LETTERS

0

That’s not what I said 

Ms. Beverly Gholson apparently did not read what was written [Re: Letters; “Reviewing the Law,” Sept. 17], but rather what she thought was written. My original letter never said this is the law, and you must thereby do such and so. What I cited were common-sense RULES and offered ways for cyclists to cultivate a better (and by implication safer) travel experience. And, yes, many of these rules have been codified.

I’m glad that Gholson took the trouble to look into statutes, etc. CRS 42-4-1412 is quite helpful, as is CDOT’s “Colorado Bicycling Manual, 8th Edition.” Now I hope she will more fully understand some basic concepts such as impeding traffic, and what many of these not-just-legalese terms mean in practice. The most important takeaway? Bicyclists have the same duties and rights as a vehicle driver. Duties, you say? These begin with “Obey traffic signs and signals.” How straightforward could that be?

What an officer of the law tells you depends on what he or she is asked. And few of them know all of the law. Even judges don’t. So it is best to err on the side of caution, and responsibility.

Gregory Iwan/Longmont

Passion without logic is bad 

Boulder Weekly found this letter from last year but still felt it was relavant for publication.

CCRN (parent of BCRN, child of CELDF) was a group that I respected for their passion. I thought that their mistakes came from a place of naïveté. What they want to do isn’t “illegal,” it’s just not within the law. It’s like saying, “We’re going to eliminate fracking by putting the Emancipation Proclamation in the tax code.” It’s dumb, and they already know they can’t win. Not because of shady corporate forces against them, but because we have a system of laws. How many Americans want to repeal the constitution in order to ban fracking?

There are many ways that Coloradoans can push the law to make changes to protect the environment at the local, state and national level. All of the anti-fracking initiatives potentially going to the ballot in November (with the exception of CCRN’s 75) could be upheld by the courts. The Longmont case could be decided in a way that permits home rule municipalities to ban fracking or at least zone surface operations. Any citizen may petition the COGCC for a rulemaking that could change how oil and gas development is regulated in the state.

Nationally, Citizens United could be overturned by a constitutional amendment reserving the bill of rights to natural persons.

CCRN says the legal way isn’t working, when the legal fight has barely been going on for three years. It’s clear that their agenda has nothing to do with protecting the people of Colorado from the harmful effects of oil and gas development. It has everything to do with losing “noble battles” to glorify their egos. That’s a shameful disservice to the families who are forced to breathe toxic air, surrounded by dirty industrial practices. Those people don’t deserve to be victims, they deserve victory.

PS. I’m the author of a 100-page thesis on the local regulation of oil and gas development in Colorado, and I am a natural resources attorney who has done extensive work on the issue.

For more information on the national level organization behind the community rights issue, and why their strategy is deliberately meant to fail, please see this article: zcomm.org/ zblogs/community-rights-as-an-organizing-strategy/ 

Kate Toan, Colorado Environmental Law/Boulder

Fracking problem fix

I would like to thank Paul Danish for his recent article relating to the Supreme Court’s possible decision on the Longmont ban on hydrofracking [Re: “Longmont Fracking suit: What if Longmont wins?”, Sept 3]. Although the most important points he brings up are not directly mentioned, they sit alongside of the article with sharp clarity.

The conflict that Danish addresses here is one of historic origin. It is the inherent conflict between property rights and human rights, which in modern environmental debates isn’t actually supposed to be a topic of discussion so much as a foregone conclusion. With fracking, like mining, injection wells, GMOs, the adoption of a local living wage, local rent control, the authority has been taken by the state to protect property interests as superior to what communities consider safe, sustainable, just, or otherwise necessary so to protect their health, welfare, and safety.

It’s this conflict between what property owners consider their right and what the people consider as necessary that identifies nearly all social movements in our nation’s history. The slave states considered African Americans their property and thus exempt from power or rights and women were relegated to the property of men, which is why disenfranchisement was legally acceptable. The labor movement was seen as a violation of the property rights of the robber barons and corporations, and segregation of business was reasonable because it was the choice of the property owner to determine who sat at his lunch counter.

Thankfully, people conducting those movements didn’t buy it, and moved to create structural legal changes that recognized people as superior to property.

The fracking issue is no different, and the reason it can’t go away is the same reason that the civil rights movement didn’t give up when Rosa Parks got arrested for failure to give up her bus seat. The legal system that protects the oil and gas industry, true to its historic role, protects the rights of the few while guaranteeing the harms of the many.

That is the conflict that fracking has created, which has historic remedies starting to be discussed today.

The solution to the fracking problem will rely upon the creation of similar legal changes that recognize the rights of people, communities and our natural environment as superior to those of corporations. The Colorado Community Rights Amendment, which is being readied for the 2016 elections, accomplishes exactly that. And because the amendment goes directly to the heart of the matter, we can expect the system to join the campaign with every strategy in its book to make sure the measure is either disrupted, confused or outright crushed. People have learned through experience how the powerful derail the many, and this time around it might not be so easy.

So that’s where it stands today, and of course we hope the Colorado Supreme Court does right by the people of Longmont and other Front Range communities. But Danish’s suggestion that we all just save up and buy the mineral rights if the Court fails to protect our rights is about as flat as suggesting that the Abolitionist movement should have saved up money to buy the slaves instead of freeing them. Luckily our national history has had much more audacious, inspiring and necessary views, and it was those ideas which prevailed.

Finally, laws that are necessary for the common good have a way of pissing off the powerful, and sometimes those laws reveal the real nature of the problem. It is the conflict between the many and the few that Americans have experienced from the very beginning, and we don’t have to look further than the Declaration of Independence for an example. The first complaint against the King of England listed by the colonists in that document reads, “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” Sound familiar?

Let’s hope the Court does what’s right by the people, and prepare for the next steps if they don’t.

Cliff Willmeng/Lafayette

Stand fast for liberty 

Conservative Republicans who are being accused of holding firmly to their positions and refusing to compromise.

The lesson from this battle should be clear to all. If the Republican majority in Congress is to govern, it must refuse to yield to the obstructionist liberal minority. If the election victory of 2014 is to have any meaning, the Republican leadership must prove that it can outwait and outlast the Democratic leadership.

Peter J. Thomas, Chairman, Americans for Constitutional Liberty

No-till is no good 

I sincerely hope you have received many others that are better stated than mine. I don’t know if Ms. Evans could be this uninformed of the GMO debate and still be writing an organic column?

I have no qualifications other than growing up in Kentucky on a small farm, watching no-till become popular, then watching the extension of those “best practices” into the GMO monster we have today. Here in Hygiene, I am surrounded by farms that spray Roundup on all crops.

I moved to Colorado in 1981 and have been organic gardening for over 30 years.

Joseph Lemmon/Longmont