Solu­tions Insti­tute [SI] is thrilled to announce that the peo­ple of the Bor­ough of Kodi­ak, Alas­ka have defeat­ed a zon­ing bill that would have severe­ly restrict­ed prop­er­ty rights and changed the char­ac­ter of their com­mu­ni­ty. Many res­i­dents were deeply con­cerned, but a coali­tion did not exist. Activism brought these peo­ple togeth­er, and all who con­tributed to the bill’s defeat are to com­mend­ed for defend­ing long-stand­ing prop­er­ty rights. SI pro­vid­ed assis­tance, but the indi­vid­u­als who devot­ed their time and resources to the cause car­ried the day for Kodiak.

Local activist Jamie Fagan wrote to us, describ­ing the process that turned the con­cerned res­i­dents into a force that the Bor­ough Coun­cil could not con­quer. It is a sto­ry of ambi­tion and per­sis­tence that inspired us to make the video that accom­pa­nies this press release. Here it is Jamie’s own words:

On or around Nov. of 2013, an aware­ness that had been build­ing in me for some time reached a crit­i­cal thresh­old where I knew I had to do some­thing! It hit me that I could no longer sit on the side­lines and watch as one crime after anoth­er after anoth­er was being com­mit­ted with impuni­ty by “the Pow­ers That Be.” So, after hear­ing Dan inter­viewed on sev­er­al talk radio shows, I decid­ed to call him and ask for his help in start­ing up a local PANDA group in Kodi­ak (Peo­ple Against the NDAA). At around the same time, I read Rosa Koire’s book, “Agen­da 21 Behind the Green Mask,” and invit­ed Rosa Koire to come and give a pre­sen­ta­tion in Kodiak.

Some­time in mid April of 2014, frus­trat­ed and ready to throw in the tow­el due to lack of sup­port for our anti-NDAA res­o­lu­tion, I phoned Dan John­son for advice and encour­age­ment. He talked me into con­tin­u­ing, which I am very thank­ful for. Not too long after that phone call, it occurred to me that I could prob­a­bly drum up more sup­port by invit­ing Dan to Kodi­ak to give a pre­sen­ta­tion. Dan came to Kodi­ak for about a week in mid-May and gave three sep­a­rate pre­sen­ta­tions. (As a side note: On Dan’s sec­ond pre­sen­ta­tion at the local Amer­i­can Legion an extreme­ly intox­i­cat­ed man con­tin­u­ous­ly yelled at Dan to “shut up punk.” Dan han­dled it very well.)

In mid-August, the PANDA res­o­lu­tion failed before the city coun­cil by a vote of 3 to 4.

On August 29th, Rosa Koire gave her pre­sen­ta­tion. Dan’s and Rosa’s pre­sen­ta­tions drew audi­ences, and I devel­oped an email list of over 150 local supporters.

After the PANDA fail­ure, our core group of six to eight peo­ple were momen­tar­i­ly at a loss for what we should do, since we had to wait for one year before we could present our anti-NDAA res­o­lu­tion again.

We weren’t at a loss for long. It came to our atten­tion in Octo­ber that many sec­tions of the pro­posed code revi­sion were absolute­ly hor­rif­ic. I also learned that Rosa Koire knew our Com­mu­ni­ty Devel­op­ment Direc­tor, Bob Ped­er­son, dur­ing his stint as CDD in Island Coun­ty WA. She made no bones about how she felt about him. She feels he ought to be locked up for the hor­ri­ble things he did as CDD in Island Coun­ty. Many oth­ers in Island Coun­ty feel the same way.

Some of the oth­er peo­ple who had been loose­ly fol­low­ing Kodi­ak PANDA, whom I did not know at the time, got in touch with me about the code revi­sion. Many peo­ple worked very hard read­ing and scru­ti­niz­ing the 340 pages of bureau­crat-speak. It turns out that many peo­ple had been fight­ing this code for a few years but they did not have the orga­ni­za­tion or num­bers to make much of a dif­fer­ence. Thanks to a lot of hard work, we were able to put togeth­er a list of the worst parts of the pro­posed code revi­sion and mail them out to all 5500 Kodi­ak address­es. Also, sev­er­al peo­ple ran radio and news­pa­per ads point­ing out the worst of the code. Many oth­ers were hand­ing out fly­ers and col­lect­ing sig­na­tures on a peti­tion to defeat this code. The com­bi­na­tion of all of these things, plus the fact that many peo­ple in Kodi­ak has already been aware of the hor­rif­ic nature of this new code, lit off an unbe­liev­able and unprece­dent­ed firestorm of sup­port to defeat it. Peo­ple who have lived in Kodi­ak over 50 years and who are very polit­i­cal­ly active say they have nev­er seen any­thing like it!

Our group now has over 400 peo­ple who have signed on and to whom I reg­u­lar­ly send emails. This is very excit­ing as that is about 3% of the pop­u­la­tion of our Island and prob­a­bly accounts for 20% or 30% of the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion, which is eas­i­ly enough to sway pret­ty much any elec­tion in Kodiak.

There were rumors after the Plan­ning and Zon­ing com­mit­tee unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to kill the code revi­sion and that sev­er­al mem­bers of the Bor­ough Assem­bly were going to try and res­ur­rect the code revi­sion, but I believe that was sim­ply hot air from Assem­bly mem­bers who want­ed the new code to pass, and who, I can say with almost cer­tain­ty, will not sur­vive anoth­er election.

Solu­tions Insti­tute believes that any com­mu­ni­ty can accom­plish what the res­i­dents of Kodi­ak did. We invite inquiries from activists need­ing help in get­ting a move­ment orga­nized, vis­i­ble, and triumphant.

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