Reply to Paul Danish regarding civil disobedience in Lafayette

[An editorial by Paul Danish appeared in the January 19, 2017 issue of the Boulder Weekly, which can be found here. Because his editorial was so biased and one sided, but publicized in Boulder County's most widely read newspapers, I had to pose this response.]

Paul Danish, age 74, ex-Dem turned Republican, past Boulder Council member and candidate for County Commissioner, has penned an editorial that ridicules civil disobedience, minimizes the accomplishments of the Standing Rock protest, is in favor of allowing fracking on Boulder Open Space, and favors a bill currently before the North Dakota legislature that would legalize murder of oil and gas protestors by automobile if they get run over on a state highway. Charming.

Why the Boulder Weekly allows such an angry, biased, and inaccurate libertarian rant to be published is beyond me. I am only glad to see that they allowed a more balanced news story by Rob Jackson in the same issue about the Lafayette city council meeting where the Climate Bill of Rights was proposed and tabled for a later vote. I suppose Mr Danish's outlandish editorials still churn enough controversy to justify publishing them; but I hardly think they have wide support.

What Mr. Danish fails to mention, and is apparently completely unaware, is the larger picture, and why the group behind the proposed bill, East Boulder County United (EBCU), has taken the route of proposing civil disobedience at the local level: because all other levels of government have failed us. I worked with EBCU in 2012 and 2013 to get the Lafayette Community Bill of Rights on the ballot, which passed by 60 per cent. The Boulder judge that decided that state law preempted us from doing this six months later did not even address what was stated in that bill: that we created a law based on rights stated in the bill based on our right as a home rule community to do so.

In other words, we went through an arduous, year long legal process, involving significant investment of time, energy and effort by many Lafayette citizens, of passing a valid law based on our community rights and were ignored, based on court precedent alone, which was not an authentic legal analysis of what is in that new and innovative town charter amendement. That new innovation, community rights, was not given a chance to be heard. EBCU and concerned Lafayette citizens did not get their day in court, and an unchallenged legal maneuver supposedly decided the matter; not at all, in our opinion. That decision should have been appealed and heard by the Colorado Supreme Court, where there should have a real discussion of how our community rights were defined, and what that implies. But we lacked the resources to fund such an appeal.

This is not democracy. This is rule by corporations who fund politicians; that is, a plutocracy by the rich who own those corporations, which borders on facism. I hope that anyone reading this realizes this is the kind of government that the oil and gas industry has been creating, out of view of public scrutiny, for decades, primarily at the federal and state level of government. But now the times they are a'changing...

Let me state the matter quite factually: Lafayette's declared community rights were whitewashed by a judge intimidated by court precedent that has favored the oil and gas industry. Our judiciary and legislative bodes have been intimidated by this industry for decades. To quote Mike Foote, our representative in the state legislature, whom I personally heard state this in a local town meeting, nothing happens in the state legislature without the approval of oil and gas industry.

Does this sound democracy to you? I don't think so...

EBCU and Lafayette citizens are still waiting for their day in court; and the passage of a Climate Bill of Rights is another attempt to get that. The established law has been stacked in favor of the oil and gas industry for decades; this is an attempt to even the playing field -- and they are apparently so terrified of allowing even a semblance of true democracy to emerge in our legal system that they impulsively react with heavy handed, authoritarian force, backed up by the police power of the state.

Which is exactly what happened at Standing Rock. The Native Americans have been waiting for their day in court since the first treaties were broken. All they are asking at Standing Rock is that the oil and gas industry abide by the law and respect a past treaty. And how were they treated? We all saw how they were treated -- and they have stood their ground. If Mr Danish was not aware, this was an event covered by international news media, and represents a turning point in a global environmental movement, where native Americans, backed up by thousands of non-Native supporters, stood up to injustice, and the insanity of continuing to invest in an industry that is hell bent on destroying the planet.

I sincerely hope the Lafayette City Council will pass this Climate Bill of Rights, which I feel is what the majority of Boulder County citizens would also support -- and not allow fracking into our community. According to the amount of available open land in Boulder Country (see http://www.bouldercounty.org/o..., if 1,800 wells were drilled on county open space, and would be approximately one per 21 acres. If Mr Danish thinks that Boulder County citizens are ok with this, I am afraid he's going to be disappointed. His views are those of an outdated, backward looking libertarian crank who is out of touch with a progressive movement that is looking to the future, has no illusions about who is pulling the levers of power, or the power of civil, non-violent disobedience to change the established order of things, as history has shown.