On a hot, sticky night in August 2006, more than 200 residents of the rural township of East Brunswick, PA (population 1300) squeezed into local physician, Dr. Glenn Freed's skeletal frame barn to talk about...sludge. Despite sewage sludge's high toxicity, waste corporations have spun it as an environmentally friendly fertilizer, that they are paid handsomely to "gift" to farmers. Ever since the deaths of two children, and countless reports of illness and livestock loss, rural Pennsylvanians have opposed the dumping.

But state and federal law says that corporations don't need community permission to drop pesticides overhead from airplanes, withdraw water from local aquifers, site unwanted refineries or dump sewage in your town. So who does decide? State agencies issue "permits" to corporations, and state legislatures routinely "preempt" (usurp) community lawmaking authority on behalf of those corporations. The folks in East Brunswick began asking themselves: "if those directly affected by policy decisions are not the ones who make them, then do we really have a democracy?"

The conversation in Dr. Freed's barn was a lively debate about passing a cutting-edge law that not only asserted the rights of residents to make key decisions where they live (like banning corporations from hauling and dumping sludge)—the ordinance boldly denied and invalidated the Constitutional "rights" claimed for corporations by their lawyers. When the Board of Township Supervisors unanimously refused to pass the ordinance into law, the citizens demanded their resignations. Two eventually obliged, and by December, the ordinance was passed. But that's not the end of their story.

In passing the ordinance, East Brunswick linked arms with over 100 communities (and growing) that have challenged corporate power by passing "rights-based ordinances" drafted by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). Global Exchange is now partnering with CELDF to assist communities in California and elsewhere to assert our undeniable, inalienable right to community self-government.

Arguing that "There is no inherent right to local self government," on January 31 2008, Attorney General Thomas Corbett (a former waste management lobbyist), filed a lawsuit against East Brunswick to overturn their ordinance—representing the sludge corporations' interests over the people's. If Corbett was hoping to create a chilling effect on other communities, his plan backfired. Outraged, the Concerned Citizens of East Brunswick have taken the offensive. Corbett, who is up for reelection, has been dogged on the campaign trail by protesters carrying large signs quoting his anti-democratic words. Resident Annette Etchberger and others have become active citizens, writing Opeds, contacting other communities and traveling the state speaking at town hall meetings, asking other municipalities to stand with them.

Amidst a thunderstorm on August 7th, residents of Shrewsbury Township, PA gathered for a hearing on passing a similar sludge ordinance. Annette Etchberger and Dr. Freed spoke passionately of their experience, and CELDF Projects Director, Ben Price addressed questions about the ordinance itself. "You've got three choices," said Price. "You can do nothing, and get sludged. You can attempt to fight this using the regulatory system, which legally 'permits' sewage sludge dumping. Or you can assert your right to make this decision for your community, and adopt a law that forbids corporate waste haulers from poisoning this town." Proving that legitimate government derives from the people, and in defiance of the Attorney General, six bold municipalities — including Shrewsbury —have since passed virtually the same law.

Packer Township, PA recently published an open letter to the Attorney General advising him not to bother requesting the municipality rescind its ordinance to avoid a lawsuit, declaring that they "refuse to recognize the Attorney General has any jurisdiction within this municipality to enforce a law which runs so contrary to democratic principles." Some 25 other communities have passed resolutions supporting East Brunswick.

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