Community rights over corporate rights. How?

In the face of corporate power today, the struggle for real, lasting change and the efforts to assert real people’s rights over  corporation’s ‘personhood’ rights is being championed by some very special communities throughout the US.

These communities describe to a different approach to the traditional regulatory system, one that says plainly and clearly: NO, we do not want corporations to have the right to make the decisions where we live! Rather, that right is reserved exclusively for us, the people.

We get frequent calls from citizens across California asking us for help in asserting their communities’ rights. They want to know how to take the right to decision making in their community away from profit-driven corporations and put it back into the hands of the people.

We figure, what better way to help those wondering than to share what a handful of communities are doing to assert their rights? So below are two excellent pieces published this week that highlight some of the cutting-edge work being done to change the rules for corporations and empower people to get what they want in the places they call home.

For a look at how citizens are standing up to corporate power in real and meaningful ways, check out these articles from YES! Magazine and AlterNet:

• Corporate Control? Not In These Communities

• Vision: How Small, Mostly Conservative Towns Have Found the Trick to Defeating Corporations