“What If A River Could Speak?”
In 2008, after Jane and I retired and moved to Grass Valley, California, we attended a workshop called “The Democracy School,” conducted by Thomas Linzey, an attorney with CELDF (the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund). The workshop was structured to help local communities use legal strategies of self-governance to resist particularly the negative impacts of corporate profit-driven assaults on the natural world. They centered their strategies broadly on “the rights of nature.”
This morning I received the following wonderful email from CELDF (if you do nothing else, at least click on the links to “Talking Wings,” “Talking Rivers” … and CELDF itself).
Dear Don,
What if a river could speak? That’s the question asked by two of CELDF’s amazing partner-advisors, Blake & Tzintzun (they/them), in their recent TEDx talk.
They ask us to see the world through the eyes of other living beings, deepening our connection to nature, and helping us to undertand the transformations we need to see in the world.
Blake and Tzintzun weave stories that amplify the voices of the land through their collaborative projects, Talking Wings and Talking Rivers, and are working with CELDF and other allies to create ecocentric governance systems that honor the rights (and rites) of rivers.
We invite you to watch their video and consider how you can contribute more to this movement.
RELATED (from Google’s AI Overview):
“The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) has worked with Bolivia to advance the rights of nature and communities. CELDF’s efforts include helping to draft a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth and supporting the passage of Bolivia’s Law of the Rights of Mother Earth.”
