Note: First Place winner, Serious Columnist category (weekly newspapers), Florida Press Association
1997 competition.
Ray St. Louis
2/8/97
BETWEEN THE LINES
Like most residents of Alachua County, I have heard the experts on both sides of the proposed
Florida Rock Industries cement plant near Newberry ad infinitum. I have read scores of newspaper
articles and letters to the editor. I have made the effort to digest statistics on pollutants and
emissions and particulate matter.
And, in answer to the question "is the proposed cement plant dangerous?", I believe I can now
answer with a firm "gee, I don't know. Think so."
Don't get me wrong. Although I may be a bit fuzzy on the scientific evidence, from a different point of
view (which I'll get into momentarily) I have no uncertainty whatsoever. I'm agin it. I don't care how
many County Commissioners and FRI lawyers tell me it's safe and necessary "for the common good",
I'm still agin it.
Fact is, that entire scientific debate is irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether the cement plant is very
harmful to the environment or only a little harmful to the environment.
What matters (and here's that other point of view I was speaking of) is that the people who will have
to live with it don't want it. This is about who decides what is best for whom. Who makes the rules.
Who has the power. In other words, this is about community control, a term that got a good deal
more air play back in the sixties and early seventies.
Here's an example. Back around 1970 when I was a college student living in Minneapolis, a conflict
arose surrounding the proposed construction of a Red Barn fast food restaurant in an area near the
University of Minnesota known as Dinkytown.
Dinkytown was, and still is, a quaint little enclave of shops, coffee houses, student bars and
occasional ethnic restaurants with a character all its own. It had its own look, and it had history.
There was kind of a Paris West Bank feeling to the area. At one or another of the bars and coffee
houses, offbeat poets and folk musicians regularly took the stage. People like Bob Dylan and Leo
Kottke before they became big recording artists.
The intrusion of a Red Barn hamburger joint threatened to change all that. It threatened to change
the esthetic of the neighborhood. For starters, all of Red Barn's restaurants looked, not surprisingly,
like big red barns.
The residents in and around Dinkytown decided to fight. A neighborhood organization was formed.
Meetings were held. Public hearings were attended. Legal maneuverings ensued.
At every step of the way, the Red Barn Corporation proved that money is the equivalent of muscle.
The meager resources of the neighborhood association were no match for Red Barn's high-powered
legal gunslingers. Red Barn got city approval and a building permit. The bulldozers were on their way.
That's when a young activist by the name of David Pence stepped in and began tossing about
phrases like "community control" and "civil disobedience." He talked about blocking bulldozers. By
then, a lot of people were ready to listen.
The morning the bulldozers and earth movers showed up to begin construction, they were met by
David Pence and a small army of students and neighborhood residents as well as a gaggle of
reporters and TV cameras which Mr. Pence had had the foresight to call. Like a scene from
Tiananmen Square in a more recent conflict over democratic principles, wherever the heavy
machinery was pointed, there was a body there to block the way. Eventually, the construction crews
left vowing to return the next day.
The next day there was a bigger contingent to block construction. People who had seen it on
television had decided to put their bodies on the line. Day after day the demonstration grew. A
number of people even camped out on the site in sleeping bags to make sure Red Barn didn't try a
night assault.
The siege went on for several weeks. Red Barn continued to flex its corporate muscle, getting court
injunctions and having people arrested. But there were always more people to take their place. Little
by little the Dinkytown residents won the sympathy of the public. They were David standing up to
Goliath.
People started avoiding Red Barn restaurants in other parts of town. The corporate heads realized
they were doing themselves more harm than good; and eventually, Red Barn gave up.
The point of this whole story is that the people who live in a neighborhood have a right to decide how
the nature of that neighborhood will change or not change, more so than a handful of developers
and politicians who don't live there.
It's no secret that money talks. And big money usually gets its way. It's like the old perversion of the
golden rule from the Wizard of Id: those who have the gold make the rules.
Every now and then, however, the big boys can be beaten, if not in the halls of justice and
government, at least in the court of public opinion. It just might require putting bodies in front of
bulldozers.