Welcome to the Coal-Free Bellingham Community Bill of Rights campaign!
Monday- Friday 11AM-1 PM Room 413, Bellingham Herald Building 1155 N State St. (map)
Tuesdays 3-6 PM at the Bellingham Herald Conference Room, 3rd floor, 1155 N State St. (map)
Saturdays 10 AM -1 PM Bellingham Local Farmers Market (corner of Chestnut & Railroad) (map)
Please submit your signed petitions weekly, even if they are not completely filled. We need to keep a current tally. Come in and pick up a new set.
Petition Gatherer Location Sign up Form, click here
Signature Gatherer Guidelines, click here
More people are becoming aware that the promise of an American democratic republic is not being met. Instead of government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”, we have government “of corporations, by corporations and for corporations”.
When communities try to prevent corporations from engaging in activities they don’t want, they often find they don’t have the legal power to say “NO!” Why? Because our current legal structure too often protects the “rights” of corporations over the rights of actual human beings.
Why should Burlington Northern, SSA Marine and Goldman Sachs, a major corporate investor in the proposed coal terminal project, have more say about what happens here in Bellingham than the residents of Bellingham?
Simply put, if we are to elevate our rights and the rights of our communities above those of a corporate few, we need to transform the way laws work.
It is time for the City of Bellingham to join other communities which are proclaiming their inalienable right to local, self-governance. We do this by introducing our ordinance, the Bellingham Community Bill of Rights, which can be read here. The No Coal! Political Action Committee (PAC) has prepared this local ordinance for the people of Bellingham to adopt through the initiative process. We seek to:
- Protect Bellingham and surrounding communities from the negative health and economic impacts from coal trains,
- Prevent destruction of local and regional natural resources from the known ecological risks from coal transportation, and
- Confront the underlying structures of law that currently prevent communities from protecting themselves from corporate threats.
Because of coal’s implications for causing global climate change, adopting a local ordinance in this way will also mean that we are preventing our own territory from being used to cause ecological harm worldwide. (Read more)
By passing local ordinances that ban harmful corporate practices communities can protect themselves and their local ecosystems. Other communities have been successful in turning away projects that threaten them even when the projects have been ‘permitted’ under state or federal law.
As of January, 2012 the number of communities with such ordinances is about 150. Perhaps the best known law protects the people of Pittsburgh and its local ecosystems from natural gas fracking. Other communities have confronted threats such as industrial hog farming, spreading sewage sludge, cell phone towers, waste disposal and bottling local water sources. (Read about other communities’ rights-based ordinances)
Beyond protecting communities from immediate corporate threat these ordinances are also addressing and challenging the structure of laws that has arisen to give corporations superior rights to the communities in which their projects are being carried out. (Read more)
This website seeks to explain in more detail why our group believes that such an ordinance is the best option for our community to protect itself against the permitting threat and the structure of laws under which such permits are currently granted. Link to ordinance here.
“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. . . Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
- Frederick Douglass