WHO DECIDES Forum Planned

SCC Chairman Jack Dunavant announced a Public Forum for Citizens and Public Officials---

Thursday, Jan 24, 7:00 pm Halifax County High School

Who Decides Whether Southside Virginia
Will Be a Sacrifice Zone for Uranium Mining?

A Public Forum for citizens and elected officials

Thursday, January 24, 7:00 p.m.
Halifax County High School
310 High School Circle, South Boston VA 24592

Who Decides?

Who decides whether the people of Southside, Virginia, should have to endure uranium mining and its impacts on human health and our environment - the citizens of Southside Virginia, or the corporate officers of Virginia Uranium Inc.? That's the question that will be posed to the citizens and elected officials of the Southside communities that would be directly affected by the proposed mine in Pittsylvania County. Presenting the case for decision-making by the people who will be affected by that decision will be Ben Price and Shireen Parsons, the Projects Director and the Virginia Community Organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), a nonprofit, community-interest law firm.

Local Self-Government on Issues of Local Import: the Kind of Government You Can Get Behind

Since 1995, the Legal Defense Fund has assisted community groups and local governments in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia and New Jersey to draft municipal ordinances that prohibit corporate activities determined by the citizens to be a threat to their health, safety, environment and quality of life. Municipalities that have asserted their right to self-governance by adopting such ordinances have tackled issues including long-wall mining, ground water withdrawals, factory farms, sewage sludge and corporate waste dumping.

Just Government Exists Only With the Consent of the Governed

Some who distrust democracy argue that it is "beyond the authority" of communities to make governing decisions and pass laws on such issues. They assert that it is up to the state, or the "experts" to decide what's best for the people, the ecology, and future generations of Virginians, and that a centralized system of decision-making is "more efficient." But that's not the model of decision-making and self-government envisioned by the American Revolutionaries who signed their names to a bold statement of community rights that asserted: "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed." Clearly, when people are governed by powers derived, not from their consent, but from some other force, governing power is separated from justice.

Security Begins at Home

Those who disparage the people and their decision-making ability pretend that compliance and obedience are necessary in service of the greater good, for an abstract ideological concept, or for "homeland security." But security really begins at home. If our communities are not secure, if we, the people are stripped of our rights of self-determination and self-government, if the health of our children can be jeopardized in service of corporate profits and the political security of those who decide for us, how can we say the nation will be secure? Homeland security begins at home - if our communities are not secure, the nation cannot be secure.

Regulating Is Not Governing

State regulatory agencies issue permits for activities that are detrimental to communities across Virginia, and the people in those communities are prevented by their own elected representatives from corporate assaults that promise gradual but complete destruction. Citizens are told they can regulate the rate of destruction by advocating for the strict enforcement of permissive regulations. But to regulate harm is to allow it, while merely attempting to limit the severity. To regulate is not to govern. The people have an inalienable right to self-government, not a limited right to mitigate harms. If the people are denied their inalienable right to self-government in the communities where they live, they have it nowhere at all.

The Time Is Now

This presentation will bring the necessity for action to the forefront. Gathering data, writing to legislators, petitioning regulatory agencies, testifying at public hearings - these are not self-governing activities, but grievance procedures. There is no hero waiting in the wings to save our communities from ruin. We are the ones we have been waiting for. Our time has come. There is no time to lose.