American Democracy (and Other Fairy Tales)
A Call for a New Constitution
Thomas Linzey
Think your community can stop a new data center, factory farm, or fracking? Think again.
Think your community can stop a new data center from coming in? How about a factory farm, water bottling plant, or oil and gas drilling? No, no, and, well, no.
No one tells communities the truth—that they don’t have the legal authority to stop corporations from moving into their town, no matter the damage they will cause. The law simply doesn’t allow communities the ability to say “no” to things that will hurt them. It’s almost as if we don’t live in a democracy.
American Democracy (and Other Fairy Tales) takes you on the journey of a lawyer who set out to help communities protect themselves and the environment, only to find out that it was impossible without taking on the very basic structure of our government, the US Constitution itself. His story, and the stories of the people and communities he works with along the way, is one that reaches back to the founding days of America.
Author Thomas Linzey is the father of the “community rights” movement. He pioneered the first local laws to empower US communities to protect themselves, not just from corporate harm—but from a system of law that protects the rights of corporations to harm our communities, over the rights of communities to protect themselves from harm.
Linzey also launched the global “rights of nature” movement, writing the world's very first laws to recognize that nature—including ecosystems and species—possess legally enforceable rights.
The book concludes with a plan to create true local democracy by organizing for constitutional change. It calls for a system in which our communities can adopt laws more protective than those adopted by the state and federal government and that recognize the rights of people and nature to clean water, air, and soil, and a healthy environment.
AUTHOR
Thomas Linzey serves as the senior attorney for the nonprofit Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights. He is widely recognized as the founder of the contemporary “community rights” and “rights of nature” movements that have resulted in the adoption of hundreds of municipal laws across the United States. He drafted the very first rights of nature law in the world (Tamaqua Borough, Pennsylvania, 2006) and assisted with the drafting of the very first national constitution recognizing the rights of nature (Ecuador Constitution, 2008).
Linzey is the author of Be the Change and On Community Civil Disobedience in the Name of Sustainability, and the coauthor of We the People. He has been named one of Forbes magazine’s “Top Ten Revolutionaries,” and he was recently named one of the top 400 environmentalists of the last 200 years in the two-volume encyclopedia, American Environmental Leaders: Stories from the Community Rights Movement in the United States.
REVIEWS
“If you are concerned about what corporations (the 1%) are doing in the United States of America to violate the rights of nature and humanity, causing irreparable harm to air, water, wildlife and it’s habitat, and you don’t know what to do, I recommend that you read this book!”
—Ed O’Neill, actor
“For those wondering how corporate ‘rights’ and corporate power suffocate our ability to fix what’s broken, look no further than Linzey’s journey through America’s heartland. You’ll be shocked, saddened, and inspired, most likely all at the same time.”
—Thom Hartmann, New York Times bestselling author and America’s #1 progressive talk show host
“Linzey helped our Tribe protect the rights of the Rappahannock River in our Tribal Constitution—a first in the US. His description of how the law limits the legal power of communities is something Indigenous communities know all too well—maybe now we can all do something about it.”
—Chief Anne Richardson, Rappahannock Tribe
“This must-read memoir chronicles how the US. became a corporate-run Democracy theme park, and how we must rewrite America's constitutional DNA to reclaim our democracy, ensure the survival of people and our communities, and protect the countless beings with whom we share the planet.”
—Kenny Ausubel, cofounder of Bioneers
“This book reveals how and why communities can’t defend themselves from data centers, factory farms, fracking, and other threats, and how and why we don’t actually have local democracy. Thomas Linzey takes us on a legal journey unlike any other, offering an eye-opening critique and a visionary plan for constitutional change, all wrapped up in a good story.”
—Karenna Gore, executive director of the Center for Earth Ethics
“Thomas Linzey puts forth a stunning revelation: that, starting with our Constitution, the American experiment has been destined to become a corporatocracy. This book is a sobering wake-up call, challenging us to come together to bring a different kind of system into being, one that fosters the health and wellbeing of the whole community of life.”
—Paul Winter, musician
“American Democracy (and Other Fairy Tales) offers a bracing account of how our legal system is structured against nature and in favor of corporate interests. Thomas Linzey argues that radical action represents the most—maybe the only—practical way forward, and he makes a powerful case.”
—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History