We’re Not Done!

It looks like things have slowed down. The word according to Norm Hickling, deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich is that negotiations are moving along at last, that someday soon the Briggs Road Community will be free from the landlocking perpetrated by a private LLC, Los Angeles County, the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority.

Whew! What a cast of characters! And to think that all these agencies just happened to deny passage to the residents of our little community all at virtually the same time—supposedly independently of each other!—between 2004 and 2006.

If you are a new reader of this blog, please skim through earlier posts to get a more complete story.

What is happening right now is that a permit for Briggs Road residents to cross the Metrolink tracks was found, after nine years of being lost, somewhere in Los Angeles. Trouble is, the permit was lost for long enough to endanger our court-mandated easement across the LLC Property. If everyone is telling the truth, and the several parties involved are independent of each other and wish to accomplish what they say they wish to accomplish, it really is in the best interest of all involved to unlock this landlocking. Now.

If, on the other hand, this whole issue is as laden with secrecy and malevolence as it would appear, anything is possible. It could well be that the game is being delayed while the obstacles to our access are being reinforced. There remain several ways that our community could be played for fools. Though we are aware of that, we must be very careful with our accusations at this point, for reasons that are easily understood.

Shortly after the errant railroad crossing permit was unearthed, the word came down that Fish and Wildlife was open to the creation of an affordable Arizona crossing of the Santa Clara River, and that Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority was ready to discuss granting an easement across their holdings at the other end of Briggs Road. Also, plans to improve the road out the back way were revived.

That was three months ago. Since then, nothing.  I am not aware of the production of a single document, or even a hand-shaken agreement, that takes us any further with either of the two remaining access blockers: California Fish and Wildlife or Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority.

If my intuition is at all valid—and it often is—I just get such a strong sense that something is dirty. I smell dirt. I suspect that if the human beings behind this effort to choke a good neighborhood to death are successful, they will likely finish their lives content in the knowledge that they killed a community for their own profit. I also suspect that their own grandchildren will correctly despise them, as do the offspring of several recently exposed perpetrators of corruption. I would be delighted to be wrong and, as I have said earlier, proud to be one of the first to admit my error and celebrate the great goodness of those I have maligned in my heart.

Until that happens, I am keeping my eyes open.

I wish to make three entreaties of you, dear reader:

1.       Too many have been coddled into complacency by recent assurances that have produced nothing. Please urge your friends to keep up with us, to keep up the communication with us. Please let’s all keep the light on.

2.       If you have connections, if you know of an honest government official or a compassionate member of the media, please put us in touch with each other. We are already developing a surprisingly extensive network, but until something real happens with our access, it is not enough. Yet.

3.       Stay focused and steadfast on this issue. Granted it is a local issue, fought at a local level against local opponents, possibly outside of your sphere of concern. But have you heard of the Broken Window policy that has been so effective in curbing crime? [Not to be confused with the Broken Window Fallacy.] The theory is that if blight as minor as a broken window is left unaddressed, criminals get the idea that more brazen acts will also go unnoticed. Conversely, repairing windows discourages crime. It does work.

We must discourage corruption and victimization by government in the same way. You may feel that our issue does not touch you, that our broken window does not let freezing air into your home. But if you fight in whatever way you can—by writing letters to Governor Brown or Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, or by spreading the word about this blog, or sending us your ideas—you will be joining us in sending the message to all public “servants” that the People will not tolerate mistreatment. And that may well matter a lot to you one day.

One last point. We are seeing more and more allegations about Agenda 21 these days. Agenda 21 is a 300-page document produced twenty years ago by the UN. Its intent is ostensibly to address the ills of the third world, but the Glenn Becks and other reactionary conservatives have chosen to read it as advocating the shoveling of all of us into urban high-rises. I don’t know how many of the Agenda 21 alarmists have actually read the thing, but I don’t share Glenn Beck’s vision.

Anyway it doesn’t matter. Our local problem may or may not be related to this strange and dire theory. But I fear that if we ascribe all of our troubles to an Agenda 21 or other massive faceless oppressor, we are going to collapse into a soggy, passive muddle, unable to face so large an opponent. Remember the Broken Window policy.

Turn on the light. Focus on the issues at hand.

We’re not done!

Come Save the Day!

I just hung up from an ominous and very scary phone call. As a result I am setting aside the post I just finished writing and starting anew.

The whole thing puts me in mind of a story from my past. When I was thirteen and fourteen back in New Jersey I had a cute little girlfriend named Linda. I was aware that she had a former boyfriend from a nearby town known to be the home of tough guys, but I didn’t worry about that. Well, maybe I worried a little bit.

One day two guys from that town somehow accompanied Linda and me into my very home. My parents were not home. Stupidly unafraid, I probably invited them in. One of the guys went off to talk to Linda, and the other, bigger and older than I, sidled me off to our living room.

“Stay away from Linda,” he warned. “If you see Linda any more I am going to knock all your teeth down your throat.” Those who know me know that I remember the words of others quite well, and these were words to remember.

I am not a fighter. I am easy meat for anybody that wants to beat me up. So what did I do? I kept seeing Linda. I did break up with her a couple of years later, but for reasons that had nothing to do with those tough guys, whom I never saw again.

Now I find myself really afraid of some really tough guys. That phone call was scary.

But I think I’ll keep seeing Linda.

I realize that Michael D. Antonovich can pull some really mean dirty tricks on me if he chooses to. Well, hell, cutting us off from our homes was a pretty dirty trick, wasn’t it? I can’t say Michael Antonovich was directly involved in that, but I definitely believe that his influence has been far more negative than positive, as far as my family’s and neighbors’ quality of life is concerned. I have been told by many people that he is very likely behind much of the loss of our access. That phone call this morning put fear in me, but it also convinced me again that powerful, self-interested officials of Los Angeles County and the State of California are well-equipped to strip us of everything.

So why am I back? Because I know the difference between right and wrong, and I know that if I stop seeing Linda just because a hoodlum from the next town told me so, I will still lose everything, plus my self-respect. I was minding my business, teaching mathematics to the youngsters of our county, when all of this started in 2004. I did absolutely nothing to bring this on myself, and nor did any of my neighbors. So, despite your phone call, and you know who you are, I intend to continue seeking wide-spread public support for our cause, because that is our only salvation.

But no, of course I will not divulge the name of the caller. I’m not stupid.

I’m just an old guy who can’t fight, and surely those who did our neighborhood wrong are fully aware of how powerless we are. Our only hope is that someone who can fight, someone who is tougher and meaner than Michael D. Antonovich and certain officials of the State of California—or at least can’t be destroyed by them—will step forward and open up our access to our homes.

Our hero doesn’t have to be meaner, although the people trying to ruin our real estate values may think she or he is, for taking away their spoils. But I would prefer to be championed by someone nicer.

I am put in mind of my father, who never took my side against bullies. He believed that though I was younger and smaller and outnumbered, I should go back to that playground and get my basketball back. Okay, we are not looking for that kind of father. We are looking for someone who gets it, and who sees the need to assist innocent, unassuming folk such as me, my family, and my community.

Mighty Mouse, where are you?

No Guts No Easement

If you go to the State of California Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy webpage, you will read there that “Through direct action, alliances, partnerships, and joint powers authorities, the Conservancy's mission is to strategically buy back, preserve, protect, restore, and enhance treasured pieces of Southern California to form an interlinking system of urban, rural and river parks, open space, trails, and wildlife habitats that are easily accessible to the general public.”

Their mission is to cooperate with other public agencies to secure land. There is nothing in there that says they will do it ethically, or even legally. It does not say that private ownership of land will be in any way respected. Yes, they could buy land back—from a huge, powerful organization—but there are other ways to push out the little people.

Early on in the course of our community being cut off from the world, a Los Angeles County official assured us that eminent domain was not part of the plan. We were comforted. Little did we know that this official was telling us that the spirit of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was to be violated, that we would receive nothing for the loss of our property values, that we were to be besieged by the State of California until we gave up our property for nothing, because we would eventually give up paying our taxes for land we could not use. The Conservancy would buy our land back in a tax sale.

A friend told me recently to be careful, that the agencies cutting off this neighborhood’s legal access to the world were run by powerful, dangerous people.

Really? What might they do? Ruin my property values? Physically close off the only reasonable route to black top, a route that has been successfully acquired legally twice? Force me and my family to traverse five and a half miles of a rough and treacherous dirt road going out from and coming in to our property?

Should I worry that these dangerous people have worse tricks to perpetrate? I can only hope that, if I am taken out of the picture, another will take my place. The first time our easement was won in court was by folks of our parents’ generation. Our generation has won it, but only to be cut off by other means that some find very suspicious. Our children, and others of their generation, appear to be stepping forward.

Am I in some sort of danger? Surely there is a lot more bad stuff “they” could do. Maybe if "they" do something bad enough it will actually motivate a public official with competence and a conscience to actually do the right thing. But let’s hope that no more damage than we have already suffered is necessary.

Anyway, it makes you wonder: who else, besides the inhabitants of the Briggs Road community, might fear the actions of our besiegers?

Their mission statement does say that the State of California Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy works “Through direct action, alliances, partnerships, and joint powers authorities.”

Could it be that Michael D. Antonovich and his deputies, good men all, have been muscled into a very uncomfortable position by the much more powerful State of California? They have a lot to lose. I don’t know for sure, but I’ll bet anything that they still have access to their own front doors. What if they and their families had to drive a horrific dirt road in and out every day? That thought would be enough to frighten anybody. It sure upset us, anyway. And those guys have even more to lose.

Previously I argued that intelligence stood on the tripod of brains, heart, and courage. I claimed that it was not courage that was lacking in our besiegers. But could Mr. Antonovich and his deputies be motivated by fear? Is guts the missing component of character? Guts to turn around and tell California that “this is wrong and I’m not having any part of it?”

Of course none of us have any idea, but we do have a hard time accepting the possibility that Mr. Antonovich and his deputies are as humanly limited as all of this is making them appear. But maybe? Who knows? Anyway Occam’s razor suggests that it is highly unlikely that all of those people are motivated to strangle a neighborhood .

When the truth is withheld, as it is here, all sorts of theories spring up. Anything is believable. It’s only human nature. By not openly and honestly defending their actions, the City of Santa Clarita, the County of Los Angeles as represented by Mr. Antonovich, and the Conservancies run by the State of California all indicate that they have little confidence that their motives could stand public scrutiny.

On the other hand, if the City of Santa Clarita is really only about green space, and is willing to trash the property values of eleven families as collateral damage, then let that be acknowledged—and please, let there be one, just one public official with a conscience stand up and say, “But that is wrong.” My personal favorite is to see Norm Hickling turn into a hero. I hear from various sources that I should give up that hope, but I can still dream.

Similarly, if the State of California is really concerned with the well-being of all animals (except the human animal), and is willing to wreck the finances of eleven families as collateral damage, despite the laws of the land and common decency, then let them openly say so—and please, let there be one, just one national magazine or media outlet that has the guts and conscience to stand up and say, “This is not right.”

If anyone knows what altruistic goal Mr. Antonovich might be pursuing in so weakly pretending to defend this community, please tell someone.

If you don’t see another post here in a few days, call the cops. If they won’t do anything, come looking for me.