Fight City Hall? Sure!

[godfry n. glad]

Hey... This is stuff I've been doin' for years.

As a matter of fact, I love my job because I can leave it behind and do all those private non-prophet things I love so much. Well, non-profit things, actually.

I get heartily tired of folks who give up without a fight, just because their opponent is some fairly sizeable bureaucracy. Opposition to bureaucratic initiatives _can_ be successful, but you've got to be willing to engage and to lose battles before you can win any. You can fight City Hall and win. Take it from me, I have.

It doesn't have to be just opposition, either. There are plenty of private non-profit organizations out there that are eager to find willing volunteers. Find one that fits your interests and see if they have needs you can fill. If you see something that needs doing and there seems not be an organization to do that...then organize one!

godfry

[livius drusus]

Great post, godfry. Very inspirational. :bravehrt:

Do you have a favorite story of a successful fight against The Man? I'd really love to hear it if you don't mind telling it.

[Corona688]

One tack I've seen that often works is to induce "enlightened self-interest" in members of the buearocracy. For instance, locally, the city council nearly passed a resolution disallowing certain kinds of driveways. It looked like they were about to cost hundreds of homeowners thousands of dollars in construction costs to revamp these driveways, until someone notified a bunch of city council members that they PERSONALLY would have to pay to have THEIR OWN driveways converted.

Suprise suprise, the resolution didn't pass. :) You'd be suprised how quickly their feelings can change when they're reminded that they're regulating THEMSELVES, not just everyone else.

[Beth]

My neighbors and I are about to embattle the county. My area has been turned into a flood zone due to the county allowing a developer behind us to culvert and divert a natural creek that is used as a storm water runoff channel. This developer has turned an area that previously never flooded, except for a small area in my drive (which is considerred a 100 year flood plain by swiftmud) into an area that floods after a 30 minute storm. My neighbor's house was severely flooded, a culvert that connects two wetland is collapsing and the school buses and most of the residents drive over this, risking cave-in, and now, the natural creek has been permitted to legally be widened by the county, which is again federal laws. The widening of this creek will have most of this area under water the next heavy rain or hurricane. We will all lose our properties and the values of our land will be drastically dimminished.

So now, we are starting to fight the fuckwits in the county that caused our mess, demanding they get engineers out here to fix everything. So far, a vast amount of administrative ineptitude has been discovered. Because of this, no one is doing anything. Each channel is blocking because people have made serious mistakes and no one wants the blame.