Make Your Own Community Rules Laws Over State & Fed (January 2015)

Video Transcript:

In 2011, Bolivia did something the world had never seen before. Granted nature, illegal rights may seem like a strange concept of some, but in a world where predatory capitalism is exploiting nearly every natural resource, it may be necessary in order to preserve a habitable future. And now, Mendocino County in California has taken the same leap by passing a fracking ban that also grants the land legal rights. So to learn a little bit more about how this would actually work, I spoke with activists and a farmer Jamie Lee who helped craft the measure. I started by asking him why voters passed a fracking ban considering there's currently no fracking activity in the county. It is an issue in Mendocino County as it is in California. In 2008, a company called Foot Hills, California, as well as several other companies, I've been extracting and have natural gas and oil that are right next to the EO River, which feeds our watersheds here in Mendocino County. And there is current further permits that have been filed to frack here in 2015. So we are taking the Preemptive Act to halt and ban and prohibit them from coming here as we did with GMOs back in 2004 when we were the first in the country to ban GMOs in our county. Considering that nearly all of California is now experiencing a severe drought, talk about the impact that the expansion of fracking practices has on the state's water resources. Well, we can see it up and down the state. Here we are going into the fourth year of the drought, the greatest is drought in the history of California. And all the governor can do is bend over backwards to allow fracking to continue while they've cut off the water back in March to the Central Valley farmers. And they're not allowing them any water, but they're allowing the frackers to continue. And fracking uses millions and millions of gallons and some wells to get the fracking out of our water to get fracking out of the ground. And it should be noted, Abby, that we're seeing this in our food prices into direct results since food is 40 to 50 percent water cost. We now have one gallon of milk equaling one gallon of gas. So we're driving our cars at the expense of our food. Really, really good point there. And perhaps more importantly, is that in measure as the ballot measure that ban fracking also established legal rights for nature, is it the first of its kind voter approved initiative in the country, explain why and how nature can have legal rights? You know, nature gives us life. Nature, we take for granted and it comes from somewhere else and through this industrial evolution, revolution, devolution, however you want to call it, we've taken nature and just used to it as a source of supplyhouse and a sewer. And now we're getting down to the end. And the famous Cree Prophecy says, well, after you've done taking out the fish and taking out the water and polluting the air, you're going to find that you can't eat money. And I think we're down to that. I mean, in Anderson Valley and Mendocino County here, our Redwood forests are down to 3 percent of what used to exist here. Our salmon don't come up our Navara rivers anymore since 1985, but they used to come here for thousands of years. And its rights of nature is connecting to other organizations and counties and countries like Bolivia and Ecuador. Let's talk about how this will legally work. Like how would a developer be challenged on a legal basis for infringing on the rights of nature in Mendocino County? We're going to start to decide for ourselves. We're going to decide whether or not we want to have our waterways come back and whether or not we want to prioritize our water to go to the farms first ahead of corporate interest since who knows when the water is going to be coming up next. We're down to 25 percent supply in our lake here and most of us here are on wells. And so what you don't hear from Governor Brown, what you don't hear from the federal government or anybody else is the word conservation. You've got to take care of our water. Since they're not going to do it, we're going to start writing laws and further ordinances that are going to start protecting ourselves and protecting the health, safety and security of our people and of our lands and our water and our soil and our, and so that's great stuff. So this is not purely symbolic. It can result in tangible action if there is enough pressure from the community. Correct. Correct. So the first thing you do is state your intention and in our court system, it's a hearing you have in court. So you must speak your truth and apply consent as silence. So we've stood up and we've stated that we're not going to take it anymore and here's how we're going to go about doing it in a legal form structure. And it's really cool, Abby, in our area that people are starting to talk about their rights again and people are starting to talk about, well, what does this mean and what can we do? And we're going to the schools now and we're, we're timing them right community bill of rights now, but what would they want? I hope that this really spreads across the country. Thank you so much for taking the initiative, really inspiring stuff there. Jamie Lee activist farmer really appreciate you coming on. Abby, thank you so much for letting us out of the woods. Coming up, I'll talk about why Bill Cosby is just the latest a list of who's a lot of the people who are going to continue working despite a flood of sexual assault allegations. Stay tuned. When you live in the public eye under an umbrella of scrutiny, any scandal can be a career under whether it be drug abuse and fidelity or criminal activity. It doesn't take much to push celebrities out of the limelight once their affiliation becomes a liability. But there's one thing seems like celebrities can do with near total impunity, sexual assault. In the case of beloved family actor Bill Cosby, despite several accounts that have surfaced over the last decade alleging he drugged and raped multiple women, America gave him the benefit of the doubt. This in the face of several women coming forward with claims in addition to a lawsuit he settled in 2006 with another victim. Such as Hollywood though, it's also fashion icons like Terry Richardson, one of the most sought after photographers in the world. See under the guise of art, Terry has allegedly sexually assaulted and harassed dozens of young earnest models eager to get their foot in the door. Whether it's demanding oral sex, coercing models to touch his penis or even ejaculating under their faces during photo shoots, Terry has allegedly gone to disturbing lengths to assert his power. But as long as people like Barack Obama and Oprah continue to proudly work with Terry, he will remain on his predatory pedestal. Amazingly, the media seems to ignore report after report alleging a pattern of abuse. In fact, New York magazine recently featured an enormous expose that did nothing more than apologize for Terry's despicable behavior, posing the false equivalency as Terry Richardson an artist or a predator as if he can't be both. But assault doesn't have to come from overt scusballs like Richardson. You can come from those who project themselves as intellectual feminists too. Which brings us to the case of Canadian radio host, Giangameshi, former star of the popular CBC show Q. See, Gomeshi was an advocate for women's rights, hosting panels about domestic violence and sexism.