DENVER — The Colorado Community Rights Network (COCRN) has submitted to the state for review and comment the language for a Community Rights Constitutional Amendment to be placed on the 2014 ballot. The significance of the proposed state constitutional amendment was explained by COCRN member, Cliff Willmeng:

‘Communities throughout Colorado and across the country are finding that, in the face of corporate exploitation, they don’t have full authority, due to state preemption, to protect public health, safety and welfare, economic and environmental sustainability, property value, and overall quality of life. To do so without repeated challenges from corporate lawyers and our own state requires changes to our structure of law. The Community Rights Amendment would codify into law the right to local self-government, enabling local governments to define fundamental rights and prohibit activities that violate those rights.”

Lotus, another member of COCRN, commented, ‘When the thirteen colonies revolted to gain independence from England, the very first grievance listed in the Declaration of Independence was the refusal of the central government to recognize local laws enacted as an exercise of the people’s right to local self-government. The Declaration states that the king ‘has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and […]