a good neighbor demonstrates respect on a daily basis by the way they treat the people who live on the other side of the fence line
local government should never sell out the people on the fence line in exchange for the promise of increased tax revenues
Ohio Citizen's Good Neighbor Handbook includes excerpts from Hilton Kelly's activism in Port Arthur Texas, a small community over-burdened with the cumulative impact of multiple plants and ineffective regulatory enforcement.
Page 25 Industry
gives just enough to keep you quiet and keep a smile on your face. Our county gave Motive Enterprises a tax
abatement in January 2005 that will cost the schools $3.6 million a year. In
return, Motiva gave each school $1,000. There are only seven schools in the area, so
that is $7,000 back. There are always pictures in the news with a little child
pointing to a test tube. The refinery guy is standing over him with a smile
like he sponsored this whole project. It cost them all of $7,000. Sometimes,
after residents complain about a chemical release, the refinery people go door
to door offering each person in the house fifty dollars to sign off on a sheet
saying their complaint was satisfied. Of
course, people are going to take that money. Fifty dollars is better than no
dollars. There go your rights.
http://www.ohiocitizen.org/about/finalinside.pdf
Page 26 Community advisory panel The
refineries have community advisory panels and they select well-to-do folks to
be on the panels. They know the panel members are content with what they have
because they don t even live in the community. The refinery guys say, “We have people
here representing the community and they say everything’s fine.” That’s not the
real community. When the panel meets, they have their little box lunches, they
talk about what’s going n at the plant,
and then they go home. No one sitting on that panel brings up the issue of
pollution and what needs to be done That is why I couldn’t be on that panel. I
went to a couple of their meeting, with
all the refinery heads and all these people I grew up with, my teachers,
clergymen, people that I had respected. I said, “you know what’s going on and
you’re just sitting there”.
Page 27 I’m enjoying myself and I’ve learned a lot. There is
nothing more rewarding than standing up for people who are not strong enough to
stand up for themselves and having some victories. Every time I look at a
little child outside in the park playing, I know they’re not breathing as much
poison as they would be had it not been for our group fighting.
