We will be blogging individual articles from The League Line, our quarterly newsletter
Link to Fall 2020 edition: http://bredl.org/theleagueline/Fall2020.pdf
~Louis A. Zeller, Executive Director
“Making the Southeast better, one community at a time” is
what our website states on the opening page.
More than aspiration, the statement embodies BREDL’s approach to
community organizing; it is based on our founding principles. From the
beginning, BREDL established chapters, or local task forces, based on the
recognition—by Bernard Goss, Janet Marsh and other members of the founding
board—that a community targeted for one environmental insult will sooner or
later face another. In the 1980s, it was
a radioactive waste dump for the nation’s nuclear power plants. In the 2010s,
it was a 600-mile pipeline for fracked gas.
These two examples bookend the many comparable campaigns we waged during
the last 36 years.
Beginning in 1984, BREDL organized community groups in
several western North Carolina counties which were on the U.S. Department of
Energy’s maps for potential dump sites: Ashe, Watauga, Mitchell, Madison,
Haywood, Buncombe and more. These
community groups effectively and efficiently fomented local opposition and
created a nexus of organized leaders who pressed local, state and federal
officials in a top-to-bottom strategy.
Local people know where the levers of neighborhood power are. After a
five-year campaign, which also reached out to activists in similarly targeted
communities across the country, Congress changed the law it had created in 1982
to select a dumpsite. This effectively
ended the program.
In 2014, BREDL’s organizing strategy was employed again,
this time in response to the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s
initiative to permit a huge climate-killing natural gas pipeline across three
states. Once again, a map of targeted
counties provided us with a warning sign.
So, like beads on a string, we organized community groups from
Fayetteville, North Carolina to Buckingham, Virginia. As before, local organizing work provided the
power for a unified movement and common strategies based on mutual
benefit. Ultimately, the power companies
abandoned the project.
Our method of organizing communities begins with learning
the unique situation of each group, taking the time to know local people and
their history, and focusing strategy on tactics which reveal their inherent
power. Until recently, this first
contact was always done face-to-face, with generous travel budgets for
organizers to go to the communities requesting help. Other means of providing this personal
attention have become necessary, but the principle of one-community-at-a-time with
a unified goal remains unaltered. Community
organizing is about people, not about issues or technology.
Some use the term “empowerment”, but that is not what we
offer. In no way do we authorize or give
permission to any community. Our
relationships with community groups are not transactional. Presuming that BREDL
could empower any group of independent human beings when we have neither power
to give nor the right to bestow authority would be hierarchical and colonizing.
We may inspire by example or encourage initiative, but we may never invade another’s domain.
In the above examples—nuke dumps and pipelines, and scores
of others—the targeting of select sites by government agencies and industry
groups is potentially a divide-and-conquer strategy, picking winners and
losers, offering incentives and other persuasion. But the tactic can be turned back on the
antagonist when it is met with broad-based, unified opposition. And when the opposition comes from a variety
of places in a variety of ways, it is more difficult and complicated to respond
to. With enough sand in the gears, even
a well-oiled machine can grind to a halt.
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