Dear Friends,
The personal story I’m about to share is not exactly a struggle against the abuse of eminent domain. But it’s an urban parallel that should deepen city dwellers solidarity with rural landowners fighting to stop the Bakken Oil Pipeline.
I’ve been involved with the Des Moines Community Garden program for a dozen or so years. Sadly, I have watched the program morph from a gardener-driven initiative to one controlled by City bureaucrats — bureaucrats who have taken the “community” out of the program and replaced it with centralized control by non-gardeners.
The plots I manage aren’t legally “mine.” But they’re on public ground that is otherwise unused — ground that I and other gardeners carefully nurture year after year.
But City bureaucrats have gradually exerted more and more control over how gardeners manage their plots. Last year, they even began charging us for the privilege of being hassled and harassed. I now pay $150 a year. It’s not eminent domain per se, but it sure feels like a “taking” of the public’s right to grow food on public land.
The list of ridiculous things that I and other gardeners have been cited for includes:
– A weed violation that was actually dill;
– A weed violation that was an edible cover crop;
– Having a composting device on one’s plot;
– The design of raised beds within plots;
– Squash and sweet potato vines growing into the pathways.
That’s just a few of the “violations” we’ve been cited for. Nearly every gardener I’ve spoken with has a story or two about being harassed by City staff about something silly.
So, yeah, when farmers across the state share stories of how badly they’ve been treated by Dakota Access workers and Iowa Utilities Board officials, I’m empathetic as all get out. When they tell me how losing their land to a pipeline would impact their ability to raise crops and livestock, I can relate to that, albeit it in a much smaller way.
If you live in Des Moines, expect to hear more about the City’s botched management of the Community Garden program. (Hopefully, working with the Mayor and Council members, it’s a problem we can fix.) If you live anywhere in Iowa, I appeal to you to stand with landowners fighting to stop Big Oil and its allies in Big Government in their accelerated push to build the Bakken Pipeline. For breaking developments, visit Bakken Pipeline Resistance Coalition and No Bakken Here.
On today’s Fallon Forum:
– We talk with Tim Dwight about challenging the presidential candidates to support powering the U.S. economy with 50% clean energy by 2030. Read Tim’s recent opinion piece here: Why Clean Energy is Necessary for a Sustainable Future.
– Author John Massaro joins us to discuss his book, NO GUARANTEE OF A GUN: How and Why the Second Amendment Means Exactly What It Says. The book’s premise is not that guns are bad and all guns should be banned. It is simply that gun control is a public-policy issue and not a Constitutional one.
– Des Moines being the Cultural and Culinary Crossroads of America, we talk with Billy McGuigan about his Beatles band and “Yesterday and Today,” an interactive concert happening this week at the Des Moines Playhouse.
– In this week’s Caucus Buzz, we talk about the Trump campaign rally in Waterloo that I got thrown out of, the obscene amount of money already being spent by a few presidential candidates on tv ads, and tomorrow’s first debate among Democratic presidential candidates.
Join us live every Monday from 11:00-12:00 noon CDT on KDLF 1260 AM (Des Moines) and online. Call (515) 528-8122 to add your voice to the conversation. The program re-broadcasts Wednesday on KHOI 89.1 FM (Ames) at 4:00 p.m. and Wednesday on KPVL 89.1 FM (Postville) at 7:00 p.m.
Thanks! – Ed Fallon