| July 28, 2006 Red Alert by Soren Wuerth Get
Off My Land!
We took a shortcut. The path led past the single-floor school district building resting on pilings and over a bridge with a sewer pipe below. Long, waving, wild reed grass brushed our legs. We walked past a small house with plywood siding, red paint chipping, ducked beneath clotheslines and skirted four teenagers shooting a basketball at a hoop hanging from a 10-foot beam. Four days later, after flying back to Anchorage from the small, rural Native village, I walked another trail, this time along Campbell Creek, just downstream from where it rushes through a culvert below Lake Otis. I wanted a closer look at four or five spawning salmon. I came out of a grove of trees onto a manicured lawn and stood at the edge of the river’s bank. I heard a nervous squeal behind me. A middle-aged woman slid open a porch glass door of a house at the other end of the expanse of lawn. “Hey! Can I help you?” “What’s that?” I called back. “Can I help you? You’re on our property!” I smiled and shook my head. “I’m OK. I’m just watching the salmon.” I turned and returned to the woods. Private property is a troubling idea. In 1992, a furniture store owner, who flew gigantic American flags in the lot in front of his Gambell Street business, was given a light sentence for shooting a teenager in the back as the boy fled his property. The high school student had been participating in a harmless scavenger hunt, trying with three others to free a balloon from the lot. People tend to get fanatical about their land. Here in the subdivision where my parents live, some neighbors have, over the years, pushed their fences out onto land owned communally by a homeowners association. Since no one noticed over many years, the thieving private property fanatic was rewarded with “squatter’s rights” to the stolen land. Then comes the case of the Owens’s. The wealthy attorney and his socialite wife landscaped public property off Westchester Lagoon to include it as part of their yard and diminish intrusion by peasants. Mayor Markie-Mark Begich, a friend of the couple, smiled, winked and let the blatant move pass with little more than a “tsk, tsk.” Down the bike trail a half mile, another wealthy private property fanatic, Bill Sheffield, pushed to privatize a public street in front of his house to expand his estate. The municipality planning board rejected his request, but installed ‘no parking’ signs for him. He is, after all, a rich, powerful and nearly impeached ex-governor. In a broader context, consider that Israel’s US-backed assault on the state of Palestine is, essentially, a conflict over land. Though Palestinians hold real title to land (in the form of written deeds), imperialist Israel continues to abrogate legitimate land claims with bulldozers, tanks and fences. Wouldn’t we all be better off living like those kind people in rural Alaska, who, when they see someone outside their window, open the door and say, “Visitors!” Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist, and is the winner of the Alaska Press Club's 2006 'Best Columnist' award. He resides in an undisclosed location in rural Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com. |
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Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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