Kind of dramatic, but it's a big deal:
CALIFORNIA'S REDEVELOPMENT AGENCIES ARE DEAD.

The courts have determined that the State has the right to end redevelopment AND that it is improper for the cities and counties to be able to pay to stay in the redevelopment game.  You'll remember that two California bills had been passed.  One killed redevelopment, and the other allowed cities and counties to pay the State the amount of property taxes that had been diverted away from schools to the redevelopment agencies.  The cities and counties were arguing (absurdly) that this was a ransom.  In the 'Through The Looking Glass' world of UN Agenda 21 and Redevelopment, the 'logic' was that since the cities and counties had been able to take property taxes meant for schools, roads, police and fire, general funds, etc for so many years and divert them to the redevelopment agencies, if they had to give some back to the State for schools that was a 'ransom.'

WE ARE CELEBRATING TODAY.  WE THOUGHT WE'D NEVER SEE IT.

But be careful: INFRASTRUCTURE FINANCING DISTRICTS are another vampire.  This is a way to take your tax dollars and pay for Smart Growth--the preferred development model for UN Agenda 21. 

LET'S KILL IFD's.  PUT THAT VAMPIRE DOWN!
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Yes, the book you've been waiting for is hot off the press! 
BEHIND THE GREEN MASK: U. N. Agenda 21
by Rosa Koire

If you've been waiting for an interesting, clearly written, how-to-manual for identifying and fighting UN Agenda 21, here it is.

Organized in three basic sections that tell you what it is, how it affects you, and what you can do to fight it, BEHIND THE GREEN MASK: U.N. Agenda 21 is 168 pages of truth.  Part history, part current events, part hand-to-hand combat, and part blueprint for freedom, this is one book that you'll put to use right away!

Boots on the ground and all hands on deck is the order of the day.  Let's put this book to work!

We'll have it on Amazon in a few weeks, but right now you can get it here.  Just go to our Donate/Contact Us page and email us with how many books you'd like and your mailing address. They're $17 each + $3 shipping.  We will pay the tax.  If you'd like to send a check, please send it to:

Post Sustainability Institute
PO Box 15192
Santa Rosa, CA 95402

Thank you!
2 Comments
 
 
Here's something you may not have heard of yet:
A one trillion dollar federal program to enable local governments to purchase vacant residential, commercial, and industrial properties from banks and demolish them.  Why?

So that more green space can be created in cities.  They call this turning redfields (vacant bank-owned properties in the 'red') to greenfields (parks and open space).

In this fantasy world of more and more federal money created out of thin air, underperforming property held in private ownership will be converted to publicly held open space.  Your community, which now can't keep your existing parks watered and maintained, will acquire bank-owned land.  In this sort of perfect UN Agenda 21 spin, all of the people in smartgrowth buildings downtown need a place to play.  It has to be a public place because government can't observe you when you're in your backyard.  In another 'rescue' of banks and as a part of UN Agenda 21's war on private property, existing buildings will be demolished and private land taken off of the property tax rolls.  Demolition of buildings (how's that for a greenhouse gas/carbon generating/landfill glutting solution) and building parks will 'create jobs' in this scenario.

Let's say it again: ONE TRILLION DOLLARS of federal money is proposed for this 'land-based approach to solving America's economic crisis.'  That quote is from the Urban Land Institute's January/February 2010 article From Vacant Properties to Green Space.  It covers the 'story' that City Parks Alliance, of Washington, DC is developing a federal funding strategy for this scheme.
 
Can we put this together? 
  • Step by step:  UN Agenda 21 sets the stage for high density development in cities. 
  • Redevelopment agencies subsidize development for smart growth.  Only some favored builders were in on the money train.
  • Banks were urged in the Clinton administration to loosen their loan criteria and let the money flow. 
  • Developers built more and more commercial and residential buildings, glutting the market
  • The economic collapse was engineered to cover the migration of business and production out of the US. 
  • The stock market crash was engineered to suck wealth out of the middle class and destabilize their retirement.
  • The TARP bail-out was pay-back for the banks and consolidated their power by allowing them to take over smaller banks.
  • The crashed economy is a staged event and encourages agitation for more social programs, along with the vilification of property ownership.  Those who own private property are 'greedy.' 
  • As people lose their homes to foreclosure and their steady employment vanishes, they will be more willing to live in government subsidized apartments in the center of cities.  There will be less people to object to loss of private property rights.  Proposals to stop the federal mortgage tax credit will be more easily accepted, thus threatening private home ownership.  The press obligingly writes articles about the miseries of home ownership and extolls the virtues of living in a condo (maintenance-free!) or apartment (move when you want!) next to the train tracks. 
  • Private car ownership will become unaffordable through high gasoline prices, high parking costs in  city centers, and vehicle miles traveled taxes, and wages can be lowered to reflect the 'savings.' 
  • The redfields to greenfields conversions in the suburbs allow cities to demolish buildings and close off services to those areas.  Redevelopment dollars, your property tax dollars, will be used for these projects.
  • Rural roads will not be paved, making rural property less valuable, banks will foreclose and local government will buy for pennies on the dollar.  Less and less land will be available for agriculture, for production, for small scale living.  Government-owned land will be managed by or given to non-profit land trusts in public private partnerships. 
  • Lands will be closed off to public use.  Rural areas closed.  Suburban areas closed.  Forest areas closed.  Rural roads closed.  Logging roads closed.  Camping areas closed.  State park areas closed. 
  • Restrictions on travel.  Personal identification required at all times.  Health records.  School records.  Communication records.  Email, Facebook, Global positioning mapping, Virtual Reality---all serve to narrow your world.
  • Regionalization of government will take the planning decisions away from local government and out of your control.  Rural councils, regional boards, neighborhood associations, condominum boards, residents' associations---all speak for you without your ability to stop them.  They all want the same thing.  Control, total information, and social engineering.  Think you'll be able to stop SmartMeters when you live in a 200 unit building owned by your local low income (government subsidized) housing developer?

    That was easy, wasn't it?  Most of this is in place right now. That's how you turn RED to GREEN in the UN Agenda 21 plan.
2 Comments
 
 
By now everyone has heard that Chinese curse : May you live in interesting times! 

Well, it's been interesting lately.  I've been on several radio shows (Maggie Roddin's The Unsolicited Opinion is a terrific source of information---you can listen on-line at www.TheUnsolicitedOpinion.com), and have been speaking in Northern California.  I've been invited to speak all over California and in many states.  I hope that I'll be able to come and visit with you and talk about this important issue.

A couple of days after I spoke at the East Bay Tea Party's meeting in Danville, CA, which was video'd by Steve Kemp, I got a call at 6:30 in the morning telling me that the video of my speech had been posted by Glenn Beck on his website www.theblaze.com.  I had never heard of Glenn Beck before but I could see that this was a pretty big deal.  We had over 5,000 hits on our website every day for a week, and over 10,000 people have viewed my speech (you can see it on this website by going to the What is Agenda 21 and Why Should I Care page---scroll down).  I am really grateful that the information about UN Agenda 21 is spreading across the United States.  I can't keep up with my email, and I want to let everyone know that there is a fantastic grassroots movement of activists in every state standing up and saying no to UN Agenda 21. 

I hope you'll join us in spreading the word about UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development, and its handmaiden: Redevelopment.  Awareness is the first step in the Resistance.
2 Comments
 
 
Guess what?  In yet another disgusting display of adventures into human nature we have the story of the XYZ army during the XYZ War.  Story goes that the XYZ, not wishing to use more soldiers than necessary to guard their prisoners of war, decided to cull out the independent, active prisoners and place them under guard.  The others, the passive ones, hardly needed any guarding at all---they went along with the program.  So, what did the XYZ find when they separated the two groups?  That a mere 5% of the prisoners were the independent, active types.  Five percent.

There are 300,000,000 people in the US.  Five percent is 15,000,000.  Figure half of that for those who aren't going to just sit around and let themselves be Delphi'd in consensus meetings, pushed around by their City Councils, told that they have to agree to lose their private property rights to redevelopment projects, shamed into watching while their neighbors are bullied by Community Oriented Police measures, and flattered into mandatory volunteer programs for local non-profits designed to dictate their life choices.

Yes, that's about SEVEN MILLION PEOPLE in the United States.  That's seven times the population of San Francisco. About twice the population of Chicago.  About equal to New York.  Remember that when you go to a 'visioning meeting' put on by the regional transportation authority and local government.  You are just one of millions of people across the nation who are standing up every day and saying 'We will not be bullied into silence. We object to being told that we are a threat to the planet if we live in a house and drive a car.  We know that this is just a smokescreen for the plan to run a total information network designed for maximum control of our lives.  This is the biggest public relations stunt in the history of the world, and we are not going to go passively.'  And remember:  Seven million is only two and a half percent. 

Speak up, speak out, reach out to those who will be bitterly disappointed to see that the vision of a perfect world of no carbon emissions and smiling people is a sham.  A manipulation.  An artificial construct designed to direct whole populations to a pre-determined outcome.  The obedient, passive, unquestioning mass of consumers ready to turn on their neighbors and report.  Is that what we want for our going forward?

Five percent.  Make it happen.
2 Comments
 
 
We got Delphi'd big time the other night and that train is headed your way.  You know that being 'Delphi'd' means that you were subjected to a visioning meeting where the outcome was a done-deal before you walked in the room.  They're calling it 'YOU CHOOSE' but the reality is that the only thing that makes it yours is that your taxes pay for it and it will be imposed on you.  

In this case it was OneBayArea but in your area it will be called something else, something regional.  It's a transportation plan primarily but that's just the excuse for creating a huge master plan based on redevelopment that includes land use restrictions.  Basically it's a stack-em and pack-em housing model for an enormous UN Agenda 21/ICLEI plan.  Moving you out of your rural and suburban home into a tightly designed, easily monitored apartment or condo with no space for your car and lousy public transportation.  The story you'll hear is that the only way that people will take public transportation is if they are crowded into downtown areas, and giving up cars is the main way to stop greenhouse gases.  What about electric cars?  We're told that driving is anti-social and besides WE NEED EXERCISE!   The facilitators, by the way, are complete hypocrites who live in single family homes...just ask them.  And they drove to the meeting, too.  Greenhouse gases are the green mask. 

      
Regionalism--the intermediate step in globalization, and the method by which laws, rules, and regulations can be standardized so that you can't escape them. The regional push is to restrict future development to redevelopment areas ONLY.  Did you get that?  If you own land outside of those areas you will not be able to build on it.  Now we didn't say 'land outside of the city limits'---no.  Land outside of a redevelopment area, outside of a transportation corridor will not be buildable.  This is stunning.  If your city wants to get a piece of the big funding pie for transportation and planning  it has to agree that for the next 25 years the only development will happen within the redevelopment area boundaries. Why are they doing it in redevelopment areas?  Because they have the power of eminent domain there and can take your land and give to another private person.  The city/county can take the property taxes in that area for the next 30-45 years and use it to pay off bond debt and pay their cronies to develop SmartGrowth.  Hear that thunder?  It's sellers running to dump their property outside of redevelopment areas and buyers racing to buy within those areas.  But quietly, stealthily, because you haven't woken up to it yet.

OK---the meeting.  If you've never experienced a Delphi meeting you're in for a shock.  Although the facilitators SAY that it's all about hearing your opinion, in fact if you dare to say anything or ask any question that doesn't agree with the steamrollering propaganda machine you'll be shouted down. Yep, supposedly decent Americans from your own community will shout at you like a feral mob and scream that THEY DON'T WANT TO KNOW where the funding for the project came from.  THEY DON'T WANT TO KNOW how much the project is costing them.  THEY DON'T WANT TO KNOW why the entire plan/project was pre-designed even though it's supposedly being shaped by the public.  How much is it costing?  $200,000,000,000.  THAT'S 200 BILLION DOLLARS JUST IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA.

If you want to keep your community the way it is now it's called 'Business As Usual' and they'll shame you.  The choices you are supposed to pick are 'Planned Future' with more and more urban development and more government control.  The facilitators go to work on you if you don't want to go along with the program.  Punishment, shaming, isolation. The room was packed with elected officials, government employees, non-profit groups, board and committee appointees who made sure that the outcome was the 'right' one. 

WHY?  Your government/public-private partnership corporate ruler needs you to buy the illusion that you have some say in what happens to you so that you'll BELIEVE THAT YOU LIVE IN A FREE COUNTRY.  Funny thing is that you live in a  Republic that is run as a Democracy.  Mob rule is supposed to be controlled by the legal system but unfortunately the courts are part of it. They don't want you to make trouble for them while they sew up the new totalitarian state.

We suggest that you get a copy of 1984 by George Orwell and read it.  It's the blueprint for the 21st century.  

Read up.  Stand up.  Speak out.  GO TO THE MEETINGS.
STOP ICLEI.  STOP REDEVELOPMENT--THE FUNDING AND EMINENT DOMAIN ARM OF UN AGENDA 21.

Do yourself a favor.  Right now, go to a search engine like Google, put in the name of your city and 'Redevelopment.'  Get the map of the redevelopment areas in your town.  That whole area is diverting its property taxes away from your city services--for 30 to 45 years.  And it's going to get worse.  Read up, Citizen!
5 Comments
 
 

Regionalization.  If you don't know what it is, you will soon.  It's the interim step on the road to globalization.  The creation of another layer of government, unelected, unaccountable.  A conglomeration of municipalites who are making new laws and goals that supercede their local laws---then they'll go back to the local community and say that they are required to bring their local laws into line.  A manipulation.

The following story is set in the San Francisco Bay Area but it could be in your area.  And it will be soon.
There are Delphi meetings going on all over the nine county San Francisco Bay Area right now.  Put on by www.OneBayArea.org they are public/private meetings organized by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Association of Bay Area Governments, and local agencies and groups.

As you know, a Delphi meeting is set up on the premise that the organizer is 'welcoming the public's input' but the truth is that the outcome of the meeting was determined in advance.  The public is there for a propaganda session and to give the illusion that there was public buy-in.  Typically participants are given crayons and paper like children and told to 'design' a perfect community.  This utopia was miraculously envisioned in advance and is produced on colored maps with lots of pretty pictures of middle class people recreating. 

The goal is to homogenize the Bay Area and the nation with 'smart growth'--mixed use developments subsidized by your property tax dollars, with ground floor shops and two to four stories of residential units above.  Very little parking, very little open space, few private outdoor areas.  Constructed right next to a busy street or rail-line (active or not), these condo and apartment developments discourage private vehicles. 

Planning documents for each and every city and county are standardized and brought into alignment with this idea.  No one can get anything built that does not conform to this plan, and only government-subsidized developers (cronies) can get their projects built.  Banks won't lend on these projects without government guarantees because they often have high vacancy, crime, and poor maintenance.  Typically the retail space never rents up or rents for far less than the developer expected, but he's long gone...sold the project to some investor with dreams of a big return---soon to be in foreclosure.  Mixed use only works in highly urbanized areas where there are enough residents to support the retail.  San Francisco is an example.  Typically, most smaller cities cannot support this model.

Forget the idea of a 'level playing field' because no private owner can get their project through the Planning Commission and City Council.  And nothing is permitted by right anymore--in other words just because your property is zoned for a use doesn't mean you can build it.  Years of paying consultants, permit expediters, architects, planners, and lawyers bankrupts many while they're waiting for approvals. Often the developer has gotten a private loan from an elderly investor who then loses everything when the developer stops paying.  Up here in Sonoma County we have developers Alan Strachan and Orin Theissen as the most infamous for that behavior. They've both been hailed as 'visionaries' for their disneyland-like failed SmartGrowth developments. And you'll recall that Alan Strachan had been poised to offer 'Green Energy Loans' as a boondoggle pushed by the sponsors of One Bay Area.  

This is social engineering.  These developments are designed for the minimum of privacy, and to allow controlling energy and water agencies the option of limiting your usage without your input.  In the guise of environmentalism the stress of living will increase through greater regulation and restrictions. This is a giant redevelopment plan with the power of eminent domain.  STOP ONE BAY AREA NOW.

For a look at an incredible grassroots success at anti-Delphi-ing one of these meetings take a look at this youtube.  The whole meeting is a great example of how to take over one of these meetings and how to assert yourself as a citizen, but if you go to the beginning of the second hour on this youtube you'll get the essence of it!  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH5KYGV8314
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OK.  YOU JUST FOUND OUT YOUR TOWN OR COUNTY OR COUNTRY IS A MEMBER OF ICLEI--INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON LOCAL ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES.  SEE OUR FLYERS TO KICK ICLEI OUT OF YOUR COMMUNITY--CLICK HERE (pdf)

What does this mean?

FROM ICLEI-USA WEBSITE (Member Benefits):
What ICLEI Members Receive:
  • Clean Air & Climate Protection (CACP) Software and training
  • Tools, guidebooks, case studies, and other resources, including a library of local government sample ordinances, policies, resolutions, and other documents
  • Webinar trainings and regional workshops
  • State, regional, national and international peer networking opportunities
  • Technical and programmatic expertise and assistance from our regional staff
  • Regional, state, and federal funding updates, as well as federal and international policy analyses
  • Annual training and leadership events
  • Recognition and awards
  • Representation at international meetings
If you read that carefully then you are concerned.  Very concerned.  Because you now see that the ordinances, resolutions, regulations, and restrictions being imposed by your council or board of supervisors is coming from an international group with a fully designed one-size-fits-all blueprint for your life.  Just in case your community government has trouble with you or with these policies they, ICLEI, give them training in how to handle you, how to impose legislation (with samples), goals, targets, fine structures, and restrictions. Your government is given opportunities to get together with ICLEI facilitators outside of your view...to plan your future. 
Sinister?  YES. 
TRUE?  YES. 
OK, you say, since you're not convinced, and you think that maybe this is a good thing because we should all be coordinated in our energy usage and planning...you say:
Why should I be concerned if an international group is dictating policy to my government? 
Why should I be concerned if I don't have a vote on these issues? 
Why should I be concerned that goals and targets have been established for me without my knowledge?
Time for a tutorial...Let's use ICLEI's own website links where they tell you all about one of their favorite projects, PlaNYC, a New York City plan involving a huge developer, a redevelopment project, eminent domain, and a fierce community fight--here it is---READ HERE.

The bottom line?  What your government says is good for you and good for the environment, and good for government and good for a fat cat developer might only be good for................
you guessed it.  MEOW!

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The three cornerstones of Agenda 21/Sustainable Development are Economy, Ecology, and Social Equity. 

Economic collapse creates a chain of events, but on a micro level (county, city) there is a marked reduction in revenue for maintenance of services. Loss of services to outlying areas means, for example, roads not being maintained to rural/suburban areas. Roads not being maintained to those areas, schools not being supported in those areas, law enforcement/fire/social services not being supported in those areas means a gradual movement into the denser city centers.  Add to that the increased cost of gasoline (manipulated), and the higher cost of energy (manipulated) to heat and cool statistically larger homes, and you have more pressure to leave rural and suburban areas. Reduction of energy usage is key.  Smart Growth/New Urbanism is the supposed answer: smaller units, attached condos, little or no parking, few private cars.  More eyes on the street.  Paid for and subsidized with your property tax dollars through redevelopment.  You pay for 30-45 years.

In addition to these factors, ecologically motivated regulation makes rural/suburban development prohibitive.  From stream/creek/ditch protection to watershed protection, to bayland/inland/rural corridor prohibitions, to increased species protection (lists are growing), the use of land is greatly limited.  Water well monitoring and loss of water rights reduce the opportunity for living outside of cities. Wildlands programs that prohibit roads/trails into rural areas while supposedly protecting them with conservation easements (sale of development rights to Agricultural Land Trusts that restrict farmers and ranchers from using their lands and therefore make it impossible to farm for more than one more generation) increase the loss of our food source independence.

Add to this the pressure from Climate Protection Campaigns to reduce our energy usage to pre-1985 levels and increased regulations on industry and you have the perfect storm for loss of jobs and greater dependence on other countries for goods. As the population becomes more and more urbanized and less able to provide food or necessary products, more people are dependent on the government for housing, food, and other basic necessities.  Government itself becomes dependent on grants and loans with requirements attached.  In this way policy-makers are influenced and pressured by the corporatocracy.  Public/private partnerships favor some businesses over others and completely unbalance the playing field.  Independent businesses go out. Poverty works its way into the middle class.

Social equity, another one of the cornerstones of Agenda 21 comes in here.  As a major leveler, the loss of money, land, food, and energy independence brings the US into 'social equity' with the poorer countries. This is a goal of Agenda 21.  Health will suffer, presumably health care will suffer, nutrition will suffer.  Psychological problems, stress from living in tight areas with other un- or underemployed people, and crime will result.  Community Oriented Policing will encourage, if not require, people to watch their neighbors and report suspicious activity.  More activity will be identified as 'crime'--such as obesity, smoking, drinking when you have a drinking problem, name calling, leaving lights on, neglect (in someone's perception) of children, elderly, and pets, driving when you could ride a bike, breaking a curfew, failure to do mandatory volunteering.  The 'community' will demand more law enforcement to restore order, and more rules and regulations will ensue.  The Chinese and Russian models are instructive.  See: Nien Cheng's Life and Death in Shanghai, and Alexsander Solzhenitsen's The Gulag Archipelago for details.

You can see that the groundwork for this has been laid and is being implemented throughout the nation.  When you create deep dependence and then withdraw assistance the result is chaos and poverty.  Propaganda infuses our culture with messages that there are just a few winners and many losers; that we are killing the earth and time is running out; that prosperity is an anachronism and detrimental to life; that individual freedom is selfish and injures those who are less free.  

This is Agenda 21.

Communitarianism is the 'balancing' or subsuming of individual rights below the needs of the 'community.'  The community is defined now as the global village.  So anything identified as serving the global village takes precedence over the rights of the individual.  In the United States, our constitution guarantees our rights to life and liberty.  Ownership of property includes that of our own persons.  

Personal liberty is at odds with Communitarianism, the new standard of the Twenty-first Century.
2 Comments
 
Tangents 06/19/2010
 
In reflecting on the newspapers' attack on me due to my reporting leading candidate for Assembly District 7 Michael Allen to the FPPC for conflict of interest violations I am disturbed at the insinuation that as a Democrat I should have overlooked corruption in my party.  Corruption is non-partisan.  Just because I am a Democrat does not mean that I should look the other way when a party member has broken the law.  Blind adherence to an ideology does not serve us as Americans---no matter what party we are in. 

I've heard astute comments regarding Communitarian/Hegelian ideology informing the current political and social condition and they are unfortunately descriptive of the behavior in this tightly closed Sonoma County community.  I am beyond being shocked, as I was earlier in my political experiences here, that those with whom I expected to make common cause are actually avowed enemies.  Even if I was unaware of their existence they had heard of me, and were 'gunnin' for me.  All because I had inadvertently tread on the Agenda 21 lockstep creed. 

For me it began when I was elected to an oversight committee for a huge redevelopment area here in Santa Rosa. Redevelopment is one of the tools of Agenda 21 because it places large areas of land under control of those with a 'vision' of social engineering.  Private property rights are subjugated to the larger 'vision' which is sold to the public as being an improvement on the existing land uses.  In fact redevelopment is used to actualize a plan of high density urban development (essentially stacked condos) with retail on the ground floor.  These units, often hundreds of them, are situated adjacent to train tracks or bus corridors and constructed with minimal parking to discourage private vehicle ownership.  In my opinion this is a way of controlling populations and restricting free movement.  The property rights of those who own property within these areas are limited and encumbered with a further layer of regulations.

One interesting twist to the redevelopment/Agenda 21 methodology is to involve bicycle coalitions.  The bike people range from just you and me and our kids to those who are fanatical about bikes and the fight against private vehicles.  They are used as advance shock troops to demand redevelopment of areas where there are no bike lanes.  Complete Streets is a national group which is composed of many member groups and lobbies for total redesign of streets to accommodate bicycles.  I have a series of morphing photographs from their website showing a major arterial street in a generic city, which morphs as the photo changes from having no bike lanes to having them.  That isn't all that changes, though.  The buildings are completely replaced on both sides of the street.  Where people once had viable businesses, shops, and homes, the new 'vision' is ground floor retail built to the edge of the sidewalk with two floors of condos above and parking behind in an alley.  One car per unit or less.  In some areas this design plan is a requirement for development. This is where the ideology of Agenda 21's social engineering and the actuality of the remaking of our cities through land use planning comes together. Smart Growth is an element of Agenda 21.

As an element of Agenda 21 and communitarian policy, the government wants citizen buy-in, but they actually manage it by creating their own government-sponsored neighborhood associations and manufacturing consent.  There is a whole industry teaching officials how to manufacture consent (often using the Delphi Technique), and training officials in overcoming 'disagreeable' citizenry.  The worst thing, in the city's opinion, is a free and vocal citizenry. We have seen this first-hand here in Santa Rosa, where my partner was elected as president of the largest neighborhood association in the City only to be hounded and demonized for over a year because she did not support redevelopment and was not a 'yes' woman for the city.  She was actually threatened with a trial by the neighborhood board; she was charged with being a disagreeable character!  Finally she agreed to serve out her term as a member at large and stepped aside to let Gary Wysocky, former president of the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition, take her place.  He had not run against her originally, and in fact had not been active at all, but the local powers that control Santa Rosa had decided to run him for council and needed to refer to him as a 'neighborhood leader.'  He declared his candidacy shortly after he took over the presidency from her and was elected and now is Vice Mayor.

Getting back to my service on the redevelopment oversight committee, when I saw fraud in the redevelopment documents justifying 'blight' and alerted the City to it (as if they didn't know) I was marginalized, attacked, maligned and silenced.  A facilitator was brought in to meetings to manage me.  They even accepted a petition we wrote requesting that 235 acres be removed from the project area (including our properties), and the City DID remove that area, hoping to shut me up. 

Instead of shutting up and going away I lobbied the others in the group to vote the project down, and they did so.  The City Council passed the ordinance creating the project, however, so my partner and I formed a business association for the property and business owners within the Project Area. These citizens did not want the threat of eminent domain hanging over them for 12 years and did not want to be declared blighted. We attempted to gather 9,000 signatures to place the ordinance on the ballot as a referendum. We only had three weeks to meet the deadline. We failed to get the needed signatures (the City had published a phony ordinance in the hope that we would use it and have our referendum thrown out of court, but we had a great law firm that caught this.)  

Our next step was to sue.  We formed a non-profit and raised a half million dollars in donations and pro-bono legal work to fight. Over the next three years we went to Sonoma County Superior Court where we lost but the court affirmed that we had exhausted our administrative remedies and so we were able to appeal to the San Francisco First District Circuit Court of Appeals.  We lost there but were able to delay the redevelopment project for 3 years. At the end of the case the economy had crashed and all of the projects were shelved.  Many of the cronies went bankrupt. 

I have been on television and radio discussing this project and it has generated a great deal of outrage from genuine citizens.  For instance I broke the story that the owners of Coddingtown Shopping Center, Simon Property Group, the world's largest  shopping center developer, had told the city of Santa Rosa that they wanted to be in the redevelopment area so that they could get nearly $30 million dollars from the city for a parking garage.  Coddingtown is included in the project area, and the community was furious.  These issues don't stay long in the public eye however, and fade out.  This was our introduction to politics in the north bay.

As a Democrat in Sonoma County I have been greatly disappointed to see that the political machine here is vicious, exclusive, and vitriolic.  They have interlocking groups, sit on one another's boards, share office space, give each other grants, endorse one another, and generally disguise themselves as environmentally concerned do-gooders when in fact they are power-mad manipulators.

During the past few years I was upset that I couldn't hang a flag out without people assuming I was a Republican.  It seemed that the Republicans had taken the flag as their symbol and it was no longer a symbol of all Americans.  I resented that.  Wasn't I an American too?  The flag belongs to all of us, the country is ours.  We need to wake up and see that this issue goes beyond parties, that those of us who are pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, anti-war, and accepting of cultural and social diversity are also patriotic.  I do not support the adherence to UN Agenda 21-imposed doctrine that limits my use of my property and my free speech rights.  The Bill of Rights and the Constitution are the foundation, the cornerstone of our government, and transcend party lines. 
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