This book reveals that our Constitution and legal system were intentionally designed to give more rights to the wealthy propertied class than the rest of us and exposes how this hamstrings our ability to effectively address a host of pressing social and environmental problems-and what we can do about it. Many of today's most serious issues resist resolution because property rights undermine the rights of people. Issues that affect whole communities are determined by the courts to relate primarily to property, contracts, and corporations and are removed from the public sphere and immunized from public governance. This is because the Federalists-the more conservative faction of the Founding Fathers-secretly drafted the Constitution as a counterrevolutionary document, and it restored to the colonial 1 percent privileges overturned by the revolution. This book describes how over 200 communities have drafted their own bills of rights that push back against the primacy of property.<\\P>