2008may01. Reason Magazine: Power From the People. Long article on Jim Mason, the shipyard, and his trials and tribulations fighting city hall. As long as America continues to have an overly-restrictive profit-driven nanny-state permit structure, smarter/greener/more creative ways of dealing with day-to-day living are going to get caught in net. They’re trying to stop the future. They’re always the last ones to get it. We’re running out of time. [via doc]
Still, Mason feels crushed by the conflict – and radicalized. While others on his team are more optimistic that it will all work out, he thinks experimental living in a highly regulated context might ultimately be hopeless. Never any kind of libertarian, he was shocked to discover that giving someone the right to shut down a physical site is no less a significant power than giving someone the power to arrest me. The lives of 30 people have been stopped, and there is no immediate review of that decision.
I live life in economies based on what is interesting, he adds. I’ve found no matter what the rules or processes, in the end the thing that’s interesting somehow gets chosen. But getting beat down, I realized that is completely irrelevant. They will not listen or make consideration for interest in anything. They only care, what does the letter of the code say, and does that completely encapsulate the conditions they determine are sitting in front of them? It’s an impossible set-up in which to engage the messy flux of the world.
