Out to change the law of the land - property rights movement - Cover Story

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 17, 1993 | by Richard Miniter

As for corporate funding, Callahan dismisses that notion. "When you think of [the movement] you think of command-and-control, top-heavy, corporate-funded front groups that are organizing local people to get involved," she says. Based on her 50-state survey, that's not the case. "In fact, the more we dig into it ... we have come to the conclusion that this is pretty much generally a grass roots movement. Some of the grass roots groups are dirt poor. Which is a problem, because it means there's no silver bullets." In other words, there is no easy way to stop the land rights movement.

Calling the land rights activists very effective, Callahan says, "The movement is actually growing quickly at the grass roots, as it finds its base. This is happening in every single state."

She continues: "What people fundamentally believe about environmental protection is that no, it is not just jobs, and no, it's not just environment -- why can't we have both? The high ground here is capturing that message. And when Joe Six-pack hears that message he goes, |You're right, damn it, people ought to be able to work, and the environment ought to be able to manage.' People, it's not that they don't get it, it's that they do get it! They're losing their jobs!"

Next, Callahan lays out the battle lines. "What they're saying out there is that |we are the real environmentalists. ... These guys [environmentalists] live in glass towers in New York City. They're not environmentalists, they're elitists. They're a part of the problem and they're aligned with big government and they're out of touch: And the minute people capture that high ground, we almost have not got a winning message left in our quiver."

Then Callahan delivers the final blow. "It is true that the environmental movement has been, traditionally ... an upper-class, conservation, white movement. We have to face that fact. It's true. They're not wrong that we're rich," and have access to political power. "We are the enemy as long as we behave in that fashion," she says.

She recommends an aggressive campaign "to find the ideological divisions" in the movement and exploit them. Callahan's campaign was quickly swung into action. The winter 1992 newsletter of the Conservation Law Foundation, which is funded by members of the Environmental Grantmakers Association, attacked property rights groups as "a motley crowd of deceivers" that are "fronting a slick, industry-funded public relations campaign."

When the political war over property rights must be fought out in the open, critics will say land rights legislation is not needed, will impose costly bureaucracy, and will slow and weaken regulatory protection; that the takings analysis required in the bill cannot be done; and, finally, that legislation ought to consider what is given to landowners as well as what is taken away from them by regulation. It is on these fronts that the land rights brigades will combat well-entrenched environmentalists in the coming years.

Lawmakers opposed to the land rights act say there is no need for it; both the U.S. and Maryland Constitutions protect landowners from seizure of property without compensation and, the lawmakers claim, no regulatory takings cases are pending against the state. "Proponents of the act claim it is not intended to expand these guarantees beyond what constitutional law already provides," wrote Maryland resident Christopher S. Rizek in a letter to the editor of the Capital, an Annapolis newspaper. "In other words -- the act is entirely superfluous and unnecessary."