Grassroots Groundswell

I’m having trouble with my links lately. If you click on a link and bounce to a page that says “Easy, Tiger,” please drop me an e-mail at communityrights at gmail.com and let me know which link is broken, so I can fix it.

Thanks.

Just heard that some rumors are flying around again. Here’s the factual rebuttal, for the record: RUMOR - “Katherine Watt and NPCCR are moving forward with recall of the Mayor, which will cost the town a lot of money and is a waste of time and money because this is an election year.”FACT

- NPCCR is still discussing recall, primarily because talking about it scares the bejeezus out of the political insiders in the Borough: it’s a genuine threat to their monopolistic, authoritarian grip on local power, and it’s something the citizens have an absolute right to try, if they want to. Our group decision a couple of months ago was to continue digging up the information that would support a recall effort, just because it’s information about the track record of the current Mayor and Council and because the public should be aware of what those folks have done and are continuing to do (or failing to do) with their delegated authority. The consensus of the 30-40 people who made that group call was identical to the conclusions outlined in the rumor: this is an election year, which is a de facto recall scenario, so organizing a formal recall would be a waste of time and energy. So, there is no formal recall effort. There’s just an ongoing effort to hold local authorities accountable for their decisions and actions in every possible way.

RUMOR: “At the court hearing about the Self-Governance Ordinance, Katherine Watt was defiant to the Judge, ran up to the bench and threatened the Judge, and had to be restrained by the courtroom deputy and was almost held in contempt.”  

FACT: Fevered imagination at work there. The only kernal of truth is that, after we all stood up for the Judge’s entry into the courtroom, and after we all sat back down, and after the Judge said it was my turn to speak, I asked her for permission to read my prepared comments. The Judge said that was fine, and because the microphone was sitting on the desk in front of me, I laid my papers on the desk and started reading. I didn’t realize protocol was to stand up until it was Philip George’s turn to speak, but neither the Judge nor anyone else gave any sign that I had behaved inappropriately. I don’t even remember there being a courtroom deputy in the room, but maybe I just didn’t see him or her. Then, when the Judge gave her terse ruling, we all said “Thanks” and packed up our stuff and left. Antoinette and Frank were there, as was Councilwoman Mary Forbes, so readers interested in other accounts of the scene should ask them what they remember about it. I have to say, that particular rumor is almost flattering. I wish I had the gumption to open up a can of freedom-lovin’ whoop-ass in a courtroom. Alas, I don’t. RUMOR: NPCCR Members barged into a Council meeting making demands, which was a waste of time because Council discussion only happens at agenda meetings.FACT: Agenda meetings take place on the same nights, in the same room, among the same Council members, as regular meetings do, so any time a citizen or citizen group wants to make comments or propose ideas, all the right players are present and the same tape-recorder is running. Plus, Council members rarely discuss anything in any detail at either the agenda sessions or the regular sessions. That’s one of the giant problems: Council silence in the face of resident questions, concerns and proposals.

NPCCR members did make a presentation on December 10, and it was a low-key affair, with a half-dozen members informing the Council about the research we’d done to put together 14 workable proposals for saving Villa Maria from the bull-dozers - proposals we’d already submitted in writing several weeks before. No response from the Mayor and Council before, during or since.ONE MORE FACT: While these attempts to discredit me are entertaining, they’re really irrelevant at this point. I’m all but a lame duck community organizer, twiddling my thumbs for the next few months with gathering, organizing and disseminating public information and assisting all the people who will be here for years to come as they make their decisions about how hard they want to push for better, more open, more accessible, more accountable, more responsive governance in North Plainfield.  

Other defenders of democracy (right, left and center) feeling the sting of the ”treason” charge: essay here.

I received several extremely thoughtful and persuasive letters from readers following last Friday’s “Legs on a Dog” post, and after considering those arguments, have decided to keep up the blog, but decrease the frequency of new posts to two or three per week, to maintain the information sharing resource, but free up more of my time for information gathering.

For me, the most compelling argument was from a man who pointed out that, even when their work is not visible to the general public, many readers are providing an enormous (immeasurable) amount of support to NPCCR’s work by reading the blog for hard, document-sourced facts, culling out the opinion bits as they choose, and then passing on the factual information to their friends and neighbors, increasing the overall level of awareness and general discussion about important issues around town.

I needed that important reminder, and will try hard to keep it fresh in mind as we all go forward together.

I keep hearing that the local Democratic Party operatives are trying to paint North Plainfield Citizens for Community Rights as a Republican-driven attack machine.

Since I’m one of the co-chairs of the group, and the most wordy public articulator of what the group is working on, I’ve updated my Blogger profile as follows:

I’m a writer and community organizer. I think both major American political parties are irrelevant, and that it’s up to sensible, informed individuals at the local, community level, to make plans for coping with the historical changes upon us: global warming and the end of the fossil fuel, profit-driven, socio-military-political-economy. I think we’re at the beginning of the sustainability era, when humans will move to rejoin the rest of the natural world in respecting the biological truth that no species can live beyond its ecological means forever. And I think that young people - even younger than me - are going to lead, both by actually leading, and by becoming, for the first time in Western history, the generations for whose benefit public decisions are made.

To elaborate just a little bit, I’m a registered Democrat, but way, way, way to the left of the officially-sanctioned, misguided Democratic Party of Clinton-Obama-Edwards, out in the progressive, communitarian (not communist) end of the liberal spectrum.

I ran as a convention delegate for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 Presidential Campaign, and drive around with a Kucinich for President bumper sticker nowadays too. He’s the only candidate I’ve donated money to in the last few years, because he seems to be the only one standing up for the things I believe America needs at the national and international level: I love America, but no more and no less than I love every other place and people on Earth. As Virginia Woolf put it, “…my country is the world.” (For more on the Kucinich campaign, click here.)

True enough, a lot of registered Republicans come to the Town Meetings and signed the Ordinance petition, and, if and when we get into discussions about state, national and international politics, we’d probably find areas of agreement and areas of disagreement. Equally true, a lot of registered Democrats and Independents and “no party affiliation” people are involved with NPCCR too. Again, on specific state, national and international issues, we’d probably find areas of agreement and areas of disagreement.

But at the local level, party politics won’t help us pull together to do what’s best for the town, and all of the people who have come to Town Meetings, written letters to the editor, done research on Villa Maria options, signed the ordinance, donated money or otherwise gotten involved with NPCCR would probably support that view.

That’s why we’ve all chosen to start and continue to participate in a nonpartisan group intent on empowering free and equal citizens to solve local problems through open public discussion and use of our democratic right to self-governance.

More info about me and my politics:

I got my historical perspective from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and James W. Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me.

I get my national and international news from Democracy Now! , a radio news program aired at 9 a.m. weekdays on WBAI - Pacifica Radio - out of New York City on 99.5 FM.

I watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, both on Comedy Central, with great pleasure, because I think what passes for political leadership - Democrat AND Republican - in Washington D.C., is appalling, and if we don’t laugh at it, we’ll collapse in teary despair at ever finding ways to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, stabilize our climate and economy, and build green, clean, re-localized communities that support the people and ecosystems who live in them with good food and clean water; nontoxic, life-supporting work; creativity-inspiring education and healthy healthcare.

On-line, I read many of the essays at CommonDreams and the breaking political and media coverage at ThinkProgress.

I don’t listen to NPR, or watch FOX, or CNN, or CSPAN, or PBS. I don’t read the Courier-News or the Star-Ledger, and only occasionally check in with The New York Times on the web, mostly to see what the corporate media spin on national and international affairs is.

I don’t use those information sources, because I don’t trust them. I think they lie in the stories they do cover, and outright ignore the real stories that need to be told and understood by self-governing citizens in a genuine democracy confronted by the problems America faces.

Where do YOU stand on the political spectrum?

Where do YOU get your news, and why?

Send in a paragraph or two, and I’ll post your views too.

One of the most frustrating aspects of this work is dealing with the circulation of unfounded rumors about what we are up to, particularly when it’s so easy for people to check the facts.

For one thing, the nj.com North Plainfield forum permits anonymous postings, which lends itself to lots of problems because anonymous posters can’t be held accountable for factual errors or mischaracterizations. (In contrast, I generally post direct quotes or the actual documents, and if I post something factually in error, those mistakes can and have been corrected by more-knowledgable readers posting comments or sending clarification e-mails).

Also, there are just a lot of rumors to keep up with, making it difficult to sift through them, categorize them and rebut the ones that need rebutting.

Two that came to my attention recently:

Dan Glicklich, a former Council President who now lives outside of North Plainfield in an age-restricted community, is apparently canvassing with Councilman Santiago Soto, who is campaigning for election to the council seat he was appointed to after his son, Daniel Soto, moved out of North Plainfield and resigned from the Council.

Mr. Soto faces a challenge from Republican council candidate Jenny Uptegrove.

The rumor is, Mr. Glicklich and Mr. Soto, in their door-to-door canvassing, are telling voters that the Self-Governance Ordinance is “anti-business,” and that Jenny Uptegrove supports it.

Both of those statements are false.

[UPDATE: Another difficulty with debunking rumors is finding out whether the rumor is actually being spread in the way that it's rumored to be being spread. This is another reason why I have such a hard time figuring out when to address a rumor and when to ignore it.

At any rate, Ruth Glicklich sent in the following correction today:

"I happened to have visited your blog and noticed your article. Just for the record, my father, Dan Glicklich has not been canvassing with Santiago Soto. Your statement that he and Santiago are spreading rumors is in itself a rumor. I do not think Santiago has said that his opponent is a supporter of your ordinance either. He knows her position on it. Please check your facts or your blog will become as bad as nj.com. Thank you, Ruth Glicklich."

So, thank you to Ruth for the correction. Sorry about the mistake. Here's the rest of the original post.]

I leave it to Ms. Uptegrove to articulate her full position on the ordinance in any public forum she chooses, especially during a debate - if the candidates have a debate before the November 6 election, and I understand there’s some effort to put such a debate event together.

But she has expressed general reservations about the ordinance to me in one-to-one conversations, so linking her to the Ordinance is not an accurate characterization of her position.

Second, the Ordinance is not anti-business.

The ordinance is anti-business-exploitation-of-the-Borough-of-North-Plainfield, and its main purpose is to establish that property rights are not the only important rights that need to be considered and protected in local land development discussions and public decisions.

Community rights - to things like democratic self-governance; clean air, water, soil; healthy forests, flora, fauna, wetlands and streams; historic character and sense of place and community; reasonably free-flowing traffic - are as, if not more, important than property rights, deserve explicit protections under the law, and must be protected in government decision-making processes and outcomes.

If the state and federal government won’t enshrine those protections in the law, and they currently don’t, then citizens and local government must, under our authority as the People from whom all legitimate power flows.

If any of those community rights were adequately protected under current laws, we wouldn’t even need the Corporate Land Development and Local Self-Governance Ordinance, because our Borough officials would already have all the authority, power and incentives needed to fully protect those aspects of the public good.

It may be that more power for communities means less power (and less profit) for corporations, but it doesn’t mean no power or profit at all for corporations.

It means our community interests matter in a real way, influence public decisions in a real way, and can’t be rolled over willy-nilly in the corporate pursuit of the “almighty dollar.”

There are a lot of materials at this blog and all over the Internet, and in libraries and bookstores about these complex problems.

My hope is that, before anyone passes judgement or spreads rumors about what we’re up to, they’ll take the time to learn as much as possible about the relationship between corporate structures of power and democratic structures of power in America throughout our history up to the present.

I’m still educating myself about these things, and will continue to do so, because it’s an enormous subject.

But my provisional understanding is that something is way out of whack when corporations can bully a town into doing things that are damaging to the town, and that towns need to fight back, through things like the ordinance and all the other strategies being vigorously pursued by regular people all over America.

I welcome honest, fact-based, researched, thoughtful debate - like the questions and arguments posed by Bill here at this blog and in some of the conversations I’ve had with other people.

But the rumors are not helping anyone understand the situation better and prepare to take more responsibilty for the future of our much-beloved hometown.

So I’ll address the rumors as I hear about them and have time to address them, and keep hoping people will look behind the rumors to make up their own minds using the wealth of materials available for self-education and building community understanding and empowerment.

David Branan – school board and planning board member, wrote the following (his own views, and not intended to represent the views of any boards on which he serves):

These are entirely my own thoughts and I have not consulted with anyone else prior to writing this.

I know the people involved in North Plainfield Citizens for Community Rights are sincere in their beliefs and genuinely want to effect positive change for North Plainfield.

However, I was highly disturbed by reading this quote from the CCR blog, and I am writing with a plea that concerned residents working to resolve local issues also work to arrest what I see as a troubling trend in that work.

“the process for requesting a full financial/operational audit of NP by the State or even the GAO…” mentioning the high taxes, “unacceptable services” and the poor quality of the schools as possible signs that there’s some “fund misappropriation by the administration, and perhaps even criminal activity.”

While I generally support grass roots activities such as yours that breath new life into potentially stagnant communities, there is a danger that success can breed a crossover to an “anti” organization whose sole purpose is to tear things down without thought to rebuilding afterward. The degree of hatred I see emerging recently is unfitting to what started out as a noble enterprise to expand participation in local government. Looking beyond the issue of Villa Maria, many of the other local issues that are often mentioned, transcend the confines of the present administration, and date from times when others held the mantle of power.

My personal opinion is that there can be a very fine line drawn between activism in support of a good cause, and viciousness that serves the self-gratification of a small minority. To suggest that myself, my fellow Board of Education members, or the present school administration are engaging in self-aggrandizement borders on the slanderous. I annually sign a financial disclosure statement listing all sources of income as required under state law. My purpose in becoming involved with the Board of Education was entirely based on the fact that, at the time, I had 2 children enrolled in the schools and wanted to have some impact on what might happen to the schools in the light of the ever-increasing squeeze between operational costs and realistic tax levies.

As a parents yourselves, many of you too must feel this type of concern. I finally had the opportunity to become involved in 2005 when I transitioned to a new job within my company that did not require extensive travel. I have learned a great deal about what a board member can and cannot do, and what degree of influence we can have. I have never sought to achieve any financial gain from my involvement with the board.

Please, do not let your group get drawn down this path. Be very careful of those who may have alternate agendas that don’t necessarily align with your group’s stated nonpartisan intentions to inform and empower all residents toward more public discussion and more meaningful self-governance. I have seen many marriages of convenience disintegrate after the short term goals are achieved.

I implore all of you to take care with your group’s direction. Don’t make it an organization of hatred and destruction.

Youtube video of economist Milton Friedman - Bill’s contribution to the public debate about the relationship between corporations and democracy and the ordinance.

I need to listen to the interview more carefully and analyze it more fully at some point, but for now, I’ll just respond to Friedman’s comment at somewhere around the 16:15 minute mark. He’s talking about the “welfare state” programs such as minimum wage laws, Social Security and other programs initiated during the Great Depression under F.D. Roosevelt’s New Deal:

“That’s the great defect of this line of thinking, is that the ideas that are behind the direction we’ve been going in is that the people are children who need to be looked after by the paternal-, by the intelligent intellectuals and government officials who can take care of them, that Big Brother is in Washington and that he has to look after people. Now I think it’s Big Brother that has to be looked after...”

There are a couple of assumptions in there that I believe to be false.

One is that policies and programs designed to organize human systems of mutual support constitute “paternalism.” My views are derived from my rejection of the Hobbesian view that human beings are inherently isolated, individual creatures, each capable of complete self-sufficiency from birth to death.

That’s not true.

Humans are social creatures, strong and resilient creatures in some ways, but also frail and vulnerable creatures in some ways: children are uncoordinated and lack the ability to make judgements about their safety, adults are sometimes tired, injured or sick, and moving along into old age intensifies the frequency and severity of these times when we need help and support from caregivers.

Giving that help is not “paternalism.” It just makes good sense to give help to others when they need it, to increase the odds that others will take care of you when you need help and thus promote the survival of the social group overall. This biological altruism is seen in many other animal species, and challenges traditional notions of Social Darwinism - based on individual selection favoring the strongest - with the notion that groups with highly developed systems of mutual support have an evolutionary advantage over groups with more cutthroat, competitive systems.

The other assumption Friedman makes is that there is a difference between the people at work “in Washington” and the people who elect them. I actually think that’s currently true, because I don’t think America is yet a genuine democracy, and the people in Washington do, in fact, demand a great deal of watching, because most of the time they are all busily engaged in screwing the electorate while trying to get re-elected, so mutual suspicion and mistrust are hardly surprising or even unjustified. The politicians are afraid they’re going to get found out and fired, and the vast majority of regular people are afraid their minimal current levels of economic and social security are going to be ripped out from under them tomorrow by some new government scheme, corruption, incompetence or apathy.

On the other hand, I think that as we move more in the direction of recognizing that mutual support is the foundation of sustainable civilizations, the decisions about resource allocation and economic policies made by the people responsible for making group decisions, will be more in line with what those affected by the decisions actually need to survive and thrive. In my view, mutual suspicion and mistrust have got to be replaced with mutual respect and trust, or we’re going to keep fighting - economically, militiarily, socially - until there’s no one left but the best fighters, who will then devour themselves.

As Will Durant wrote:

Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is what happened on the banks.

Last, I’ll point interested readers to Naomi Klein’s critique of Friedman’s economic theories, elaborated in her new book - The Shock Doctrine - which she also discussed in a Democracy Now interview, saying, of Friedman:

“He had a vision of society, in which the only acceptable role for the state was to enforce contracts and to protect borders. Everything else should be completely left to the market, whether education, national parks, the post office; everything that could be performed at a profit should be. And he really saw, I guess, shopping — buying and selling — as the highest form of democracy, as the highest form of freedom…”

I’d like to do a photography project similar to the portraits made by Sidyou Keita in the 1930s and 1940s in Bamako, Mali. The idea would be to create dramatic, somber black-and-white portaits of active local citizens, photographed against an eclectic fabric background: faces of North Plainfield kind-of thing.

July 16, 2007 Notice (on the general subject of municipal authority to protect the environment, and developers’ use of the legal system to undermine community and environmental protection):

WILL MOUNT LAUREL AFFECT HIGHLANDS ACT?

After winning an Appellate Division ruling stating the Meadowlands Commission had to follow the Mount Laurel doctrine to set aside parcels for low-income housing, builders and their lawyers are now using the tactic to go after the Highlands Act. Last week, Carl S. Bisgaier of Flaster Greenberg’s Cherry Hill office, a lawyer for a proposed Warren County development, said the 2004 Highlands law, intended to protect the state’s drinking water supply and open space areas “usurped municipal control over land use” and “precludes any possibility of meeting the Mount Laurel doctrine” in the affected areas. Last week’s suit names the state and various other agencies as defendants and alleges the statute also violates the constitutional and statutory rights of poor, elderly and middle-class residents, as well as developers’ property rights. 7-16-07