home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: sparky!uunet!olivea!sgigate!sgi!cdp!cberlet
- From: cberlet@igc.apc.org (NLG Civil Liberties Committee)
- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
- Subject: Re: Wise Use in Northeast (anti-Green)
- Message-ID: <1425500036@igc.apc.org>
- Date: 13 Dec 92 22:24:00 GMT
- References: <1425500034@igc.apc.org>
- Sender: Notesfile to Usenet Gateway <notes@igc.apc.org>
- Lines: 240
- Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1425500034:cdp:1425500036:000:10245
- Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!cberlet Dec 13 14:24:00 1992
-
-
- /* Written 2:10 pm Dec 13, 1992 by cberlet in igc:publiceye */
- The Scent of Opportunity:
-
- A Survey of the Wise Use/Property Rights
- Movement in New England
-
- by William Kevin Burke
-
- December 12, 1992
-
- Introduction
-
- The national Wise Use movement, a coalition of
- self-proclaimed grassroots groups allied to
- developers and resource extracting industries, is
- growing rapidly in New England. Combining noisy
- demonstrations with quiet organizing and
- coalition building, Wise Use organizers have
- rapidly made themselves important factors in an
- ongoing struggle to shape the region's economic
- and ecological future. But close examination
- reveals that the movement's roots are not so deep
- nor its motives so pure as its proponents claim.
- Across New England the Wise Use movement can best
- be characterized as a collection of financial
- opportunists and ideological extremists who
- depend upon misrepresenting--at times even
- appropriating--environmental messages.
-
- "Property rights" is the slogan the Wise Use
- movement has adopted in New England. The Wise
- Use/property rights organizations studied for
- this report have all used similar tactics and
- advocated similar goals. While these goals, most
- importantly the removal of government
- restrictions on development, raise legitimate
- issues for public debate, the tactics used by the
- property rights advocates seek to prevent
- rational discussion of public issues.
-
- Quite simply, New England's property rights
- groups rely on intimidation and misinformation to
- spread a message that is almost entirely
- negative. Like their national Wise Use advisors
- and organizers, the New England Wise Users
- proclaim either that there are no environmental
- problems--that all environmental reforms and
- wilderness protection are part of a socialistic
- government plot to steal land--or that whatever
- environmental issues do exist can best be
- addressed by allowing industries and landowners a
- completely free hand in consuming natural resources.
-
- The logical flaw here is evident. Free market
- solutions to environmental problems can prove
- quite effective when instituted through
- negotiations involving government, industry, and
- the community of environmentalists and concerned
- citizens. But cries that government interference
- will harm economic progress ring hollow when
- voiced by a business owner angry over the failure
- of efforts to build a regional dumpsite in a
- relatively unspoiled rural area. That sort of
- self-serving deception is alarmingly common among
- the local property rights activist groups that
- Alliance for America, a new national group, is
- helping build in the hopes of forging a national network.
-
- With only one exception, every property rights
- group studied for this report had at its core
- people with a direct financial interest in
- eliminating environmental protection. People from
- these groups frequently used techniques which
- inhibited informed community discussion over how
- to protect resources and promote sustainable
- economic growth.
-
- It is important to give the New England Wise Use
- movement credit for its energy, significant
- successes, and a few legitimate complaints.
- Development, economic growth, and the truly wise
- use of resources are essential to a healthy
- society. But this report will show that the Wise
- Use movement's agenda as applied to New England
- is not truly pro-growth or a wise choice for the
- region's future. Rather, the movement is blindly
- anti-government. Some of the more extreme
- adherents of Wise Use philosophy oppose spending
- money on improving schools or suggest that
- centralized sewage treatment is a bureaucratic
- plot to eliminate local control. The Wise
- Use/property rights movement in its purest
- conceptual form seeks to overturn modern
- society's assumption that there are common public
- interests, such as health, education, and
- planning for the future, that bind communities
- together. Their vision of society seems to be a
- war of each against all. "It's not like they want
- to set the clock back fifty years, they want to
- set the clock back one thousand years," said an
- environmentalist who came into contact with the
- tactics of New England's Wise Use organizers
- while preparing a report on how to preserve
- Vermont's working landscape.
-
- One of the most striking aspects of the property
- rights movement in New England is how links to
- national movements have produced organizations
- that use language and tactics that are virtually
- identical. All the groups take pains to proclaim
- they are not lobbying organizations, even when
- they employ essentially full time lobbyists or
- pressure political officials to change specific
- laws. All the property rights groups fully
- embrace Wise Use founder Ron Arnold's doctrine
- that "facts don't matter, in politics perception
- is reality." The New England property rights
- movement routinely and intentionally spreads
- information that is heavily-biased or false to
- promote an agenda that will financially benefit
- the movement's backers. Unfortunately, their
- questionable assertions have rarely been
- thoughtfully challenged by the region's press.
-
- New England's Wise Users are not violent, though
- Don Rupp, one of their most important advisors,
- once wrote that he is involved in a guerrilla war
- with the U.S. government and at a public hearing
- told members of the Upper Delaware River
- Management Plan Revision Committee that they
- would "probably get shot." The property rights
- organizers are simply not what they claim to be,
- an environmentally aware, grassroots oriented
- movement devoted to educating citizens about
- their property rights. When their habit of
- mouthing falsehoods is exposed, the Wise Use
- spokespeople typically turn up the volume of
- their claims.
-
- Nationally, the Wise Use movement has declared
- war on environmentalism. But it is not inevitable
- that this conflict involve the long term
- hardening of positions into "greens" versus
- "browns." For while the property rights
- organizers are certainly entitled to their
- political opinions and have raised issues that
- need to be addressed as society implements
- environmental protection and planning laws, their
- methods, especially the reliance upon false
- information to spread fear among uninformed
- citizens, make them toxic to society at large.
- The author hopes this report will make it easier
- for other journalists to ask the hard questions
- about financial interests and abuse of the truth
- that are not being asked when property rights
- advocates hang politicians in effigy for
- advocating land use planning or claim that
- waterway protection programs are government land grabs.
-
- In fact, this report will show it is extremely
- debatable whether the policies advocated by the
- property rights advocates would actually benefit
- the bulk of New England's small landowners. It is
- certain that the property rights agenda will
- undermine the stability of the banking industry
- and promote rapid changes in rural landscapes and
- working forests that would benefit realtors and
- developers, precisely the people who most often
- make up the core of the region's property rights
- movements.
-
- Nevertheless, the property rights label seems to
- carry an immediate emotional appeal to New
- England's traditions of Yankee independence and
- self-sufficiency. In New England, property rights
- organizing has stretched from Maine's northern
- forests to the Connecticut River valley. The
- focus of this report will be a detailed
- description and analysis of the region's various
- local movements. The main text is divided into
- sections focusing on Maine, Vermont, New
- Hampshire, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Each
- of these states has seen significant organizing
- activities around property rights issues. In
- Vermont and Maine the property rights movement
- poses an immediate political threat to efforts to
- plan for an environmentally and economically
- stable future. In Massachusetts the property
- rights movement won a resounding victory along
- the Farmington River, successfully opening the
- door for future dams or large scale diversions
- along the Farmington and preventing efforts to
- enact zoning to protect the river's ecologically
- fragile banks. In New Hampshire and Connecticut
- the property rights movement has tried to enlist
- widespread public support, but has for the most
- part failed.
-
- The property rights movement has attracted active
- political allies and has shown signs that its
- funding exceeds the limits of its relatively few
- grassroots members. In Vermont, the Secretary of
- State has helped conceal financial data about
- Citizens for Property Rights, the state's Wise
- Use organization, from state legislators. In New
- Hampshire the minuscule local group--called the
- New Hampshire Landowners Alliance--appears to be
- funded largely through Alliance for America. The
- Maine organization claims to fund itself entirely
- from contributions from its over four hundred
- members. All these groups claim not to be
- lobbyists, yet devote the major portion of their
- energies to campaigning against specific elected
- officials and government policies.
-
- One of the main methods of spreading the property
- rights word is through letters to the editor of
- small community-based newspapers. The movement
- has also benefited from news articles in major
- regional papers. It appears that, as has been
- seen nationally, the prepackaged controversy of
- the property rights message of "jobs versus
- spotted owls and wetlands" and "government land
- grabs" provides a "sexy" news hook. However, it
- will be demonstrated that news reports that
- accept the claims of the Wise Use/property rights
- movement at face value risk containing serious errors.
-
- In addition to the state studies, this report
- includes a short history of the Wise Use movement
- and a separate section describing the Northern
- Forests issues that loom in the future for
- Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. One of the
- cruelest ironies of the property rights movement
- is that the realtors and developers who control
- the agenda will ultimately profit from displacing
- the same individual rural landholders and timber
- workers that they claim to represent under the
- banner of Wise Use.
-