We the People 

On paper, these laws were supposed to clean up our act……….. quite literally.  We thought we had the right medicine in these laws. We thought that mainstream progressive groups could use these stellar laws to take us where we needed to go.  Instead we’ve gotten sicker and sicker.

We believe that mainstream progressive groups have failed to restore the environment by constraining their activities within legal and regulatory systems purposefully structured to subordinate communities to corporate power. Truly effective movements don’t operate that way. Abolitionists never sought to regulate the slave trade; they sought to transform the legal structure that supported it by treating slaves as property rather than people under the law. Suffragists did the same with the legal status of women.

This ‘rights-based’ style of organizing moves away from traditional activism—mired in letter writing campaigns and lowest common denominator federal and state legislation—toward a new activism in which communities claim the right to make their own decisions, directly.

And there’s no time to waste.

We agree with Paul Hawken who says that “….there is no polite way to say that business is destroying our world”.  No, not the small, local shop down the block, but the enormous, multinational corporations that emerged within a much smaller, earlier, more biologically diverse world…….. a world with few limits, rich in natural resources; a world with a fraction of our current population; a world that felt like it was ours for the taking.

A world far different than today.

“With the understanding that true democracy was impossible in the face of concentrated power held by a few corporations, early Revolutionary legislatures passed state laws declaring that corporations could only be formed for public purposes, that they couldn’t own other corporations, that they could only exist for a certain number of years, that they could only be a certain size, that shareholders and directors were personally liable for the actions of the corporation…..” – Thomas Linzey.

So much has changed.  Today this sunset clause is no more – so a corporation may exist forever. And instead of a particular public purpose, the mission statement of today’s corporation is focused upon the maximization of private profits.

The blueprint for a modern corporation promotes enormous organizations driven to extract the very resources upon which all of life depends.  Again, this mattered little when the climate was wild and self regulating; when there were fewer people and seemingly endless resources.

In today’s far different world, with so many people, dwindling resources and a destabilized climate, the very architecture of enormous, multinational corporations threatens life itself. What has happened to our world.

We the people have a duty, an obligation, to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which, in today’s world, means protecting the natural fabric from which we emerged and from which we obtain our sustenance. 

Who is it that knows best what is needed to protect what our community, what our fertile ground, requires to remain vibrant and life-giving?  A corporation whose leadership lives afar; whose mission is to maximize dollars and not life?  The local community whose citizens know this home; who feel this soil with their hands; embrace their neighbors down the block in that small, local shop?

“Making decisions for other people where they live is called subjugation or empire. ‘Free trade’ denies self-governance and imposes empire.” – Jane Anne Morris

The NO COAL! PAC has placed its picket pin to secure the rights for local, self-governance.  We know what is right for ourselves, for life.  Corporate single-bottom-liners from afar do not.

Our Initiative seeks to spearhead an effort to bring what’s called ‘rights-based’ organizing to this place, this region, focused on elevating the rights of people, communities, and nature above those of corporations, property, and commerce.

Our stand is to throw off abusive governance from afar and to provide new protection for our future security. Is it any wonder that our own Declaration of Independence maintains that “…….when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

We believe in an inalienable right to local, self-governance; in an inalienable right to a healthy environment, within ourselves and without; in an inalienable right for nature itself, that fertile ground so critical to our next breath, our next meal, our next child.

Our objection to coal is hardly unique.  On April 29, 2011 Gov. Chris Gregoire signed the Coal Free Future for Washington legislation to responsibly transition TransAlta Corporation’s Centralia, Washington power plant, our state’s last coal-fired plant, off of coal.  Why?  To work towards healthy air and a cooler climate.

Now we are asked to grant a permit to transport far more coal through our community so that it can be burned in Asia? Does this really paint a picture of a coal free future for Washington?

We share their air; it’s one planetary air-shed.  Burn it there, burn it here, no matter….. it works towards unhealthy air and a hotter climate for all of us.

This is but one of many reasons we will stop these coal trains.

This site, this Initiative, this organization, starts from the premise that we the people must stop this harm and not massage it around the edges; not reduce the rate of harm; not issue permits; not legalize further abuse.

“Protectionism is a legitimate power of a self-governing community. Why should a community’s right to protect itself ever be called into question…………… isn’t seeing to its general welfare a community’s purpose? And protectionism not only a right, but also a duty?” – Jane Anne Morris

Corporations are not people and those corporations seeking to manage us from afar are, by definition,  not local people.  Do they care about our drinking water?  About the redevelopment of our waterfront? About our peace and quiet? About you?

We do.

So we ask you to join us to secure the rights of people, communities, and nature above those of corporations, property, and commerce.