Residents fear United Nations interference on local level
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Questions about development and projects being linked to Agenda 21 have surfaced in Polson recently.
Area resident Diane Speer first became aware of Agenda 21 and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives at a February 2012 meeting of the Polson City Commission when she heard people opposed to the Orton Heart and Soul grant use the term “Agenda 21.”
The Heart and Soul grant took Polson by storm when the Greater Polson Community Foundation, after a lengthy application process, received the two-year, $100,000 grant in December of 2011. Awarded by the Orton Family Foundation, the Polson Heart and Soul grant defines its project as “a two-year program for the purpose of reaching out to all members of the Polson community to engage in conversations about our future and how to ensure that Polson is economically vibrant and a great place for all of us to continue to live.”
The Heart and Soul committee has established a community advisory team composed of educators, community business people, the city manager, the mayor and other citizens headed by paid directors Daniel and Darlis Smith. Polson philanthropist Penny Jarecki, a well-known community advocate and volunteer, also serves on the committee.
While Jarecki and the Smiths believe their role is merely helping the community build a better future, people who believe the Orton Family Foundation is linked to Agenda 21 see the project differently.
Agenda 21 was presented at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit held by the United Nations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Approximately 18,000 attended that summit, including U.S. President George H. W. Bush.
Information on anti-Agenda 21 website, stopiclei.com, said Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action, addressing every area in which humans impact the environment.
Agreeing but adding more detail, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website explains Agenda 21 succinctly.
“The Agenda 21 plan ... was developed in 1992 at a United Nations meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and signed by 178 world leaders, including then-President George H.W. Bush. It amounts to a set of ‘smart growth’ principles, a plan to deal with overpopulation, pollution, poverty and resource depletion. It is wholly voluntary — neither a treaty nor a legally binding agreement.”
Although Congress never voted on Agenda 21, President Bill Clinton did issue an executive order creating the President’s Council of Sustainable Development. It disbanded in 1999, but opponents of Agenda 21 feel sustainable development concepts are embedded in all federal agencies.
President Obama also issued an executive order starting the White House Rural Communities Act, which also enables implementation of sustainable development, nay-sayers report.
While Agenda 21 seems ominous to some, many Americans have never heard of Agenda 21 or ICLEI.
Agenda 21 opponents have an answer for that, too - that local Agenda 21 efforts are purposefully called something else.
According to “The Future of Agenda 21 in the New Millenium,” written by J. Gary Lawrence for the Millenium Papers in 1998, “Participating in a UN-allocated planning process would very likely bring out many who would actively work to defeat any elected official ... undertaking local Agenda 21. So, we will call our process something else, such as ‘comprehensive planning,’ ‘growth management ‘ or ‘smart growth.’”
Lawrence was an advisor to President Clinton’s Administrative Council on Sustainable Development, the planning director of Seattle, Wash., and served on the faculty of the University of Washington’s College of Architecture and Urban Planning. The Millenium Papers were a series of booklets which were brought out of United Nations Education and Development for use in the United Kingdom between the 1998 UN Earth Summit and the 2002 summit.
Agenda 21 and sustainable development may be used interchangeably, according to the anti-Agenda 21 website. Other names, such as “open spaces,” “smart growth” and “social justice” are also used, in fact, anything tagged “smart,” such as “smart cars” and “smart meters,” are related.
Tea Party members also oppose Agenda 21, seeing it as a U.N. plot to wrest away individual rights.
A story in the New York Times on Feb. 3, 2012, written by Leslie Kaufman and Kate Zernike, details protests against smart meters on appliances and bike lanes in Tea Party strongholds like Virginia, Florida and Texas.
Among issues objectionable to anti-agenda 21 people named on “False Choices,” a 14-minute video available on the anti-agenda website, are that it potentially affects property rights.
The paper from which Agenda 21 grew is a 1987 paper, “Our Common Future: The World Commission on Environment and Development.” It states poverty is the major cause and effect of global environmental problems and blames the United States for consuming too much and having too much wealth, much in the form of private property. The report concludes that the only way to make the future sustainable is to lower America’s living standard and transfer our wealth to developing nations.
Agenda 21 also threatens the American life style as we know it, since high meat consumption, one-family homes, fossil fuels, and air-conditioning at home and work are not sustainable.
Agenda 21 calls for a “a substantial flow of new and additional financial resources to developing countries” and lowering the United State’s standard of living to bring it down to the rest of the world, which is another problem for anti-Agenda 21-ers. They also oppose private/public partnerships replacing the free enterprise system, moving people from open space to urban areas, placing nature over man and individual rights taking a backseat to the rights of the whole.
These perceived Agenda 21 goals are a far cry from the goals stated by Polson’s Heart and Soul project.
“What motivated us was reaching out to all members of the community, because a handful of people tends to drive everything,” Darlis Smith said.
Heart and Soul has held nine community get-togethers in different neighborhoods and is anticipating 12 to 14 more. The groups gather for food and conversation and then break into smaller groups of three. The purpose is to interview each other and find out what people care about, or what they value.
“What do you love about Polson?,” “How did you come to live in Polson,” “What would you miss in Polson if it weren’t here?” and “What are your concerns?” are examples of questions.
“Ideas are in your head,” the interviewer instructions state. “Values are the feelings you have and the things you believe in.”
Each interview takes 10 minutes with the results recorded by another member of the group on an interview worksheet. Then each person’s values are (anonymously) transferred to a note card. After group members have a chance to compare values, the entire group uses the note cards in a sorting activity.
The overall goal of the get togethers is to find common threads among the things people value about Polson. Once this is achieved, the community will have discovered it’s “heart and soul assets so that they can adapt to change while enhancing the attributes they value most.”
Jarecki, Daniel and Darlis, and the rest of the many local Heart and Soul volunteers say they are in no way connected to Agenda 21; they just want to continue talking to people in Polson and complete their project.
Though told otherwise, local Agenda 21 naysayers continue to believe there is a connection. Typically tagged a right wing issue, Diane’s husband, Andrew, disagrees.
“I would say that it is a political issue, the United States Constitution versus the United Nations charter. The UN Charter and the U.S. Constitution can’t co-exist. According to the Constitution, rights come from your creator, but according to the U.N. Charter, rights come from them,” Andrew said.
The Agenda 21 document itself is available at http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf.
The Speers are not alone in their beliefs. Like-minded people in the Mission Valley and around the United States agree that some good things came out of Agenda 21, particularly for the environment, including more emphasis on recycling, clean air and water, but that’s just one leg of it, according to Diane. Orton is about more than storytelling and Heart and Soul, it’s how to plan for growth, she explained..
“I’m not an anti-planner. I respect property rights and the Constitution,” Diane said.
