Today, as a 40-year resident and homeowner in the City of Malibu, my mother has regained the dreams she once lost as a German refugee during World War II. She loves her home and she loves the land. She composts, recycles, reuses water, grows her own fruits and vegetables and lives in harmony with the mountains. “I am of the land,” she always tells me. She is not rich, she’s not a celebrity. She is an environmentalist, the only kind of environmentalist whose opinion should count in discussing this LCP.
And yet, you have shown nothing but contempt for residents like her. You have insulted us as a community. You have slighted us with bureaucratic rhetoric, attempting to disguise the abnegation of our democratic rights by hiding behind smokescreens of legal technicalities. Instead of allying yourselves with the true environmentalists who constitute our citizenry, you have allied yourselves with a radical environmental fringe who has no love for either the city of Malibu or the democratic process, a fringe who would embrace a military dictatorship if they thought it would further their aims. You have taken the side of people who claim to love the mountains of Malibu more than the people who actually live there, who trust political appointees and carpetbagger conservationists to set and use policy more than the people who actually tend to that land. Make no mistake, you are in bed with fanatics who believe that human beings are not worthy to live in paradise.
And to those who argue that the LCP has merits, let me state unequivocally – we do not care! If this LCP had been authored by God, I would oppose it. If this LCP promised to cure cancer and promote world peace, I would oppose it. I would oppose it because the process is unjust and undemocratic. Because the constitutional property rights which are at the very foundation of this country are being trampled.
We aren’t nave. We realize that this is hardball politics-eco-fascists like the Sierra Club wield considerable political clout. In the bigger picture, we probably don’t count for much in Sacramento. But we do know how to fight.
We fought bitterly to become a city, to enjoy the right of self-governance, and we all prevailed. And if you think that we will allow those hard-fought rights to be compromised in any way, you are sorely mistaken. If you dare impose this LCP on us, we will defy you. Even if our leaders opt to enforce it, the citizens of Malibu will not obey it. We will exercise civil disobedience on an unprecedented municipal scale. We will humiliate and embarrass you before the state and nation. And, again, we will prevail. There are even those of us who are prepared, if need be, to challenge the constitutionality of the Coastal Commission.
You see, you aren’t in charge here. We are. In this great republic, you are the people’s servants, not their rulers. It is only by the grace of the people that you sit before us right now. The people, the only species in the Santa Monica Mountains whose well-being and habitat don’t seem to concern your staff. And what the people give, they can just as easily take away.
Wade Major