Community Rights educator Paul Cienfuegos explains how “We The People” are exercising the authority to govern ourselves and dismantle corporate rule within local communities. When small farmers in rural Pennsylvania wanted to say “no” to a corporate factory farm coming into their community, they learned they couldn’t, because it would violate the corporation’s “rights” and state pre-emption laws. So they did something technically illegal – their town passed an innovative ordinance banning corporate factory farming.
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It worked! The corporation left town. Pittsburgh upshifted the approach: Rather than define what we don’t want, define what we DO want. Their “Right to Water” stopped natural gas fracking in the city. Ordinances like this have been passed in over 150 communities in 9 states. Tune in to learn how this works. Episode 258. [paulcienfuegos.com, celdf.org, YouTube channel “Community Rights TV” and communityrightspdx.org]
SF Source ZenGardner Feb 2014
Wikipedia – A community has been defined as a group of interacting people living in a common location. The word is often used to refer to a group that is organized around common values and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household. The word can also refer to the national community or global community. The word “community” is derived from the Old French communité which is derived from the Latin communitas (cum, “with/together” + munus, “gift”), a broad term for fellowship or organized society.[1]
A sense of community refers to people’s perception of interconnection and interdependence, shared responsibility, and common goals.[2][3][4]
Understanding a community entails having knowledge of community needs and resources, having respect for community members, and involving key community members in programs.[5]
Benefits of local community
The author Robert Putnam refers to the value which comes from social networks as social capital in his book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. He writes that social capital “makes an enormous difference in our lives”, that “a society characterized by generalized reciprocity is more efficient that a distrustful society” and that economic sociologists have shown a minimized economic wealth if social capital is lacking.[6]
Putnam reports that the first use of the social capital theory was by L. J. Hanifan, a practical reformer during the Progressive Era in the United States of America. The following description of social capital is a quote from L.J. Hanifan in Putnam’s Book:
Those tangible substances [that] count for most in the daily lives of people: namely good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse among individuals and families who make up a social unit…. The individual is helpless socially, if left to himself…. If he comes into contact with neighbor, and they with other neighbors, there will be an accumulation of social capital, which may immediately satisfy his social needs and which may bear a social potentiality sufficient to the substantial improvement of living conditions in the whole community. The community as a whole will benefit by the cooperation of all its parts, while the individual will find in his associations the advantages of the help, sympathy, and fellowship of his neighbors.[7]
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