U.S. law gives constitutional rights to corporations. Now a countervailing legal theory is emerging that defines and defends the legal rights of the environment.

Mari Margill is Associate Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, based in their West Coast office in Portland, Oregon. But as she explains here, the organization's origins lie in Pennsylvania.


Obtaining legal standing for nature, says Margill, requires enacting new laws to spell that out, something that is beginning to happen in scattered local jurisdictions, but faces an uncertain future on appeal.

For more information about CELFD click here.

Sixteen years after it was adopted, the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gay and lesbian service members is up for review, as public support for it is waning.

Paula Molnar's first command position was leading the Women's Army Band Corps at Fort McClelland Alabama. And it was there that she first had to confront the conflict between her duties as an officer and her own personal life.

She has posted an online photo album of her service career.

Molnar sees the fixation on sexual preference as a relic of the old guard within the military establishment, while the next generation of recruits simply doesn't care.

One of the groups leading the campaign to end the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy is the Service Members Legal Defense Network.

Three months after he was seized and nearly deported, a Santa Rosa man has been released to rejoin his family, and recover from his experience inside the privatized detention facility.

  KRCB previously reported on Okili's arrest on May 21, here.

Because Okili has not only tried to play by the rules as far as his visa was concerned, but has also become an active and constructive member of the community, Sabrina Krause remains convinced that when they are finally able to explain his circumstances to a judge, that background will make a convincing case for him.

At one point during his detention in Eloy, Arizona, Okili was very nearly deported in spite of the frantic efforts to obtain his release. He recalls that he was actually at the airport, just minutes away from boarding the plane that would have taken him to Europe, when he was spared by a last-minuts intervention.

The treatment of detainees at Eloy was subtly abusive, Okili says, from barely edible food to ill-fitting shoes that took weeks to get replaced.

The profit motive affects many aspects of the operation of that privatized detention facility, from policies that prolong the detainees stay there, boosting per diem revenues, down to exorbitant charges for telephone contact with the outside world.

In her recent visit to the Gaza Strip, a Sebastopol woman left behind some hot pink playground equipment, and brought back a heightened humanitarian concern for the region's residents.

CodePink , the San Francisco-based women's peace organization, assembled an international delegation of 66  that included Barbara Briggs-Ledson of Sebastopol, for a five-day visit to the Gaza Strip early this month, just ahead of President Obama's visit to Egypt. While they were there,the CodePink represetatives were given a letter from the leadership of Hamas to deliver to the President, inviting him to also visit Gaza. Read the letter here .

The sliver of land known as the Gaza Strip comprises just 139 square miles, covering roughly the distance between Sebastopol and Petaluma and extending halfway out to the coast. Home to 1.5 million residents, nearly half of them children and youth, it is intensively urbanized--the refugee camps are blocks of concrete apartment buildings. So Barbara Briggs-Letson says she took particular pleasure in helping bring something colorful for the kids to that scene.

Barbara Briggs-Letson (in white) smiles for the camera along with the Palestinian women who acted as translators for the  CodePink visitors. In addition to bringing and assembling the playgrounds, the CodePink delegation visited hospitals and other public facilities, Briggs-Letson says they also met with some of the area's political leaders.

Damaged buildings at every turn were a constant reminder of day-to-day dangers of life in the Gaza Strip, says Briggs-Letson. And there were others, too.

You can see more photos from the Code Pink Gaza delegation's trip here.