By Katherine Watt
I wanted to write up a kind of goodbye message, gathering together the main points of what I’ve learned into a few pithy sentences before I move into the background as blog editor. It hasn’t been coming together in such a tidy package. So here it is, in an untidy package.
Leadership v. Dictatorship
A leader asks you to question everything and trust yourself to find answers. A dictator asks you to question nothing and just trust the dictator.
- Question everything.
- Trust yourselves.
Three main obsevations I’ve made over the past year or so.
The “System” is broken.
The People are not.
The People can fix the System, but probably only by starting over from scratch with a new set of contracts between the governed and the governing.
By the “System,” I mean the local councils, boards and commissions, the ordinances and the local government staff who implement those ordinances. I mean the county freeholders, boards and commissions, and the county staff who implement the county programs. I mean the state legislature, and the state courts, and the federal Congress and federal courts, all of whom pre-empt the local authority of ordinary citizens to make decisions on behalf of the local communities in which they live.
Those ordinary citizens are who I mean by “the People.”
I disagree with Emory Layne that the root of the North Plainfield problem is the specific people who have been in charge in North Plainfield for more than a decade. They may be incompetent morons, inept at wielding the limited tools they’ve got for local self-governance, and more interested in cementing personal friendships than governing openly and wisely in the interests of the whole community.
But the tools themselves were designed by and for a world no one lives in anymore, if we ever did - the world of infinite natural “resources” and infinite economic “growth” obtainable by resource extraction, development, utilization, exploitation, whatever you want to call it.
The only thing I hold the local politicians responsible for is not fighting back. Not having the sense to see that the tools don’t work, and not having the courage and the ingenuity to speak openly about the problems and start trying to design and build better tools.
How this all got started - Machines and Gardens
I started blogging for the Courier-News in March 2007. I did a post about Villa Maria. Villa Maria came up at the Planning Board in early May 2007, and in late May, I presented a proposal for alternative, community-supported uses of the parcel, to the Borough Council.
To be clear: Villa Maria is not the only local issue. It just happens to be one place where all the local issues converge and crystallize - the lack of local authority; ecology and planning; history; public accountability; population density; property taxes; litigiousness; affordable housing, health care, senior housing; public education, and so on.
I didn’t know, early, how very rigged the process was.
The tip-off was David Branan, Planning Board (and School Board) member, who wrote a blog comment clarifying that the Planning Board’s role in public decision-making, like the School Board’s, was and is a mere rubber-stamping formality, by statute, and that the crucial decisions are made earlier and elsewhere, by others. Land use rules were and are made by the state legislature far off in Trenton, and court decisions regularly upheld and uphold the primacy of private property rights over public community rights.
Many people misunderstand the roles and limitations placed by New Jersey state laws on various municipal governing and advisory bodies. I have found this quite common with my experience on the Board of Education and see it also holds true with respect to the role of a local town planning board. Unfortunately, we don’t have the power to block a particular development purely based on the feelings of a portion of the town populace whether a majority or minority. Our role is that of an adjudicator based on the demonstration of an applicant compared to clearly defined laws. Unlike supreme courts, we do not have even the implied authority to make laws or issue advisory opinions based on our adjudications. I strongly recommend that those who are interested in this issue, obtain a copy of the Municipal Land Use Law Chapter 291, Laws of N.J. 1975 which is the law establishing the existence of Planning Boards in the state of New Jersey as well as the rules govening their role. You can also find valuable information at the New Jersey Planning Officials website http://njpo.org.
I took him at his word. I looked it up. He was right.
And that was wrong.
Which launched a year of tinkering with the machinery of our so-called American “democracy,” pushing lots of buttons and pulling lots of levers, just to see what would happen, to see if the gears still move, if the machine still works, and if ordinary people are able to operate it effectively to identify and achieve common public goals.
I tapped on the microphones to see if they’re turned on, or connected to anything.
They’re not.
I sent letters to so-called decision-makers to see if they’d respond meaningfully to raised concerns and facts.
They didn’t.
The more buttons I pushed and levers I pulled, the more the machine clanked and groaned.
The gears don’t move very well. And ordinary people are not able to operate it effectively.
So I looked around for more information, and found the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a group of people - revolutionaries - who have designed an entire organizing strategy around their experiences and observations of these same undemocratic phenomena.
And that gets to the gardening metaphor, because with Antoinette, Mark and the rest of NPCCR, we’ve been breaking the ground to loosen the clods to prepare the soil, to plant a few seeds, water them, weed them, tend them, for something different: a living democracy to replace the rusted-out, broken down democratic machinery that’s not working for the People anymore.
Eggshells: Break them
In recent weeks, it’s become clear to me that Barbara Habeeb has less power as a Council member than she did as an ordinary citizen, which is an extremely important piece of information that we could not have learned without her appointment.
Barbara is only one step up from the voter level, and already it’s arguable that she was put on the Council to “shut her up.” It may have been a shrewd decision, because before her appointment, she was a bold, vocal and articulate advocate for things like open space, historic preservation and community rights.
Now, she’s walking on “eggshells,” afraid to speak up for fear of drawing a lawsuit against the Borough or jeopardizing her election chances in November. She’s feeling around to find the sides of the box to see how far she can go, and I wish her well and will support her with research and writing and whatever else she needs. But it’s a box nonetheless, and Barbara, like every other living creature, was not made to live in a cage. Nonetheless, just after Barbara’s appointment, Cheryl Reardon, representative of Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions and founder of Concerned Pilesgrove Residents, warned:
Barbara now has to be careful as a Council member to not ever state that she is AGAINST this proposed development in any way. That could open her and your Town up to a lawsuit from the developer.
It’s fine for Barbara to state her concern for certain issues based on possibility of environmental/water/community impacts, but NEVER should she use the word AGAINST or OPPOSED.
It’s ok for a resident to say that, but when an elected official says it, the developers are quick to file lawsuits. Our Town currently has a lawsuit against it because our Mayor made a statement something to the affect of he would prefer not to ever see another house built here. Also, a Judge ruled against our Town in another lawsuit and part of her ruling was that our Township was prejudiced against developers and therefore made it difficult for their applications to move forward in a reasonable manner.
That’s a preemptive gag order, imposed on free American citizens, by land developers, via the state judiciary. That’s a marker that the informed consent of the governed is a thing of the past, and the abdication of human freedom is a prerequisite for holding public office.
That’s the model of local self-governance we’re operating under: that elected officials have no judicially-recognized right to free speech, no recognized right to clearly and unequivocally state, on the record, what they believe is and is not in the best interests of the townspeople, on controversial issues of broad public concern and long-term local importance, and certainly no recognized right to implement those visions of community wellbeing that they’re not allowed to openly state to begin with.
And it’s not an accident.
Real flesh and blood lawyers, lawmakers and judges established that model, piece by People-paralyzing piece.
This is part of the System. Coopting the boldest and most vocal public advocates and neutering their power. Judicially quashing “prejudice” against builders, but not quashing prejudice against local communities interested in maintaining or improving their quality of life.
And each person can accept it, and go down mute, or go down swinging, saying: “To hell with that. God gave me a voice and I’m gonna use it.”
The state can’t give you free speech, and the state can’t take it away. You’re born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free. - Utah Phillips
Turning Points, Choices and Risks
We can have a revolution, or we can stand by and watch a further consolidation of corporate-state dictatorship. Like an assault victim, we can fight back, or we can lie there and take it silently and wait until it’s over.
But it’s never over.
And not fighting back has enormous consequences, both for the lifelong dignity of crime victims, who often hold themselves responsible for the abuse they’ve endured and lose the ability to call a spade a spade, and for the perpetrators of the violence, who get a free pass to escape accountability both public and private, and go on to terrorize the next victims, the next communities.
The biggest mistake anyone can make - whether governed or governing - is to think that the costs of silence are less than the costs of speaking up, that the costs of acquiescence are lower than the costs of struggle. Submissive silence has its own consequences, and submissive silence doesn’t protect you from your share of responsibility for those consequences.
Delay is not a win
Delays may keep the trees up at Villa Maria for awhile, and they may gain North Plainfielders some time to put together a workable purchase and preservation plan. But they may also end up as simply a grinding down tactic used by the builders to wear down local resistance.
The builders are few and focused.
We are many and often disorganized.
The builders have ample funding and the prospect of huge profits if they get to build.
We have little money, high taxes and the prospects of less money and higher taxes, whether they build or not, particularly under threat of lawsuits.
They can afford to wait us out.
We can’t afford to let them.
Sportsmanship
I had an opportunity recently to hear Mabel Hansen, matriarch of the local Dems and mentor to Mayor Janice Allen, and her family, talk about “sportsmanship” to the third and fourth-graders at West End Elementary School.
It struck me, at long last, that this is probably the notion that fills up all the spaces in the minds of the status-quo defenders among Allen’s administration. They don’t think it’s “sportsmanlike” to criticize. They don’t think it’s fair play to demand accountability for fumbles and poor judgment.
Here’s another way to look at that, within the Villa Maria controversy:
It’s not good sportsmanship to gag and bind and break the kneecaps of the opposing team before the game, as the builders have done to communities through the preemptive land use statutes.
It’s not good sportsmanship to walk off the field before the game, as the Borough Council and Planning Board have done.
Most importantly, self-government is not a game.
It can be fun, but it’s a very serious, very difficult, time-consuming, labor intense process, and the stakes are higher than backslapping and high-fiving at the end of the game, or even trophies at the end of the season.
The stakes are the lives and wellbeing of the people who live in North Plainfield - a gathering of souls that does not include Robert McNerney.
What is a win?
It’s a little mixed up. We’re kind of in a win-win situation, and we’re kind of in a lose-lose, damned if we do, damned if we don’t situation.
If the Borough fights hard against Villa Maria destruction, the builder will probably file lawsuits that will be costly for the Borough, and the builder will probably win those lawsuits, because builders almost always do. If the Borough doesn’t fight the new development, then all the bad, expensive stuff related to the development: flooding, traffic, school overcrowding, etc. will fall to the citizens anyway.
Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.
Rock and the hard place.
Lose-lose.
But…
If a significant proportion of the Borough’s residents get extremely active and involved and start pushing buttons and pulling levers all over town, all over the county, all over the state, there’s a chance, a tiny chance, that a few of those gears will actually engage and it will turn out that traditional democratic mechanisms are functional when well-maintained and regularly used. You might get what you want - local control, smart local decision-making - by using the regular channels.
And…
If a significant proportion of the Borough resident’s do all those things, and are thwarted at every turn (as we have been so far), then it will become increasingly, blindingly clear to many more people that the system is broke, it’s time, and they’re ready to create something new, something that fits the current realities and meets current and future needs.
My working hypothesis is that that last scenario is the most likely.
But being wrong would be as good as being right.
Win-win.
Anarchy
Many people have apparently been convinced over the last year or so that I’m an anarchist, interested in nothing other than tearing down the existing structures so there’s nothing.
Not true, in a couple of ways.
The enemy dictates the choice of weapons, and if the enemy here is a corporate-state structure that completely disempowers people and communities trying to step up and govern themselves using the tools and trappings of “democracy” to petition the government for the redress of wrongs and secure the public health, safety and welfare, then the corporate-state is driving the people toward anarchy, not the other way around.
More importantly, there’s never nothing.
There’s always change.
The question is, who’s leading the change, and in which direction? The dominant form of change is now being led by corporations, in the direction of greater consolidation of corporate power, by continuing a centuries-long process of withholding and/or stripping that power from ordinary people.
One of the most pithy summaries of rights that I’ve ever heard is: “My right to swing my arm ends at your nose.”
But it implies a few other questions.
Whose noses matter to the courts and the police?
Whose noses don’t?
The builders’ noses matter.
North Plainfielders’ noses don’t.
But with enough effort and enough organization, here and in other communities, people may be able to reclaim our inherent rights, lead the change, and lead it toward true local self-governance.
Resistance and Organization
Out in TV Nation under darkening skies/the resistance is just waiting to be organized. - Ani DiFranco
My provisional conclusion?
Ani DiFranco is right. Out in TV Nation under darkening skies, the resistance is just waiting to be organized, and more importantly, it’s organizing itself. North Plainfield is proof positive.
But it doesn’t go in a straight easy line.
Kris Kristofferson wrote it and Janis Joplin sang it:
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
John Mayer’s carrying it forward:
Even if your hands are shaking,
And your faith is broken.
Even as the eyes are closin’,
Do it with a heart wide open.
Say what you need to say…
