Porter Township in northwestern Pennsylvania was an unlikely hotbed for an anti-corporate uprising. The tiny rural community about an hour north of Pittsburgh has a population of only 1500 people, many of whom are staunch Republicans with deeply-held conservative values. But after the Alcosan Corporation, a Pennsylvania sewage-sludge hauler, threatened to sue Porter Township in 2002 for passing a local ordinance regulating the dumping of sludge in their community, town officials decided that their citizens had taken enough crap from corporations. Literally. So on December 9, 2002, Porter became the first municipality in the United States to pass a law...