Troublemaker

MKL Memorial Washington DC

They finally dedicated the monument to the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington, DC, USA this past weekend.  His life and work have been important influences on the life of this blogger as indeed also on the lives of many people around the world.  Far be it from me to compare myself to the great civil rights leader and martyr but our birthdays are a day apart, we both graduated from the same school - Boston University (32 years apart), and I learned this week that like my hero - I am also a "troublemaker."  Yes, I was within earshot of a conversation this week where a supervisor (at the construction site in Upper Road View/Mullins reported here for polluting the ocean on a daily basis for the last several weeks) described me as a “troublemaker.”

José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva 

Let me say up front that I do not have a martyr complex.  We all know what happened to Dr. King and many others before and after him who were vilified as troublemakers for standing up for truth and justice, etc.  We all know what happened to José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espírito Santo less than five months ago for trying to protect the Amazon Rainforest.  For the last six years this blog has been the proverbial voice crying in the wilderness here in Road View/Mullins for social and environmental justice.  I have seen the beaches upon which I grew up disappear largely because of poor coastal management.  All I have ever sought to do was to call attention to what was happening so that corrective action could be taken before it was too late.  Apparently, for some people that is troublemaking.

These are the same people who built three massive rock groynes on the beach in Lower Road View that have decimated Kings Beach downdrift of it, but apparently that was not troublemaking.  Those groynes also forced a neighboring property to spend US$250K on a seawall and rock revetment, but apparently that was not troublemaking.  They are forcing people against their will to move from spots upon which they lived for generations, but apparently that is not troublemaking.  They just bulldozed a Road View landmark to build a beachfront waterfront villa for uber-rich foreigners buttressed by a brand new massive seawall built in the ocean that now cuts off Road View from Mullins Beach making it treacherous, if not totally impossible, to walk the beach between Mullins and Road View, but apparently that too is not troublemaking.

When confronted about their construction practices the first thing out of their mouths is that all that they are doing and have done is with the blessing of the Coastal Zone Management Unit.  This is the same CZMU which preaches out of the other corner of its mouth that the building of seawalls, building too close to the water, etc., are responsible for the current sorry state of west coast beaches.  If pointing out this hypocrisy and agitating for the social, environmental and economic well-being of the place where my navel string is buried earns me the troublemaker label, then - MORE POWER TO THE TROUBLEMAKERS!

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Author Unknown