Why are citizens acting up in Palm Beach, but not in Miami-Dade? Is it a matter of geography, or, of leadership?
In part, it's the landscape. In Broward, successive county commissions made sure that communities would be separated by terrible transit infrastructure, making it impossible for people to get from one side of the county to the other. It's not much different in Miami-Dade. If you can't move, you can't meet.
Also, the urbanization of South Florida has removed most people from the environment. In past generations, people who used the environment--hunters and fishermen and bird watchers, too--defended it. Today, who protects the environment?
Surfers, for one. The Surfrider Foundation and 200 activists recently lined the causeway at Haulover Inlet to protest the lack of beach access on the southeast side at Harbor House and the collusion of bankrupt developers and corrupt public officials to close down parking.
But where is everyone else?
In South Dade, Homestead and Florida City, people value a more rural and calm pace of life with access to open areas the rest of the county lacks. The few blogs in the area are mostly indifferent, though, to the need for local activism that protests the chokehold of bankers and developers who are succeeding in turning their communities into suburbs of Kendall.
Why? Did the bankers do well, by Homestead? As far as I can tell, it is mostly the Latin Builders who benefited. Now, many are on the ropes, yet the landscape is filled with the permanent features of excess and greed.
Why aren't people willing to stand up for what they value?
At the Miami Dade zoning hearing to consider applications to move the Urban Development Boundary, how many people showed up who weren't paid to be there by Lowe's? Of course, the county commission is expert in manipulating hearing agendas, time of meetings, and general indifference to the public (ie. Natacha Seijas, Joe Martinez, Bruno Barreiro, Barbara Jordan et al), making it a profoundly dispiriting affair for citizens.
Certainly, the Chamber and city councils in those parts of the county have been unabashedly "pro" everything, like two new nuclear power plants at Turkey Point. And Florida Power and Light has been exceedingly careful in managing its exposure to the public, of the costs and facts of its plan that will impose tens of billions in costs on future rate payers (who will live to witness sea-level rise blow the cost of living in South Florida to smithereens).
What about leadership?
Perhaps the Earthfirst members from other rural parts of the state can get to Palm Beach County easier than the fifty miles south. I can guarantee that those fifty miles, past Fort Lauderdale and the Golden Glades interchange, are such a fearsome commute that the state of Florida should put a graphic of skull and bones on the interstate direction signs heading south.
Where are the young activists in Miami and Miami-Dade? Who, among them, is putting up websites like The River of Gas or The Palm Beach Environmental Coalition blog?
The PB Environmental Coalition is fighting the "environmental industrial complex". Why not, Miami Dade and Broward? Click on read more:
Welcome to Infoshop News
Tuesday, February 19 2008 @ 04:36 AM PST
Earth First! Blockades Power Plant Construction Site, 27 Arrested
Monday, February 18 2008 @ 12:10 PM PST
Contributed by: Anonymous
Palm Beach County - Early Monday morning dozens of concerned community members from Palm Beach County and all over the nation put their bodies on the line to halt construction of FPL’s West County Energy Center (WCEC), demanding energy efficiency, truly clean, renewable energy and a moratorium on development in south Florida. Everglades Earth First! blocked the main entrance to the WCEC site, a proposed massive 3800 MW gas-fired power plant that would emit 12 million tons of CO2, a leading greenhouse gas, every year. The plant is currently under construction despite ongoing legal challenges to the plant’s needed permits and certification, which have been spearheaded by the local Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition.
For Immediate Release: 2/18/08
Contact: Everglades Earth First! (561) 588 - 9666
Photos available at www.risingtidenorthamerica.org by Tuesday 2/19/08
Earth First! Blockades Power Plant Construction Site, 27 Arrested
Palm Beach County - Early Monday morning dozens of concerned community members from Palm Beach County and all over the nation put their bodies on the line to halt construction of FPL’s West County Energy Center (WCEC), demanding energy efficiency, truly clean, renewable energy and a moratorium on development in south Florida. Everglades Earth First! blocked the main entrance to the WCEC site, a proposed massive 3800 MW gas-fired power plant that would emit 12 million tons of CO2, a leading greenhouse gas, every year. The plant is currently under construction despite ongoing legal challenges to the plant’s needed permits and certification, which have been spearheaded by the local Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition.
A dozen activists locked themselves together through metal pipes as 200 supporters rallied around them. The blockade stopped work on the construction site for six hours before a total of 27 people were arrested.
This confrontational action was taken to protect the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge which sits 1000 ft from the power plant site and to protect the larger Everglades system. Restoration would be undermined by new development that the power plant is expected to encourage in the area. The civil disobedience action also aims to protect the entire planet from the destructive effects of climate change caused by power plant emissions.
“We just don’t need this plant,” said Lynne Purvis, an activist with Everglades Earth First! who was born and raised in the Loxahatchee area. “I’m not willing to threaten the integrity of the Loxahatchee, one of the last large, intact pieces of northern Everglades, so that people can fuel their greedy energy desires.”
Purvis says that the Everglades Earth First! group intends to continue a sustained campaign of direct action against this power plant and its adjacent gas pipeline.
The protest was also attended by grassroots activists and group across the United States who have been participating in the annual Earth First! Winter Rendezvous. One such group, Rising Tide North America, is part of an international movement for climate justice, which connects the social and environmental issues related to the growing climate crisis and calls for urgent and bold responses to the global human-caused dilemma.
Brian Sloan, an organizer with Rising Tide North America and participant in Monday morning’s protest, said “FPL is doing what we call ‘green-washing’. Gas-fired power is not a clean or sustainable energy. It is a dirty and dwindling fossil fuel.” Sloan also states that Rising Tide does not trust energy companies to solve the climate crisis. “The solutions to climate change will never come from the people who created the problem.”
Earth First! and the Rising Tide movements recognize that the fight against fossil fuel power is being used by the energy industry to push a new wave of nuclear energy. These grassroots groups are committed to extending their fight against the dangers of nuclear power with an eye on other FPL proposals, such as Turkey Point and St. Lucie.
For info on local Earth First! efforts, visit: www.earthfirst2008oc.info
6 comments:
Our activists are too busy to protest since they are trying to wake the folks who have been working two jobs to stay out of foreclosure.
Our activists are burned out.
Activists in Miami-Dade suffer great retalliation ranging from code enforcement to investigations by Fernendez-Rundle to punitive ordinances by the county commission to make sure "they don't activist again". Most people don't want the agravation not to mention the expense of defending themselves.
we all have to something. Acting out will not do it. We must get the people to vote for honest citizens and not the crooks who control all now. You do not win by grandstanding.
We can only win if we work our backsides off getting the vote out and for the right candidates. I know as that is what I still do and it works in my town.
most folks 'round chere' are somnambulant, but do not dispair, things just have to get worse... before they get better
The committed, persistent and dedicated activists in MDC have been harassed, ignored, sued, intimidated, driven out, and in some cases, physically abused by the cabal of political/corporate interests for many years. Amazing that there are any left standing, walking, talking. The rest of the population is too complacent, scared, exhausted, or clueless to "get involved"....any hope left?
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