Democracy School in New York

2007 NEW YORK DEMOCRACY SCHOOL SCHEDULE

Contact: Jack Ossont sandhill1 at frontiernet.net

What is Democracy School?

Democracy School teaches how communities can reclaim their rights to democratic self-governance. It offers a new way of looking at our role as citizens in a democracy, and a new way to assert our inalienable rights as a sovereign people. Attendees learn how rights claimed by corporations have been used to deny the rights of real people, and how people can reclaim rights they have lost. Lectures cover the historical route by which corporations under our legal system have achieved almost all the rights of natural persons and the dramatic recent organizing by more than 78 communities in Pennsylvania to reclaim rights of municipal self-governance.

The concept of Democracy School was created by Thomas Linzey from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund and Richard Grossman, co-founder of the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy. The first Democracy School was held at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in 2003. The number of schools is growing rapidly. In 2005, Democracy Schools are being held in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, and Washington.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in Chambersburg, PA, which Linzey co-founded, uses creative legal strategies to help communities establish local democratic control over corporations. To date, 78 Pennsylvania townships working with CELDF have passed laws banning corporate involvement in agriculture. Several townships have passed laws stripping corporations of constitutional protections and powers.

Curriculum:

Friday evening

Arrival of Attendees
Introductions of Attendees
Discussion:
"What is Our Concept of Democracy?"
"What is Our History of Regulatory Activism?"
"Does Our Work Vindicate Our Concept of Democracy?"
How We Got Here: A Brief Overview of the School and the Evolution of POCLAD/CELDF
A Case History: Traditional Organizing and Corporate Power - Factory Farms

Saturday, all day

The Historical Role and Nature of Corporations in the United States
-The Role of Corporate Charters
-The Conferral of Corporate Constitutional Rights
A History of Peoples' Movements in the United States
-The American Revolution
-The Articles of Confederation and the Constitution
-The Anti-Federalists
-The Populists
-The Abolitionists and the Fourteenth Amendment
-Womens' Rights and the Nineteenth Amendment
-The Labor Movement
What Have We Learned from These Movements?
Common Theories, Strategies, and Actions
Theory of the Constitution
Theory of the Corporation
Theory of Democracy
Building on the Lessons of Prior Movements

Building New Models of Organizing (The Pennsylvania Model)
The "Single Issue" Model: From Reframing to Winning
Driving into Local Governing Arenas
-Challenging and Contesting Corporations
-Contesting Government Actions Empowering Corporations to
Usurp Community Control
From Reframing to Drawing the Corporate Response
To Building New Constituencies
To Winning
Altering the Odds: Directly Challenging Corporate Rights
-The Porter and Licking Township, Clarion County Experience: Using Law to Eliminate Legal Privileges Claimed by Corporations
Building a Legal Framework to Support Elimination of Corporate Rights
-The Legal Defense Fund's Model Legal Brief to Eliminate Corporate Rights
FROST v. St. Thomas Development, Inc.: A Rural South-Central Pennsylvania
Community Organization Takes on the Constitutional "Rights" of a Quarry Corporation

Sunday morning

Building the Connections Amongst All Single Issues
-Our History of Collaterally Challenging Illegitimate Corporate Authority
Breakout: Reframing Single Issues by Rethinking Several Issues
An Exploration of Jurisdictions and Arenas
Other Constituencies
Critical Mass: Doing it Together and Building a Movement
This is the Work: Groups Across the United States Applying New Models

Discussion: How Do We Make Real the Promises of Democracy?

Materials: Included with Democracy School are a 190-page notebook of background reading material, and a copy of the book Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy.

Schedule:

Background information:

Consent of the Governed: The reign of corporations and the fight for democracy
by Jeffrey Kaplan, Orion Magazine, November/December 2003
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/03-6om/kaplan.html

Tom Linzey's Speech at September 2004 Bioneers Conference
http://www.bioneers.org/whoweare/linzey.php

Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund Democracy School Website
http://www.celdf.org/misc/democ_school.asp

About CELDF's Corporations and Democracy Program
http://www.celdf.org/cdp/cdpdesc.asp

Press Release for FROST Case from CELDF
http://www.celdf.org/press.asp?iStatus=view&pid=25

About POCLAD - Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy
http://www.poclad.org/about.cfm

Community Challenges Corporate Claims to Constitutional "Rights"
By Virginia Rasmussen & Richard Grossman
http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Country/usa8.htm

Confronting the Corporate Constitution in Pennsylvania
By Richard L. Grossman
http://www.ratical.org/corporations/RGCCCinPA.html

National Democracy School Schedule
http://www.constitution411.org/natl_dem_schl/main/schedule_ds.html