage jobs, we must have a trade agreement with strong and enforceable environmental and labor, and one that eliminates any other incentives to outsource jobs.

In our e-news, we included a link to a petition to Congress, demanding an end to ISDS and protection for jobs and environment. If you haven't signed, please do, and share with others who will. 

Remember that if in the end, this deal turns out to be any kind of improvement, it's not a gift from politicians, but the result of that huge popular pushback against the TPP here in the U.S. 

We blocked THAT bad deal and we can block one again if it does not put people and planet before corporate rule and corporate profits.

It's no secret that our elections are at risk from undetectable disruption and manipulation by sources  in the US or elsewhere, a risk compounded by public officials and legislators who deny this problem, and by electronic voting systems vendors who ignore or downplay the evidence and obvious potential for tampering. 

Now, just in time for the mid-term elections, there is legislation that will help reform this situation—the Secure Elections Act (SEA) has been introduced. 

On August 22, the Senate Rules Committee will start deliberations on this important bill. The security of our elections demands that it not be weakened. 

Please call or write your Senators and state election officials and demand they protect the Secure Election Act’s strong language supporting manual post-election audits of voter-verified paper ballots.

If you need to get up to speed on this issue fast, there is no better resource than our Fall 2016 issue of Justice Rising on “The People's Vote Must Count: Reclaim Elections, Restore Voting Rights, Protect Our Ballots.” Articles focus on hackable voting machines and the corporate pedigree of electronic voting machine vendors, along with a “how to “ for a successful local campaign for hand-counted paper ballots. Other topics covered include gerrymandering and voter suppression. You can read it online here, as well as download pdfs of individual articles. 
For print copies, please contact us via email or call us at 978-333-7971. 

This sample letter to election officials and  this letter to Congress signed by experts on election security will also provide background for your call. 

The situation is critical as we go into the mid-terms elections. Meanwhile, more than 40 states use electronic voting systems more than 10 years old, and  28 states report that a majority of the machines they use need updates.

Additionally, computer scientists have detailed vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems while cyberattacks originating from both within and from outside the US have been documented. 

Too much of our election security debate has focused on the non-problem of unenrolled or ineligible voters casting ballots - the pet cause of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Trump to set up a Congressional Voter Fraud Commission that has now been completely discredited.  

The real threat lies in unsecure systems, hidden lines of code in electronic voting and 
voting scanning machines, and the complacency of elected officials. We urge you to join with us and our colleagues at the National Election Defense Coalition and speak up for the Secure Elections Act (SEA) and REAL election security.​

Do we need a new stand-alone branch of the military to ensure that the US dominates space or is our military-industrial complex big enough already? President Trump's proposed "Space Force" has its critics inside government and even within the military, but even more so among activists, with few better able to weigh in on this notion than Bruce Gagnon, chair of Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

Bruce joins Steve and Annie on this edition of "Corporations and Democracy" to discuss how activists around the world are pushing back on both the privatization and the militarization of space and planets. He's joined in the second half of the show by Dennis O’Brien, an attorney, former member of the NASA-Hastings Law Project, and founder of the the Space Treaty Project.

You can listen to or download the program here.

In this piece on VotingJustice.us's recount updates, Jill Stein, the 2016 Green Party presidential candidate, provides an excellent report on program made toward voting integrity, right to vote, elections we can trust, and the problems remaining. 

"Protecting our voting system from cyber-threats is critical in an age when everything from hospitals to nuclear power plants are being hacked," Stein writes. "But cybersecurity and an accurate vote count are just the tip of the iceberg for safeguarding our votes, when the US election system is largely designed to protect the power of the economic and political elite."

The 2016 recount effort mobilized by the Stein campaign again focused attention on widespread problems with US elections, from outdated and vulnerable election equipment to systemic obstacles to voting, most consistently directed at people of color, and proposes a to-do list to strengthen election security, voter rights, and amplify the political influence of real people over corporations (or what is commonly referred to as "democracy"). There are lots of links to different issue-oriented democracy movement organizations, including Alliance for Democracy, so you can follow the latest on the work that interests you. 

Stein also repeats the call for a bipartisan emergency commission for election protection and voting justice--certainly a good idea at the state level, where they are likely to be more responsive to the grassroots and where voter groups can use them as a way to get their findings and demands out in front of both legislators and local media.

So far this year the Local Food RULES! campaign has helped a dozen Maine towns pass local food and community self-governance ordinances, bringing the total across the state to 41 municipalities.

To celebrate, here's Malvina Reynold's song "God Bless the Grass," which has become a kind of unofficial anthem for the campaign. You can also find some neat cover versions out there.