Today Granny became a NIMBY. For a while.
I am elderly. And I am a woman. And I live in a country whose government declines to protect either.
Hey, now. Being a NIMBY isn’t an all negative thing.
If everyone takes care of the people, problems and resources in their own back
yard, then collectively we’ll be just fine and dandy. Someday we'll be together again and we'll each have saved a piece of something.
In fact, being a NIMBY can be a good thing. That’s what I’m going to strive for over the next few years. You can be as callous, prejudiced, greedy, and
stupid as you want in someone's back yard. But Not In My Back Yard. My neighbors and I will decide
what belongs in our back yard. That’s how a revolution begins – people taking
care of their own families, their own neighbors, and their own back yards. Everything for The Greater Good begins in one's own back yard.
How big is my back yard? I care about my neighborhood, and my daughter’s. On a wider
scale, I care if it happens in Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, or
Connecticut, basically anywhere along the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers, and between
the Berkshires and Boston (sing a chorus of ‘Sweet Baby James’ here).
You want to hate on people? Not in my back yard. My back
yard was a battleground in the American Revolution. My back yard was a stop on
the Underground Railroad. My back yard sent proud Union soldiers to fight the
Civil War. In fact, my back yard sent soldiers to every war you had, both real and fabricated.
My back yard gave
birth to public health care and gay marriage. I’ll stand up for my neighbors, with
my neighbors, for the inalienable rights of all the folks who live in my back
yard. There are a host of different cultures, skin tones, languages, and faiths in my back
yard. We don’t want outsiders messing with that. Take your hate to somebody
else’s back yard.
You want to sell your charter schools to help bring
back segregation of the races and the classes? Not in my back yard. My neighbors and I won’t go down without
a fight. If necessary, we’ll found the biggest, best-ever home school programs since
the American Revolution just to keep our kids out of your damned socially regressive charter
schools. We want our kids to learn a lot of everything: English, Spanish,
foreign languages, local history, world history, civics, math, art, music,
sports, science; we want them to know about evolution and conservation, algebra to zoology. We
believe our different faiths make us stronger, and our kids more open to new
ideas, more tolerant and more prepared for the whole wide world abroad. We believe in separation of Church and State, and that public education is
the responsibility of the State.
If a woman needs health services in my back yard, we’ll take
care of her. If our criminal justice system gets out of hand, we’ll let them
know. If our civil rights are at risk, we’ll deal with it. We aren't suspending the Constitution in my back yard.
You want to frack for gas and drill for oil? Level grand forests? Build pipelines
from nowhere to nowhere? Not in my back yard. My neighbors and I will fight
every inch of the way. Take your humanity-hostile greed programs elsewhere. We don’t want you
here. Go where someone doesn’t care about his own back yard. If there is such a place.
You want to sell public lands for private development? My real, genuine back yard is an Audubon Sanctuary, it's private – and you’re not welcome here. I’m pretty sure
lots of other people will feel the same when you come to destroy their back
yards.
You want to kill insurance programs for the weakest among
us, folks like me? Not in my back yard. We had a head start on you here in Massachusetts.
We’ll get our own program up and running again. We’ll take care of the folks in
our own back yard.
Oil spills from offshore drilling? Not in my back yard.
Earthquakes from fracking? Not in my back yard. Frack-polluted water? Not in my
back yard. We’ve worked very hard to keep our land and waters clean. We don’t
want you destroying that, not in my back yard.
We have clean energy here, wind,
water, sun. We have the kinds of things people DO want in their back yards. We
have organic farming here. We’re not dependent on your GMO crops and
agent-orange weed killers. In winter, we already pay the price to import clean farm
foods. Life is fine in my
back yard. And we’ll work to keep it that way.
We try to keep ourselves healthy in my back yard. We are a
suburb of Canada here. They send us clean water and clean
air, and it gets forward it on. We send it to south, as clean as it can be. What happens after it leaves our back yard is in someone else’s
back yard, not our problem any more.
If we need expensive medications or eye surgery, Canada is a
cheap, short, and pleasant train ride away. They are good neighbors, those
Canadians, and we love them. They are good to us. They are our back yard neighbors.
If you’re concerned about the natural and unnatural
disasters, global warming, the quality of your education, your health care,
your natural resources and wildlife, the quality of your food supply, the
quality and price of your drugs, your civil rights or your voting rights – you’d best
take care of your own back yard. My neighbors and I will be busy taking care of ours. For a while.
MRP
