Summertown, Tennessee, USA

Natural Rights Center

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Dear Supporters, With the unfortunate passing of Tom Dixon and the retirement of Albert Bates (now at i4at.org), the Natural Rights Center stopped handling cases in 1997 and closed its doors for good in 1998. The report which follows is from our original web posting in 1995, and is preserved here for historical interest. Thank you for visiting. The NRC Crew

The Natural Rights Center is a public interest law project started at The Farm by Plenty in 1977. The focus of the Center's work is on transgenerational impacts of present-day patterns of behavior, which impair the NATURAL rights of future generations.

In the practice of law, and especially in fields of complex, multidistrict, frontiers-of-science kinds of law, the seasons between planting and harvest are very long. Perseverance is an essential element of this type of work, and every once and a while, patience is rewarded.

This year we drew to a close some cases that date back more than 10 years and consumed the energies of scores of attorneys, paralegals, interns, students, and volunteers. Each case was ultimately successful, as we knew it would be when we embarked upon it. But each case was handed defeat at least once along the way--we just didn't know how to accept it, and so we never did.

We are often asked how we manage to keep fighting these large battles with such a small budget to work with. Where do we get our stamina to keep going on cases that take 10 years or more to win?

We don't think you could watch uranium worker Joe Harding become a human skeleton, spoon-feed paralyzed atomic pilot Jim Dugan, or sit quietly as John Smitherman breathed his last breaths, and try to say something to their grieving widows about how they deserved better, without coming away with strengthened resolve. This year we closed a long open chapter of atomic veteran heroism. We don't think you can meet with the hibakusha from Hiroshima, or the deformed children who were born downwind of the Nevada or Pacific proving grounds, or the sickened children of Chernobyl, and not be moved to see this work through.

Nuclear power still poses one of the foremost threats to the survival of life on our planet. The Cold War has been replaced by any number of Dr. No scenarios wherein a small group of terrorists, working either within or outside of some government auspices, can acquire or build nuclear weapons. As long as atomic power plants generate electricity, the terrorist threat will exist. Intercontinental ballistic missiles are unimportant--today thermonuclear bombs can be delivered by UPS. We continue to monitor this situation and do what we can to bring the threat into the open and suggest what might be done. There are those, like journalist Mordechai Vanunu, who are in prison for life for precisely such activity.

Ultimately what must happen is we must abandon fission and fusion and pursue benign sources like sunlight, ocean waves, and the wind. We must stop burning our furniture to stay warm and learn to live within the budget of energy that's delivered daily.

Earlier this year we taped the Freedom Forum's show, "Freedom Speaks" in Nashville. It will air in 60 PBS markets and 300 overseas outlets in the coming weeks. The subject of our segment was the Freedom of Information Act, or more specifically, the Center's 17 year effort to obtain FBI files on The Farm and Plenty which ended, in October 1994, with release of 800 pages and a stipulated settlement of attorney fees. In those 17 years we raised and spent more than $125,000 to pursue the case, or $156.25 per page. Was it worth it? If it is easier for the next citizens' group, yes. If it helped show the federal judges we argued before how absurd the claims of secrecy made by government agencies are, yes. If it lent a hand in getting President Clinton to issue a broad directive opening up old files, including the secret files on radiation experiments, yes. It was worth it even if all it did was show us how to bring and win a protracted Freedom of Information Act case. With each success--or failure--our muscle grows.

Free flow of information is the essence of democracy. It is the active ingredient in the American system. It returns sovereignty to the people. Secrecy is anathema to a free society, a vestige of Cold War footing, a death-grip on waning control by aging power elites. Pseudo-cover-ups, like Whitewater or the Vince Foster suicide, are strawmen built by the power-hungry to posture upon. We eat real cover-ups and spit out truth. We did it with nuclear homicide. We did it with the Farm's FBI files. We did it with the Waco massacre.

Our efforts to work through the auspices of the Freedom of Information Act are expanding. We have a number of pending cases involving federal agencies, and more are contemplated. But each year, 100 documents are classified for every document released. We are one of the few independent forces working to reverse this trend.

Lingering Darkness

When we pick up the banner of the poisoned peoples of the world, the victims, the downtrodden, it is to say, "Look here! Do you see what is happening to these people? Do you think others are immune? Would you want that to happen to you?" When we argue for the rights of the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, the discarded, we hope to reshuffle the deck and empower those people to be a positive force for change. We have eager and idealistic young lawyers who want to help us. We have a large law library (much of it rescued from the Washington D.C. landfill) and a humming office with computers and modems. But we are sustained by donations, and those donations aren't keeping pace with our caseload. Donations are what pay the light bill, and the phone bill, and keep the fires burning late at night. If you have a friend who might like to hear more about us, let us know and we'll send a newsletter, or you can pass this piece of paper along. The Center is you. Our work is your work.

Now hold that thought.

Last season on Star Trek: The Next Generation, the crew of the Enterprise were on a mission to save a Farengi freighter that had fallen into a rift between time and space. In the process of this mission, they learned that centuries of use of warp drives by the Federation had been gradually weakening the fabric of time and space, causing incipient rifts to form throughout the Universe, primarily along the most frequently traveled corridors. According to calculations, each continued decade of warp use would result in a 25% further degradation, so that within 40 years, the Universe would be torn asunder, rendered uninhabitable to lifeforms of any kind.

Captain Picard and his officers debate what to tell Star Fleet. "I've devoted my life to space travel," says Picard, "and now I see that what I have been doing has been destroying the very thing I love most."

"The Klingons will honor a moratorium on warp travel," says Warf, "but I doubt the Romulans will do the same."

"Even if the Romulans honored it, there are still the Farengi, the Bejorans, and the Cardasians, none of whom is likely to give up warp drive." says Riker. "That would mean giving up space travel, except for very short distances."

Star Fleet issues its new directive as the show closes. For the time being, Federation vessels will observe a Warp 5 speed limit except for emergencies. Recognizing that it was a Warp 1 movement through an incipient rift that caused the Farengi freighter to make the first real breech in the fabric, Commander Data says to Picard, "But, Sir, that will only slow, not stop, the degradation."

"Yes, Data," replies Picard, "but we can hope that buying some time will give us the chance to find a real solution."

Like giving up space travel?

The similarity between this television plot line and the real problems faced by the inhabitants of Earth is painful. Our consumer culture, which just picked up Russia and Eastern Europe and is rapidly spreading into China, Africa, and Latin America, is warming the atmosphere, destroying the ozone layer, stripping needed resources, and fouling the only human habitat in the Universe. "Conservation," as the environmental cause has been called for 100 years, will only slow, not stop, the degradation. What is needed is something as radical, to a technophilic civilization, as giving up space travel. We have to re-think the way we live.

Rethinking the ways people live means looking beyond the issues of the moment, like revenue sharing, term limits and crime, and predicting the future. The future becomes virtually immutable after some point, based on physical laws and present conduct. For the Natural Rights Center, it means working to save species, preserve forest, reverse population growth, and stop the atmospheric buildup of carbon and chlorofluorides. To begin to live as if our presence on the planet could be sustained.

The oceans can only absorb 1 or 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. Fossil fuel uses alone will release about 6 billion tons this year. To create a balanced budget, the world has to go back to the emissions level of 1950. Policy steps in this direction have already been initiated by two dozen industrial nations, but like the Clinton Administration's goals, they are "conservationist"--i.e. designed to slow the damage--not sustainable for the long term.

Now earlier, when I asked you to hold that thought, I said the Center is you. The Center is you. Our work is your work. What we need you to do is go out and work for the Center. Send us something from the work you do. That might be money. We certainly need money. That might be contacts, clippings, key technology advancements, experience, or advice. We need all of those, too.

Don't think this work we do will be supported by the endowments of Foundations or government grants or a few wealthy individuals. That has never been our fate. We are always either too far ahead of the curve or too heedless of controversy to attract major grants or endowments, and our experience of 17 years is that working people and retirees who have very little discretionary income are better, more reliable and more generous donors to our work than heirs or aspirants to great wealth. Most likely, that's you. The Center is you.

Help us as much as you are able. Everything is appreciated. We need reach warp speed without damaging the fabric of space and time.

Contact:

Natural Rights Center
Attn: Albert Bates, Director
PO Box 90
Summertown, TN 38483-0090
Fax: 1-931-964-2200