Legalizing The Rights Of Earth And CommunityLegalizing The Rights Of Earth And CommunityThe Daniel Pennock Democracy Schools were launched in 2003 at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania by the CELDF and Richard L. Grossman. Daniel Pennock was a Berks County, Pennsylvania boy who died after being exposed to corporate-hauled sewage sludge.
At these three-day Schools, people come together to explore this country’s hidden histories; dissect the nation’s environmental, labor and other regulatory laws and confront the failure of much activist work. Attendees also learn about organizing occurring within Pennsylvania communities.
The School's organizing "model" seeks to transform ostensibly single issue organizing into campaigns that frontally challenge the authority of a corporate few to make governing decisions on behalf of community majorities. Over sixty Schools will be taught in 2006, across the United States, and a dozen permanent Democracy School locations have been established across the country.
“If you take no other training, do the Democracy School. It is a superlative unfolding revelation of how corporations have hijacked democracy that meticulously deconstructs the historical arc that brought us to this precipice.”
“Democracy School was a mind-blowing experience. Democracy School is a must for everyone who seeks to be liberated from our defensive, after-the-fact reactive organizing strategies.”
Democracy Schools are a strategic advance in the struggle for real community self-governance
The Pennsylvania Constitution declares "all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority". All state constitutions have similar language.
Why then do lawyers for insurance, utility, agribusiness, cable, banking, credit card, trucking, retail, cell phone, waste hauling, construction, water and other giant corporations routinely invade your local government meetings and terrorize your elected officials?
Why do our communities keep getting rolled by corporate lawyers, corporate money, corporate projects, corporate poisons and corporate law?
Why do experts and politicians keep telling citizens to trust regulatory agencies?
Join us as we wrestle with assumptions that box us in to losing tactics. Team up with people like you who want to rethink their options.
In Pennsylvania, people in dozens of communities have started instructing elected officials to pass laws that say "NO" to corporate sludge, corporate factory farms and corporate constitutional rights.
What's their secret? Where's all this new-found confidence coming from?
It's not something in the water.
It's Democracy School!!