Oregonians for Community Rights (OR4CR) submitted over 1,300 sponsorship signatures to the Oregon Secretary of State to begin the signature collection process to qualify the Right of Local Community Self-Government constitutional amendment for the November 2016 ballot. This amendment is all about democratizing our communities.

That means having the authority to adopt stronger rights and protections for people, our community, and the environment locally than the state, federal, or international level, and put a stop to corporate activities that attempt to violate our rights. What the amendment doesn’t allow for is to have communities weaken rights or protections secured by the higher levels of government.

Unfortunately, the Secretary of State has rejected broader circulation of the petition initiative. The state claims that denying state preemption and corporate rights exceed what is allowed though the initiative process. We believe the initiative process was made precisely to protect the rights of communities.

We knew from the beginning that the State and the establishment would be uncomfortable recognizing the power of the people to govern themselves. We’re not giving up! We will be filing legal challenge to the state’s finding.

Please click here to help fund our legal challenge.

It’s more important than ever to have a right of local community self-government amendment in place to protect a community’s right to confront or advance critical local issues such as oil trains, pesticide use, fossil-fuel pipelines, living wage, rent control, LGBT rights, and land use.