Post-Mortem

I’ve been playing around with PowerPoint to create a draft flow-chart showing the various decision points where things could have gone differently for North Plainfield citizens’ self-governance rights.

The ordinance provisions proposed for North Plainfield and passed in Pennsylvania can be thought of as deliberate citizen acts of “disobedient lawmaking,” because they challenge an injustice that is protected by current state and federal law: the power granted to corporations to override local people’s rights and harm local people’s well-being.

Perhaps the clearest historic parallel is to slavery, an unjust system protected by state and federal law until citizens began deliberately disobeying those unjust laws and, after a long struggle, the laws were changed.

In another New Jersey municipality, perhaps one with a Mayor and Council who agree with their citizens that actors with ill intent should be prohibited from engaging in harmful activities within municipal borders, an ordinance like the one proposed for North Plainfield would have a better chance, because the decisions at the decision points would go a different direction.

For interpreting the diagram, yellow boxes are decisions actually made by local decision-makers. Green boxes are citizen attempts to live the democratic ideal and follow the legal procedures set forth for active local self-governance. Dotted lines to white boxes are the paths not taken, the choices not chosen.

Acronyms:

NPCCR is North Plainfield Citizens for Community Rights.

ARC is Age Restricted Condominium ordinance.

BC is Borough Council.

PB is Planning Board.

Although I didn’t show it on this draft, there were many intersections where citizens could have given up in despair, but didn’t.

Food for thought.

Here’s the chart: Post-Mortem Chart