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Dear Friends,
We are pleased to invite you to the
upcoming March Equinox Celebration, a day for honoring the Earth and
highlighting the economics for peace principles and policies originally
envisioned in 1968 by John McConnell, the founder and creator of Earth
Day. This event has been celebrated annually at the United Nations since 1971.
People will join
together at the UN and around the world to acknowledge the exact moment of the
March Equinox (3/19/24,
11:06 pm EST) when the ceremonial
ringing of the UN Peace Bell takes place honoring world peace and earth rights justice. The
Equinox is the time of year when the planet is in equipoise of equal day and
night representing worldwide balance and harmony.
John McConnell was an
idealist, a visionary and a peacemaker, who coined the term Earth Day. He
proposed its celebration be on the March equinox to the City of San Francisco
in October, 1969 and announced it in November at a UNESCO Conference. San
Francisco hosted the first Earth Day on March 21, 1970.
Since then the Earth
Society Foundation, which McConnell co-founded with Margaret Mead, has hosted
the annual event where the UN Peace Bell is rung followed by prayer, music and meditation.
Margaret Mead, UN Secretary-General U Thant, President Ford, and thirty-three
Nobel laureates supported Earth Day. In addition thirty-six worldwide
dignitaries signed McConnell’s Earth Day Proclamation, supporting Earth Day on
the March Equinox as an annual planetary holiday linking people everywhere
without regard to politics, culture, national borders or religion.
The theme for the March
2024 Earth Day celebration is The Earth
Belongs to Everyone: Building a Culture and Economics of Peace. This focus
draws upon McConnell’s thoughts, work and writings about EARTH RIGHTS. In 1968 McConnell wrote his “Planetary
Inheritance Declaration” concerning the “rights and responsibilities of all
people with respect to Earth’s land, sea, minerals, oil and other natural
resources”. He urged the UN to establish a “Natural Resources Royalties Pool”
that would collect money from any individual, corporation or country that might
take an excess of their rightful portion, then distribute those funds to all of
Earth’s people which would help to eliminate many economic sources of discord
that lead to war.
The Henry George
Institute welcomed McConnell’s message at a May 1996 seminar stating that “Mr.
McConnell has long shared Henry George’s vision of the Earth as the common
heritage of all people and he advocates the public collection of land rent as a
way to actualize this all-important relationship.” The seminar honored
McConnell’s co-authorship, with UN
NGO Representative Alanna Hartzok of a paper titled Pennsylvania’s Success with Local Tax Reform that
described the success this “earth rights” tax reform has had in Hartzok’s home
state of Pennsylvania.
If you are not able to
be at the UN celebration; please consider setting up an event in your
neighborhood that works for you. What follows this letter is the registration
form that we hope you will fill out to let us know of your interest to endorse
our project and/or plan an event to acknowledge the UN’s 2024 Equinox Earth Day
celebration. Once complete send it back to the address at the end of the form. Additional
support materials follow the registration form.
Kindest regards,
Paul Fitzgerald and
Elizabeth Gould
The
above information is from Peace,
Justice, Care of Earth: The Vision of John McConnell, Founder of Earth Day,
a biography by Robert M. Weir and Earth Day: Vision for Peace Justice, and
Earth Care: My Life and Thought at Age 96 by John McConnell, edited by John
C. Munday. See also The Earth Belongs to Everyone by Alanna Hartzok.
The
UN Center for Human Settlements – HABITAT – is an advocate for EARTH RIGHTS
tax policies as stated in Action Plans adopted by consensus of all UN Member
States. The Vancouver Action Plan section D.1 (a)s is one example
that says: “Excessive profits resulting from
the increase in land value due to development and change in use are one of the
principal causes of the concentration of wealth in private hands. Taxation
should not be seen only as a source of revenue for the community but also a
powerful tool to encourage development of desirable locations, to exercise a
controlling effect on the land market and to redistribute to the public at
large the benefits of the unearned increase in land values.”
2024 EQUINOX EARTH DAY ENDORSEMENT &
EVENT REGISTRATION FORM
Date of this communication: _________________________________________________________________________ I/We are pleased to endorse the 2024 Equinox
Earth Day and intend to ring a bell for peace at the exact moment of equinox at
the same time that the Peace Bell will be rung at the United Nations (March 19th,
11:06 pm EST) marking the 54th year of this annual event. The date
will be March 19 or 20st depending on where I live. Calculate time
from where you live HERE.
Countdown to the 2024 March Equinox is HERE.
I/We are organizing an event that will celebrate and
educate about the 2024 theme – The Earth Belongs to Everyone – Building a
Culture and Economics of Peace. I understand that a registered event
can be as modest gathering with family and friends or as ambitious as a public
forum in my community that would include speakers, musicians, poets and perhaps
a “pop-up” art exhibit.
Please register the event I / we are organizing on
the Equinox Earth Day 2024 website:
______________________________________________________________________________
(Name of event: If undecided please write
undecided.)
Name and organizational affiliation:
______________________________________________________________________________
Email: ______________________________________________________________________________
Phone:
______________________________________________________________________________
City and Country:
______________________________________________________________________________
Please
send me information about how I/We can launch an Economics for Peace project in
our community / town / city.
Email the form to ay|AT|gmail.com Email address“>EquinoxEarthD ay|AT|gmail.comEmail address or mail it to Mary
Carlin, 238 E. 58th St. #24, NY, NY 10022. The form can be accessed online HERE. To learn about launching EARTH RIGHTS
projects contact Alanna Hartzok at ay|AT|gmail.com Email address“>EquinoxEarthD ay|AT|gmail.comEmail address or 717-357-7617
AN INTERNATIONAL DECLARATION ON INDIVIDUAL &
COMMON RIGHTS TO EARTH (Originally
composed and declared at a meeting of the International
Union for Land Value Taxation held in 1949)
We hereby declare that the earth is the common
heritage of all and that all people have natural and equal rights to the land
of the planet. By the term “land” is meant all natural resources. Subject
always to these natural and equal rights in land and to this common ownership,
individuals can and should enjoy certain subsidiary rights in land. These
rights properly enjoyed by individuals are:
1. The right to secure exclusive
occupation of land
2. The right to exclusive use of land occupied.
3. The right to the free transfer of land according to the laws of the country.
4. The right to transmit land by inheritance.
These individual rights do not
include:
1. The right to use land in a manner
contrary to the common good of all, e.g., in such a manner as to destroy or
impair the common heritage.
2. The right to appropriate what economists call the Economic Rent of land.
The Economic Rent is the annual
value attaching to the land alone apart from any improvements thereon created
by labor. This value is created by the existence of and the functioning of the
whole community wherein the individual lives and is in justice the property of
the community. To allow this value to be appropriated by individuals enables
land to be used not only for the production of wealth but as an instrument of
oppression of human by human leading to severe social consequences which are
everywhere evident.
All humans have natural and equal
rights in land. Those rights may be exercised in two ways:
1. By holding land as individuals and/or
2. Sharing in the common use of the
Economic Rent of land.
The Economic Rent of land can be
collected for the use of the community by methods similar to those by which real
estate taxes are now collected. That is what is meant by the policy of Land
Value Taxation. Were this community created land value collected, the many
taxes which impede the production of wealth and limit purchasing power could be
abolished.
The exercise of both common and
individual rights in land is essential to a society based on justice. But the
rights of individuals in natural resources are limited by the just rights of
the community. Denying the existence of common rights in land creates a condition
of society wherein the exercise of individual rights becomes impossible for the
great mass of the people.
We therefore declare that the earth is the
birthright of all people.
QUOTES FROM EQUINOX EARTH DAY FOUNDER
JOHN MCCONNELL
“We need to find ideas that can generate the
greatest cooperation for the greatest good on our planet, that’s what I tried
to do with Earth Day, the Earth Trustee Agenda, Minute for Peace and the Earth
Magna Charta.”
“Environmental efforts by themselves will leave us
in ruins unless we stop war, unless we promote peace, and unless we have more
economic justice.”
“Among the equal rights of men is the right to an
equal share in nature’s bounty a right of each man to his planetary inheritance
– his share of land, water, minerals or an appropriate equivalent in food,
housing, or other benefits”. No one can, by any compact, deprive or divest
their posterity, or any other man’s posterity, of the right to his portion of
Earth.”
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth
Gould are authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, published by City Lights (2009), Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire, published by City Lights (2011).
Their novel The Voice , was published in 2001. Their memoir, The Valediction Three Nights of Desmond was published by TrineDay (2021) and The Valediction Resurrection was published by TrineDay (2022).
For more information visit invisiblehistory, grailwerk and valediction.net
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
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