Democracy Denied in Small Town USA

Posted October, 2010.

The story that follows has lots of details that may tend to bog you down, but I haven’t been able to decide what to eliminate and what to keep in.  So I ask your indulgence, and suggest that you skim through the following account, checking out the headings, and reading as much of the detail as you need to follow the story.  ~Molly

I live in the beautiful small town of Mt. Shasta in far northern California, about 45 minutes south of the Oregon state line.  The town is nestled at the base of Mount Shasta, a 14,170 foot volcano that last erupted about 500 years ago.  The town is surrounded by mountains and forests, with high mountain lakes scattered throughout, and the official headwaters of the mighty Sacramento River flowing out of a spring in our City Park.  In short, I live in paradise, and along with many other citizens of South Siskiyou County, want to preserve it for the generations to come.

Mt Shasta Community Water Rights and Self-Government Ordinance

A year and a half ago, a friend asked me to attend a meeting of a group promoting a citizen initiative called the Mt Shasta Community Water Rights and Self-Government Ordinance.  The friend said the group wanted to work through consensus and seemed to need some help.  Because the meeting was in a home a block away from mine, I decided to go.  The group of younger (than me) people so inspired me that I ended up joining the effort, just for the pleasure of working with such a committed, intelligent, heart-centered group.

knew that this group had formed in response to a cloud seeding program that PG&E (a California public utilities corporation) was proposing to carry out nearby.  Citizens concerned about this program had soon discovered that there was absolutely no regulation of this activity as long as the towers that would expel the chemicals were located on private land—never mind that the chemicals would travel onto neighboring lands. The utility was required only to place a notice in the local paper, and nothing more—no EIR, no permit from the county, no oversight whatsoever. PG&E wanted to cloud-seed in hopes of filling the reservoirs behind their downstream hydroelectric dams, but we locals would reap no benefit from this because PG&E doesn’t provide power to our region.  We would have to deal with any weather complications from the cloud seeding, and endure any chemical side effects—with no benefit and no recourse!

Shannon Biggs of Global Exchange contacted the group and offered help.  Her “Community Rights Program” assists communities confronted by corporate harms to enact laws that place the rights of communities and the rights of nature above the claimed “rights” of corporations.  She also put the group in contact with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), which has helped 130 communities on the East Coast to pass laws that have successfully barred harmful corporate activities from their communities.

Shannon and Ben Price from CELDF presented a “Democracy School” to interested people in Mt Shasta, who then launched the ordinance project.  I didn’t attend this school (having attended a similar workshop a few years ago), but was very glad it was taking place.  The School covered how corporations came to have so much power in our country, the absurd concept of “corporate personhood”, and the failings of regulatory law—which merely limits the harm done by corporate activities and relies almost entirely on citizen complaints and lawsuits for enforcement.  The School introduced the concept of rights-based law, which derives its authority from citizens’ rights to local self-government and to a healthy environment, and the rights of natural communities and ecosystems to survive and thrive (also called “the rights of Nature”).  Rights-based laws can prohibit specified harmful activities outright.

The Rights of Nature

Law based on the “rights of Nature” makes so much sense to me.  I was pleased to learn, a couple of years ago, that Ecuador had incorporated the concept into a new constitution (apparently with help from CELDF).  It seems absurd that the “rights of Nature” are not already bedrock for all law, seeing as how we humans can’t exist without a life support system!  How has Western Civilization gotten so disconnected and arrogant?  This aspect of the proposed Ordinance enlisted my support more than anything else.  Yes, I want to protect our water from pollution and predatory extraction, but it seems to me that we need to work upstream from that, to protect whole ecosystems and the biosphere itself.  And legislation based on the rights of Nature seems like one good method to accomplish that.

People attending Democracy School decided to create a rights-based Ordinance in our small town of Mt. Shasta (population about 3500) aimed at prohibiting not only cloud seeding, but also corporate water extraction for export and resale outside the city limits. (The multinational corporation of Nestle was at that time trying to set up a huge water-bottling plant in the nearby town of McCloud.) The group also decided to include a prohibition against “chemical trespass” from nearby cloud seeding, because the PG&E program was to operate from towers on private land outside the city limits.  All three prohibitions were designed to protect our precious and pure water supply from pollution via cloud seeding and from being drawn down by water bottling corporations.

The Citizens’ Initiative Process

I joined the group within a few weeks of Democracy School, and initially remained in the background. Angelina Cook, Ami Marcus, Rene Henery, Tatiana Diakoff, and Ed Gardner initially took the lead, supported by Carolyn Real, Vicki Gold, Jan DiStefano, Jennifer Mathews, Wendy Flynn, and me. (Later, Melinda Wiley and Paula Kressley joined us.) The group put on a series of town meetings to get input from the community about the substance of the Ordinance, and to begin the process of education about this new kind of rights-based law.  Most of the people who attended these meetings were in the choir: environmentally minded and politically progressive.  Nevertheless, they had some concerns that the group took into account as they worked with CELDF to fine-tune and finalize the Ordinance.

One frustrating situation occurred during this period.  Some of the key members of our group met with Attorney Tim Stearns, a member of the City Council and the Mayor at that time.  Stearns suggested some “whereas’s” that the group agreed to include in a preamble.  At the second meeting, Stearns promised to read the Ordinance draft over the weekend and give his feedback to the group.  He never did this, in spite of several phone calls and emails attempting to continue the conversation.  Nor did any other member of the City Council offer input. After waiting six weeks, the group decided to go ahead without further input, and take the first step in the Initiative process: filing with the City Clerk the Intention to Circulate a Petition and the Request for a Title and Summary (to be prepared by the City Attorney).

The group needed a registered voter who lived within the City limits to sign as Official Proponent.  About half the group live just outside the City limits, although definitely within the city sphere of influence.  None of the other City residents were available at that time, so I ended up signing the initial papers as Official Proponent, thereby committing myself even more thoroughly to the project.

The Ordinance Title and Summary

The City Attorney, who apparently neither liked nor understood the Ordinance, prepared a Title and Summary we believed would seriously mislead voters.  We requested several changes, but the Attorney agreed to only a few minor corrections, leaving in phrases such as: “creating liability for and restricting rights of corporations” and “abolishing conflicting private property rights.”  In fact, the Ordinance restricted the rights of corporations (to “legal personhood”) and restricted “conflicting property rights” ONLY for corporations violating the specific prohibitions against water bottling and cloud seeding.  In the end, because our only recourse was to take the matter to court, we decided to tolerate the distorted title and summary and move ahead with the signature-gathering campaign.  The distortions proved, however, to be a severe blow to the process by triggering opposition focused narrowly on the supposed threat to private property rights in general.

Gathering Signatures

By now it was October 2009, with the weather cooling rapidly.  We called a meeting of people interested in helping gather signatures for our petition; more than 60 people attended, forming several teams headed by core group members.  Initially, we focused on tabling in public places and at community events to gather signatures.  When it got too cold for that, we began going door-to-door. I personally resisted engaging in either of these activities, because of my reticence to try to persuade anyone to do anything, and to disturb people in their homes.  I was also afraid of putting myself in the way of hostile or angry responses.  So I limited my participation to attending meetings, talking about strategies, writing letters to the editor and press releases, and other behind-the-scenes efforts.  However, as the winter wore on and our March deadline for submitting signatures approached, Ami Marcus persuaded me to try going door-to-door with her one Saturday.  I was surprised at the open reception we received.  Most people wanted to sign, some eagerly.  Even a few who didn’t want to sign thanked us for our efforts.  Our major challenges were the wintry weather and trying to time our visits when people would be home and available.

In the end, we gathered 700 signatures, a third of the registered voters in town.  We estimated that a little over 100 of those were probably invalid (outside the city limits or not registered to vote). We also helped a number of people register on the spot, so they could sign.

During this time, various other members of our volunteer group and I wrote Letters to the Editor, a more lengthy Guest Opinion in the local weekly newspaper, and an article for the local Ecology Center newsletter, to keep the issue before the public.  We also held a couple of community events with documentary films on water issues.

Ami Marcus worked closely with both the City Clerk and the County Clerk to follow proper procedures as we went along.  We filed the initial documents with the City Clerk, as instructed, because this was a city ordinance.  In March, when it came time to file the signatures to the petition, both the County and City Clerks indicated we should do this with the County Clerk, because she had the roles of registered voters at her office to check against the signatures.  It was a happy group of women who drove the 40 miles to the county seat in Yreka to submit the signatures.  The County Clerk asked us for an hour to count up the petitions and make out an official receipt, so we retired to the local health food restaurant for a celebratory lunch, and then returned to pick up her memo affirming the submission.

A month later, we learned that the County Clerk had officially verified signatures up to the 15% required to impel the City Council to either pass the Ordinance or place it on a ballot—another cause for celebration!  The City Council put an action item on the agenda of their next meeting, on April 26.

Presenting the Ordinance to the City Council

Meanwhile, Ami Marcus and others contacted City Council members and the City Manager and offered to meet with them to present the Ordinance and answer questions.  Although this offer was declined, two City Council members (Sandra Spelliscy and Tim Stearns) had lengthy conference calls with Thomas Lindzey of CELDF and members of our group.   At our invitation, Thomas Lindzey traveled to Mt Shasta to attend the April 26 meeting, and to lead an informational session for the community preceding the meeting.

Nearly 200 community members showed up at the April 26 Council meeting in support of the Ordinance.  Over 40 spoke in favor of it, while one spoke against it (fearing job losses and private property problems) and another expressed some misgivings. To our great surprise, Councilor Tim Stearns spoke against the Ordinance, citing a number of concerns that he had brought up in his phone conversation with Thomas Linzey, and which we believed Linzey had adequately addressed.  We were dumb-founded, having believed Tim to be a potential ally on the Council, even though he had never given us the feedback he had promised.  Only Sandra Spelliscy and to some extent Mayor Michael Murray showed any support for what we were trying to do.

The Council voted to ask the City Attorney to prepare a special report on the Ordinance, partly to delay their decision to place it on the ballot until the window for the November general election opened in 30 days.

Our “Special Report”

In the intervening month, Shannon Biggs of Global Exchange, Ben Price and Thomas Linzey of CELDF, and the writers in our group (Ami Marcus, Jen Matthews, Angelina Cook, Rene Henery, and I) prepared our own “special report” for the Council and the community.  In fact, we worked our butts off!  Our report gave as much information as we could about our process, the rationale of the Ordinance, the “truths” as opposed to the “myths” about the Ordinance (including Stearn’s concerns), and its historical and legal background.  (This report, along with the Ordinance itself, is available on our website: https://www.yestolocalrights.org.)

City Council Votes to Place Ordinance on the Ballot

The community gathered in force again at the City Council meeting a month later on May 24, and a similar number of people spoke in favor of the Ordinance, with the same one man opposed.  (We had learned by then that he was a member of the local Tea Party.) This time Ben Price of CELDF and Kirsten Moller of Global Exchange came to town for the meeting.  Tim Stearns continued to voice his concerns without any acknowledgment that we had tried to address them; he seemed to have taken a position from which he would not budge.

Nevertheless, the Council was compelled by law to either adopt the Ordinance or put it before the voters in a special election.  They voted unanimously to place it on the ballot, consolidating the special election with the general election in November.

Whew!  We had worked for a year and a half toward this end, and even though we knew we had complied with all the procedures for getting a citizens’ initiative on the ballot, it felt really good to have passed this milestone.  Now we had a campaign to organize and run.  We set to work writing and rewriting our Argument In Favor of the Ordinance, to which the County Clerk assigned the designation of “Measure A,” with input from everyone in our core group, Shannon of Global Exchange, and Thomas Lindzey.  Here’s what we submitted:

Neighbors can disagree on many issues, but we can all come together on one: we residents of Mt. Shasta should decide what happens to our most valuable local resource—water.

State and federal laws let outside corporations extract massive amounts of groundwater from our aquifer and manipulate rainfall through cloud seeding using known toxic chemicals—without local citizens having any say.

The single issue addressed by Measure A is Mt. Shasta residents’ right to water. The intention is to ensure that Mt. Shasta residents regain our right to local self-government, especially our right to decide what happens to local water.  It also recognizes the rights of nature and, in doing so, establishes the legal mechanism our city needs to protect the community’s water for future generations. This strengthens local private property rights and shifts the legal balance of power from outside corporations to local citizens.

The Ordinance creates no new rights; rather, it spells out rights “retained by the people” according to the U.S. Constitution’s Ninth Amendment.

Those who thoroughly read and understand Measure A will see that it states broad rights, but enacts only two narrow, enforceable prohibitions: It prohibits corporate water extraction for sale and export, and corporate cloud seeding.

Some City officials oppose this measure because the City would have to enforce it. However, without this measure residents have NO protection against water withdrawals or cloud seeding—activities that may have long-term negative economic, environmental, and health impacts.

Some 300,000 people in other states are living under similar rights-based laws. Only 4 laws out of more than 125 have been challenged. None of these towns has gone bankrupt or had negative impacts to their local economies or individual property rights. Please read this Ordinance and vote “YES” for local rights and local control of our water.

Challenges Appear

Now things began to get weird.  A Letter to the Editor appeared, castigating the Ordinance for all kinds of imagined wrongs, written by our primary Tea Party opponent.  It became clear that the local Tea Party had taken on the Ordinance as the focus of their anger and angst.

Then we learned second-hand, and with only a few hours notice, that the City Council was holding a special meeting to vote on the wording of the Argument Against that they planned to put on the ballot–this in addition to the so-called “impartial analysis” that the City Attorney was to submit, which was anything but impartial from our point of view.  We hastily gathered a few of our core group to attend, squeezing into a backroom at the City offices.  Sandra Spelliscy, our strongest ally on the Council, was (conveniently?) out of town, so the matter was decided by the remaining four councilors.  The Council did agree to remove some of the more specious arguments from their statement, but included other inaccuracies.  To his credit, Mayor Michael Murray voted “nay” on the Argument, which was approved by the three other councilors.  The Council also voted to allow other opponents to write the Rebuttal to the Argument For; presumably this would fall to the Tea Party.

One of the frustrating aspects of attending City Council meetings is there is never a chance for any dialogue.  Citizens are allowed to speak without any comment or response from the Council members, and then the Council members discuss the matter among themselves, with no further input allowed from the citizens, even when the Council is proceeding on the basis of inaccurate information or false assumptions.  I found this especially frustrating at this particular meeting, because there were so few people present in a small space; we still couldn’t have anything resembling a conversation or dialogue.  Everyone spoke from a pre-determined “position,” with no exploration of common ground or problem solving.

Language Change Threatens the Ballot

Things really got tough when one of the proponents discovered a flyer urging people to attend a special City Council meeting the next day, in order to oppose keeping Measure A on the ballot.  She went to City Hall and found out that there was indeed a special meeting scheduled to address a 21-word change in language between two versions of the Ordinance (the one initially filed with the City, and the one on the petition that voters had signed).  We proponents were aghast, having had no clue that a change had even occurred.  We had to appear at the meeting and try to defend the Ordinance process without knowing how this had happened.  At the meeting, the City Attorney, the City Manager, and Councilor Ned Boss all implied that we proponents had made the change knowingly and deliberately, which could be seen as a violation of the Election Code.  Nevertheless, because the City Attorney stated the one-sentence change did not affect the meaning of the Ordinance, the Council voted to take no action to remove it from the ballot.

Later, we learned that the change in wording had resulted from a clerical error between two versions that our contact at CELDF had submitted to us—one for the initial filing, and the one that had to be converted to a Word document so it could be reduced in size to take up fewer pages on our petition.  Somehow, in this process, slightly different versions were used. Fortunately, the correct version appeared on the petition that voters signed.

County Clerk Removes Measure A from Ballot

Then the second shock:  On August 19, the proponents learned (again, second hand) that County Clerk Colleen Setzer had removed Measure A from the ballot.  In the letter she sent to the City, she cited the change in language as one reason.  Her second argument was that she was in fact the City Elections Clerk, and that therefore the initial filing of the “Intention to Circulate a Petition” and the “Request for a Title and Summary” with the City Clerk was invalid.  She did not explain why she waited until the eleventh hour to declare this, when she had had a full year to bring up this concern.  We had filed the initial documents in August 2009, and had worked closely with her ever since in fulfilling the requirements for bringing a citizens’ initiative to the ballot.

Our Election Complaint

When San Francisco Attorney Tania Rose showed up at this precise moment of offer pro bono help, we decided to file an election complaint with the Siskiyou County Superior Court. Because Setzer’s reasons for removing the measure from the ballot seemed so legally insubstantial, we were certain any reasonable judge would rule in our favor.  So Jen Matthews, Ami Marcus, Tania Rose, and I worked 14-hour days for the next week preparing the case, which we were able to file at the Court just before closing time on Friday, August 27.  Other members of the core group did research, provided food and transportation, and wrote up their own Declarations needed for the Argument.

On September 10, Judge Dixon heard the arguments of the attorneys. The County Attorney argued for Setzer, claiming that it didn’t matter whether Setzer was the official elections clerk or not; either way we proponents had made procedural errors and therefore the measure should not be on the ballot.  Judge Dixon more or less dismissed the concern about the language change during the hearing.  However, when her ruling came out ten days later, she ruled against returning Measure A to the ballot, saying the Setzer was NOT the City Elections Clerk and therefore didn’t have the authority to put the measure back on the ballot. (She didn’t address the paradox of Setzer having the authority to remove it.) The ruling also claimed the City Council had not passed the proper resolution to place the measure on the ballot, in spite of the fact that City Council had done exactly that, using similar language to resolutions that placed two other measures on the ballot—both of which remained on the ballot without challenge.

Thus the citizens of Mt. Shasta were denied their right to vote on this admittedly controversial measure, and democracy consequently suffered.

What happened??

Clearly there was opposition to the Ordinance, some of which came from misunderstandings of what it would do.  There were also fears that the Ordinance, if passed, would embroil the City in expensive legal challenges.  These concerns and fears could have contributed to a lively debate during the campaign leading up to the election, but instead apparently led to the Measure being removed from the ballot altogether.  We may never know what pressures were brought to bear behind the scenes, and by whom—although we certainly have our suspicions.

We learned more about the influence of the local Tea Party on the County Clerk when she was quoted in a newspaper article the day after the November election:

“I think we are seeing an increase in the number of voters who decline to state their affiliation more than we are seeing a drastic change in specific political parties,” Setzer said. “This year, I think that is driven by the Tea Party movement–people who are voting their conscience and not along political party lines.” 

Her sympathy for the Tea Party, which opposed the Ordinance all along, may well have played a role in her decision to remove Measure A from the ballot.

Next Steps

At this point, we had to decide whether or not to appeal the judge’s illogical decision, and how else to move ahead.  We decided not to appeal, because the process would take up to 18 months for resolution, and would require a substantial investment of time and money, with no guarantee of success.  We asked the City Council to put the measure on the ballot in a special election, but they refused, citing concerns that the measure was unconstitutional anyway, and would probably be thrown out by the courts if passed.  It seemed that the whole project was dead in the water.

Not so—it was just the end of Round One.

Ami Marcus was invited to participate on a panel on the Rights of Nature at the annual Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, CA. Over 400 people attended that panel and vocally expressed their support for our group’s attempts to pass a rights-based ordinance in our small town.  Over the next week, Ami received many phone calls offering support and from news organizations.  This helped us to see our local efforts as part of a larger movement for a saner legal system that would balance the life needs of all the world’s citizens and creatures against the short-term profits of corporations.  We realize that we have not failed; the tortured political system of Siskiyou County has failed us, and therefore all its citizens. And we find renewed determination to move ahead.

As I write this, our group is assessing the tangible support in our community for reintroducing the Ordinance—with some revisions to clarify some points of confusion and perhaps allay some of the fears about its intention and effects.  We fully intend to maintain the integrity of the Ordinance, especially its rights-based foundation.  If we decide to revise it, we may again approach the City Council asking them to place it on the ballot at the upcoming special election in June.  If they refuse, we may decide to collect sufficient signatures for a citizens’ initiative all over again, thereby compelling the City Council to adopt it outright or place it on the ballot for the voters to decide. Of course, in doing that, we run the very real risk that the County Clerk will again cook up reasons to prevent it coming to a vote.  However, we are hope all the publicity may discourage any more such shenanigans, allowing citizens to vote to assert their right to protect the natural resources in the place where they live.

Guidance from the Watershed

I am reminded of a quotation from deep ecologist and rain forest defender John Seed. “I am protecting the rainforest” develops to “I am part of the rainforest protecting myself.  I am that part of the rainforest recently emerged into thinking.”  What a relief then!  The thousands of years of imagined separation are over and we begin to recall our true nature.”* 

Similarly, those of us involved in the Ordinance project are part of the Mount Shasta watershed protecting itself.  This understanding can revolutionize our attitudes and energize us for the work ahead. We can rely on what Gregory Bateson calls “primary process,” the unconscious wellsprings of wisdom beyond the arc of “mere purposive rationality.”  (See my previous Musings on this subject, “Opening the Doors to Gaia Mind.”)

It has been all too easy for me to lose this perspective in the midst of the external work—strategizing, dealing with the frequent emergencies, meetings, writing, etc. I’ve even lost it in the process of writing up this little history. When I can remember that it’s not up to me, not even up to the group, and that we can let ourselves be guided and inspired by the wisdom of the ecosystems we want to protect—a wisdom that resides within each of us—the stress and tension dissolves and we become instruments of Nature’s own life force and resilience.

And guidance from that source could lead us along many different paths, only one of which may be continuing the work on this Ordinance.  Alternatively, we may conclude that our work has already accomplished what is possible at this time, and find other avenues for our energies and talents—and for our commitment to democracy, local self-government, and our precious water.

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*Seed, Macy, Naess, Fleming. Thinking Life a Mountain,  Philadelphia: New Society, 1988

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