Organizing Notes

Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire....

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Location: Brunswick, ME, United States

The collapsing US military & economic empire is making Washington & NATO even more dangerous. US could not beat the Taliban but thinks it can take on China-Russia-Iran...a sign of psychopathology for sure. We must all do more to help stop this western corporate arrogance that puts the future generations lives in despair. @BruceKGagnon

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

WATER WARS

I went to our state capitol in Augusta today for a news conference and a legislative hearing about water and limiting corporate control. The event was sponsored by three groups in Maine working on water issues - Save Our Water, POWWR and Defending Water for Life.

I was asked to speak at the news conference (which was attended by just one commercial TV news station and two public access cable stations). Then we went inside the state house building for the public hearing before the State and Local Government Committee of the state legislature.
We had to wait two hours before it was our turn to comment on the pending legislation we were there to support. There were enough supporters there on our side that we filled the meeting room.

A bill has been introduced called "An Act to Enhance Municipal Home Rule Status" that would guarantee local communities right to self-government to stop the corporate assault on local decision making authority.

This has become a big issue in Maine because the Nestle corporation (doing business as Poland Spring bottled water which they own) has been trying to come into Maine and take control of much of the ground water in the state. In several communities the local people have overwhelmingly organized opposition to Nestle control of their water supply and they have been told again and again that they have no right to legally stand against this corporate control.

So a couple small towns, using the town hall meeting style of decision making, have passed local ordinances denying constitutional protections to corporations. They've then been told these laws that they have passed are "unconstitutional" and that the state won't allow locals to put limits on corporations.

So this bill has been introduced in our state legislature to give a municipality the right to adopt and enforce an ordinance that denies a corporation sweeping powers.

I was the third person today to stand before the state legislative committee to offer testimony and while I was preparing to go up to the podium I found myself thinking of the Chipaya people in the Bolivian Andes that are featured in the short video I posted just below. I told the state legislators that the corporations know that water is a declining resource due to global warming and that there will be water wars coming soon for control of remaining supplies of water and these big corporations, like Nestle, are trying to line up their control of it now. In fact I said water wars are already happening right here in Maine in our local communities.

I said that the Maine Constitution recognizes that the people are the source of all governing authority. That being the case corporations should not be allowed to block our local democratic processes in order to take profits from our communities.

I said that conservatives have long maintained that the best government is that which is the most local and I thought this was a good point.

I concluded by saying that if local democracy was made irrelevant by corporate domination, then it was just a matter of time before the Maine State Legislature would be irrelevant as well.

Only one vote was needed from the committee to send the bill to the full legislature for debate. We won't know for some time what will happen as I understand they next go into a "work session" to study the bill before making their committee recommendation.

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