The Northern Forest Forum
Volume 9, No. 3, Summer 2002

Is This Democracy?

A preferred means of dealing with citizens raising obstacles to mega-development is to dismiss them as Nimbyist. One environmental activist recommends that democracy belongs in everyone’s backyard.
*nimby: not-in-my-backyard

The following letter was sent to the Rutland Herald but never printed, in response to an editorial about corporate accountability. The writer, Annette Smith, is director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment (VCE), a membership organization which has been active in questioning the expansion plans of Omya, the multi-national mining company. Omya seeks to open a 24 acre calcium carbonate quarry in Danby and Tinmouth. VCE has also been monitoring the issue of factory farms in Vermont.

In response to your editorial, "Under suspicion," [http://rutlandherald.nybor.com/Archive/Articles/Article/49905, July 13, 2002], the question of how we can trust the President to correct corporate abuses could go further to ask how we can expect Congress to facilitate change since they, too, are beholden to those same corporate interests.

Closer to home, we have seen the open door policy for corporations while Vermont's Governor refuses to even consider the concerns of citizens affected by those same corporations. I had heard that the governor wouldn't meet with the citizens of Sheffield who were concerned about what a South African corporation was doing to their community and didn't want to believe it. During the last gubernatorial campaign, Governor Howard Dean agreed to meet with me after the election. I waited, and when I heard that he said in public that he would be meeting with the North American head of OMYA, I asked for equal time. Governor Dean refused my request for a meeting.

Governor Dean has consistently made devastating comments about the concerns of citizens dealing with corporations trying to do developments that are out of scale for Vermont. In the case of the Highgate Egg Factory's proposed expansion by a Canadian millionaire, Governor Dean likened the situation to a neighbor putting up a fence and said it wasn't the business of the Governor.

Most recently, Governor Dean had this to say about OMYA: "Everybody has local opposition. I've been traveling all over the country for the last year and a half. You pick up any local section of the paper and somebody has a lawyer that's suing somebody else because they don't want something in their backyard. That happens everywhere in the country. The question is how you moderate through that process." [for more of Governor Dean's comments on OMYA, see: http://www.vce.org/deanomya.html].

Governor Dean seems to think it is wrong for people to be concerned about what goes on in their community. This strikes at the core of what we thought we had in Vermont that is no longer a component of much of America -- a sense of community.

Two and a half years after OMYA's announcement of their intention to open a new mine in Danby, the community has turned into an ugly place where people are either for or against, with no middle ground. The community of Highgate is similarly divided. The community of Sheffield was literally destroyed by the granite quarry which turned out just as the neighbors' experts had predicted -- the granite deposit was no good and the quarry has since closed. The process totally fails our communities.

Equally problematic is the complete lack of communication with our elected officials. From Senators Jeffords and Leahy to Governor Dean to local Representatives and Senators, they have maintained an invisibility from citizens concerned about corporate development to an extent that is not only baffling but infuriating and, ultimately, insulting.

The jobs that are created by corporations are important. But while the Rutland Economic Development Corporation promotes the idea of "balance", we find there is none. Vermont citizens dealing with large corporate development projects, whether in Highgate or Sheffield or Danby, have learned the deeply painful truth that we are alone. Our government has failed us.

Where do we turn for guidance? Perhaps a look at this country's history will provide some enlightenment. First we learn that the situation 150 years ago was not that different:

"We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood....It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war." -- Abraham Lincoln, letter to William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864. Archer H. Shaw, ed., The Lincoln Encyclopedia 40 (1950)

And so we look further back to our founding fathers who offered this in their Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

Are we in such desperate times yet? Time will tell.


Editor’s Note: Vermont’s Governor Dean wants to be President.