(This article was originally published on the Freedom Foundation blog on March 12, 2012, written by Glen Morgan, while he was the Property Rights Director at the Freedom Foundation. The original article posting was deleted by the Freedom Foundation in 2017. It has been reposted here exactly as it was originally written)
This video comes from a Town Meeting on Orcas Island a few weeks ago. It has taken me a while to get back to this, but it is worth viewing for property owners everywhere. The Backstory is that the Freedom Foundation was invited to do a story on a small organic farmer on Orcas Island named Charles Dalton who was being hassled by San Juan County for a garden shed and various other perceived property violations on his small blueberry farm. A local “environmental” organization called Friends of the San Juans had apparently been the catalyst and self-appointed neighborhood enforcer for the original harassment of this farmer – Charles Dalton.
We posted this video a few months ago. The video which we helped to produce got a lot of local coverage in San Juan County, and many people responded to how their neighbor was being treated in their local community. Friends of the San Juans apparently needed to burnish their image with the residents of Orcas Island after this story became well-known, so they called a Community Meeting where they wanted to get back in the good graces of the local residents who were supporting their friend and neighbor – Charles Dalton. Stephanie Buffum – the main speaker in this video – invited me up to this meeting with just a two day notice. I was barely able to get to the meeting with such short notice, but I did attend at her invitation.
The structure of this meeting was odd – a big circle of chairs (making it difficult to speak to the entire audience for anyone – plus making it hard for some people to hear). A circle of rocks and some candles were located in the middle, and a “professional facilitator” was there to guide the community in group think. I’m fairly certain the meeting did not go as the Friends of the San Juans had planned. Mainly, this was because local citizens showed up, were assertive, and they were willing to speak out about their concerns. I wanted to post this video clip because it illustrates the clear danger of an outside entity like Friends of the San Juans taking a police state type mentality in attempting to enforce their ideas of community conformity upon themselves. They do this in the name of “environmentalism” and saving the world from man, but they clearly have become an unaccountable, unelectable, out-of-control rogue entity spying on their neighbors, turning them into the authorities, and attempting to cloak themselves with the self-righteous mantle of guardians of their community.
As you can see from some of the resident’s questions, they were not happy with this self-created role for Friends of the San Juans. Spying, trespassing, taking photos of neighbors, turning neighbors into the authorities, and then pushing the authorities to harass the targeted individual seems to be their standard operating procedure. As you can see from this video, Stephanie feels perfectly entitled to take the role of community spy and informer. She has justified this behavior to herself, and probably a little less effectively to her fellow residents of San Juan County in this video. I’m certain that she feels righteous in her cause and morally correct in her actions. The danger, which is clear to most casual observers and to many of the residents of Orcas Island, is that there is no accountability for her actions.
This is hardly neighborly behavior even if you call yourself a “Friend.” What also came out in this meeting was that Stephanie had been given direct access to the San Juan County database for code-violations – including a log-in name and password so that she could track or assist in managing how the county was dealing with the neighbors she had turned into the county authorities over time. This should be troubling to most people as well – beyond the obvious ethical lapse at San Juan County government. No government should be outsourcing this type of enforcement action to any outside, unaccountable entity – whether they call themselves a “Friend” or otherwise.
It was also instructive to learn that the targeted farmer’s neighbor was a significant donor to the Friends of the San Juans (and had a 120 acre estate next door plus a newer salt-water dock – one of the few private docks in the San Juans which was not challenged in court by Friends of the San Juans). Apparently, that neighbor didn’t like leaving his estate and seeing the poor farmer’s small shed and farm implements on the way down the private road to his gated compound . This large,wealthy donor outsourced his complaint to Friends of the San Juans, and Stephanie obviously did the dirty work to harass the farmer – which is why she was in this video defending her actions. I’m sure that Stephanie is a nice person to her friends, and I’m certain that she believes she did nothing wrong.
That is why these stories should terrify those of us who believe that property rights matter and mean something. To those on the enforcement and harassment side of this ideological battle, people like Stephanie believe that almost any decision or action they take can be justified – regardless of how much harm they do or how many people they harm by their actions. They believe they exist to enforce the “greater good” on the less enlightened peons and peasants who live amongst them. I don’t want to beat up on Stephanie or Friends of San Juans – their neighbors and the people who live in their community are doing enough of that already. Frankly, I feel a certain debt of gratitude towards Stephanie and Friends of the San Juans for inviting us up to witness this community meeting. Without the Friends of the San Juans inviting me to this event – we never would have been able to document these activities or see such a clear example of how good intentions can go awry.
It has been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. While I love the San Juans too much to ever use that terminology to describe such a beautiful place, it does not take much imagination to see where this type of behavior by Friends of the San Juans can lead a society and a community. We should always be sensitive to how easy the exact same behavior can happen in any of our communities and towns in Washington State. Please feel free to contact me with your stories or information about where our freedoms and property rights are under attack by our local governments or just out of control entities like Friends of the San Juans – because with “Friends” like this, who needs enemies?
