Eminent domain, by any other name . . . still stinks

In the wake of Kelo v. City of New London (the disastrous U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared the mere promise of increased tax revenue or jobs justifies condemning someone’s home), Alabama passed two laws that significantly tightened the state’s eminent domain law.  Private property can’t be condemned for private development, and individual properties must actually be truly unsafe or neglected.  It is largely impossible to use eminent domain for private gain now in Alabama, and the Institute for Justice, which tracks such reforms nationwide, gave the state a high grade of B+ for its efforts.

The end game in Montgomery, however, is obvious.  The city wants to clear and ultimately sell-off the property of lower-income, mostly black Alabamans to higher-income developers, but it can’t do that through the state’s eminent domain law.  So it found a backdoor, which also incidentally does not require the city to compensate property owners for their loss, but instead charges them.

Montgomery has been a battleground for civil rights since Rosa Parks stood up to the powers that be more than 50 years ago and demanded the freedoms guaranteed by our forefathers — in the same place property owners today demand the right to keep what is rightfully theirs.

This Saturday, August 28, 2010, the Institute for Justice (IJ) will hold a workshop in Montgomery to train property owners on how to fight these abuses of their rights.  IJ holds these workshops nationwide to empower grassroots activists with the knowledge that they are right, that they do have rights and they can fight back and defeat even the most entrenched, powerful, well-funded interests — in this case, the government itself.

We will discuss how Montgomery residents can fight back and stop these demolitions, with the principle and conviction of a woman who refused to get up from a bus seat that she knew was hers five decades ago.

We encourage you to let your friends and colleagues in the Montgomery area know about our event.  You can find more details here: http://iam.ij.org/cq2LM0.

Christina Walsh is the Director of Activism and Coalitions for the Institute for Justice, which is based in Arlington, Va.