[CRNMC] Scope of our work?

[Charles Cresson Wood]

Hello community rights friends,

Now that we have passed Measure S, I suggest that it is time to (1) take an inventory of where we are now, (2) define where we're going from here, and (3) clearly describe why we are going in those directions. I sense a grave danger, and that is that we could easily get scattered, and the amazing positive energy, momentum, and goodwill that we have built would accordingly be dissipated, and thus become ineffective in the future.

Our community rights network was spawned out of the work of Paul Cienfuegos, Thomas Linzey at the Community Environment Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), and Shannon Biggs at Global Exchange. It is focused on giving people back the rights that have been taken away from them by both governments and corporations. As I understand it, it's focus is on changing the laws so that citizens can protect not only themselves and future generations, but also the biosphere (animals, trees, insects, soil, water, etc.). Measure S absolutely fits within this scope. Other community rights groups across the country also focus in this specific area.

I suggest that this community rights (legal) focus is a very important type of foundational work. I suggest that we (CRNMC) stick with this foundational work as the limited scope of our efforts. Such foundational work opens up the possibility that the larger Mendocino County community is then able to undertake the work that needs to be done now. The County-wide work that needs to be done now includes, but is certainly not limited to, the work that Tammy and Agnes suggest (food security plans, public bank, alternative currency systems, community public safety network, etc.). The work that needs to be done now also includes setting-up alternative transportation networks (that are not reliant on cars and trucks), assisting local businesses that provide our essential needs to get established, and many other important endeavors. Realistically we (CRNMC) cannot possibly do all of these things.

But we can clear the way for these things to happen. We can make it legal to sell raw milk, we can make it legal to require full disclosure of ingredients in food, we can make it legal to set up an ethanol or biodiesel plants, etc. Existing business interests and governments are stopping us from becoming a locally-based, ecologically sustainable, and largely self-reliant community. They want to force us to be dependent on their unreliable (and often dangerous) centrally-sourced products and services. I suggest our focus should remain on clearing the way legally, so that people in this county can go on and do what is needed now. 

There is a misconception that we need to confront directly, and that is that we must have a grand plan for all the transition work that must be done now. This misconception is for example manifest in the preparation of "community-wide energy descent plans." Many of us think we cannot take constructive steps because we need a centralized approach, and this is a viewpoint which is encouraged by both corporations and government. We have been led to believe (brainwashed into believing?) that a centralized approach is the way to go because it validates their monopoly control of business activity, and it also fosters the legitimacy of their approach to providing products and services. To the contrary, as nature reveals through mutations in genes, the most resilient and adaptive approach is to both legally allow and encourage many different people, to take many different steps, to work on many different projects, so that our community becomes more resilient, sustainable, and local. 

We don't know exactly what the future will look like, because we have never gone through all the simultaneous major changes that we are now going through. I am talking about getting off of fossil fuels, watching our government bankrupt itself and destroy the money system through it's printing of money and outrageous debt levels, getting away from chemical-related agriculture and moving to organic farming, reclaiming our news media so that they print the truth instead of propaganda and trivial stories, etc. We have no idea how all these changes are going to collectively show up in the future. If we did have a clear idea, it might be possible to put together a grand plan that integrated all these things. The fantasy of this central planning approach is laid thead-bare by the failures of the former Soviet Union, which used centralized planning, or I should say at least attempted to do so.

So realistically we don't know what the new local, sustainable, and resilient future will look like. So we can't put together any sort of a useful plan for that future, at least a plan that would be helpful. What we do know now is that there are laws that are restraining our ability to adapt, to make the changes that need to be made now. We (CRNMC) should focus on changing those laws so that the people of this great County can then go on to make the changes that are needed. Thus I suggest that the scope of CRNMC effort should be exclusively on the removal of the laws that get in our way, on the removal of the laws that prevent our rapid evolution so as to be compatible with both the present reality and the future reality. 

An example would be for Mendocino County to become a "home rule county," which has more power to go its own way, which is not dictated to by Sacramento the way other California counties are.

/s/ Charles