Part 16 (1/2)
Von Winkle, Matt Dery, and Tim LeBlanc tried to coax Susette down from her porch. ”C'mon, Red,” Von Winkle said, ”you gotta go.”
She kept sweeping, oblivious to the danger. ”They're making such a mess.” Tears streamed down her face, mixing with the film of dirt on her skin. She appeared to be in shock. No one knew what to do.
”C'mon, Red, I'll take you downtown,” Von Winkle said. ”We'll have a beer.”
Refusing to move, she started wailing.
Barberi had seen enough. He approached Susette. ”I'm sorry,” he said, his husky voice nearly a whisper. ”I didn't know this was going on down here.” He turned on the NLDC official. ”You never told me this was goin' on down here,” he shouted in anger, waving a finger in the official's face. ”I can't do any more work with her standing here.”
”Susie,” LeBlanc said softly, ”come on.”
The captain of the police department pulled up. The group explained the situation to him. The captain didn't want to arrest Susette. Von Winkle took one more shot at coaxing her down. He approached her on the porch. ”Look, you've got the captain of the police department and the chief of the fire department here,” he said empathetically. ”C'mon, Red. Your house will be okay. We'll come back in a couple hours, and it will all be over.”
She dropped her broom and came down from the porch. LeBlanc helped her into the back of Von Winkle's car. Then he called the hospital and explained Susette would be unable to report for her nursing s.h.i.+ft that night. Von Winkle took Susette to a bar, where she drank until she couldn't feel the pain anymore.
The next morning, Susette woke up groggy, hoping it had all been a terrible nightmare. She looked out the window. The houses on her street were all gone, replaced by mounds of rock, concrete, busted wood, and dirt. Her neighborhood resembled a war zone. It had not been a bad dream.
She got up, showered, and put on a pot of coffee. Then the doorbell rang. Expecting Von Winkle, she answered. It was Chico Barberi, wearing a tank top. ”I'm sorry,” he said, handing her a gift basket of perfumed soaps.
She invited him in and offered him a cup of coffee. He followed her through the house to the back porch. They overlooked the piles of debris he had made of her neighbors' homes.
”It's going to be okay, Susette,” he said in a low voice.
Too hurt to be mad, Susette just looked away and cried.
In twenty years of demolition work, Barberi had never been face-to-face with a crying homeowner. He put his mug down and wrapped his ma.s.sive arms around her. Susette buried her face in his shoulder.
Barberi had seen enough.
”I'll never tear your house down,” he said. ”If it ever comes to that, I'll never do it.”
As soon as Barberi left, Susette called Scott Bullock at his Was.h.i.+ngton law office. Pacing back and forth behind his desk, Bullock grimaced, trying to contain his fury while listening to Susette's account of the demolitions. Legally, he knew the NLDC had the right to destroy the homes; the agency had owners.h.i.+p of the properties. Politically, however, Bullock saw the move as a brutal tactical maneuver to intimidate Susette and the other holdouts.
”What should I do?” Susette asked.
”Try to hang in there,” Bullock advised.
”I've about had it, Scott. I can't keep living my life with this threat over my head.”
”They were able to do that with those homes,” Bullock said, hearing the desperation in her voice. ”But that doesn't mean they will be able to do it to yours.”
”Okay,” she whimpered. ”Okay.”
As soon as he hung up, Bullock stormed into his law partner Dana Berliner's office and told her what had happened.
Berliner clucked in disbelief. ”Why is the city acting so irrationally?” she asked calmly.
”Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds tore down those houses to send a message,” Bullock ranted. ”This was absolutely unnecessary!”
”Legally, the city owned those homes and had a right to tear them down,” Berliner reasoned. ”But they-”
”But they did it to show the inevitability, to show that this is a done deal,” Bullock said, cutting her off, his voice rising. ”They did this to show that it's only a matter of time before they get to Susette's house and the rest of them who have the audacity audacity to challenge this.” to challenge this.”
”Well, it's not a done deal,” Berliner said.
”Claire takes delight in saying she is engaged in this glorious work of transformation,” Bullock said. ”The fact that such tyrannical and petty acts could be dressed up in high-minded rhetoric about the greater good is just disgusting. Some of the worst acts in human history were justified as the pursuit of a greater good.”
Berliner didn't attempt to slow Bullock down.
”I want to take these people on,” Bullock said. ”I want to sue those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.”
Attorney Tom Londregan reviewed the pet.i.tions signed by the city residents seeking a referendum on the question of whether the NLDC should demolish homes. It was clear that more than enough people had signed the pet.i.tions. But Londregan found a different legal defect: timing. The protestors, he determined, should have filed their pet.i.tions within fifteen days of the city's granting the NLDC the power to use eminent domain. The city had made that decision back in January. The time to repeal or put the city council's decision before the city's registered voters had pa.s.sed. Londregan sent the city clerk a two-page memorandum declaring the pet.i.tion to save the Fort Trumbull homes invalid.
The same day, Scott Sawyer went to court on behalf of the Fort Trumbull Conservancy and secured a temporary restraining order to stop the NLDC from demolis.h.i.+ng any more homes. Two days later, a judge lifted the order. The conservancy had no legal grounds to keep the NLDC from demolis.h.i.+ng homes that it already owned.
28.
PUT A PRETTY FACE ON IT.
Late September 2000 The U.S. Coast Guard had been searching for a site on which to erect its national museum. The NLDC figured there was no better place than New London, home to the Coast Guard Academy, perched on 128 acres on the banks of the Thames River, next door to Connecticut College. The NLDC lobbied the coast guard to make its museum part of the large-scale redevelopment plan in Fort Trumbull-specifically on East Street.
After months of discussions, the NLDC put out word that the coast guard had committed to building in Fort Trumbull and that Rear Admiral Patrick Stillman planned to visit the area. He could not have picked a worse time to inspect possible sites. Piles of busted lumber, twisted house siding, broken bricks and cement, and shredded insulation littered the lots that only days earlier had hosted houses. Temporary orange mesh fencing separated the lots from the sidewalk. Their backs to the fencing, protestors lined the sidewalk all the way to Susette's house, one of the few homes left standing on the block.
With stars and stripes on his uniform jacket, Admiral Stillman approached the protestors, trailed by a uniformed officer. Steve and Amy Hallquist looked him straight in the eye and held up their cardboard sign: ”Proverbs 22:16: He that oppresseth the poor to increase his riches and he that giveth to the rich shall surely come to want.”
Press photographers snapped shots of the admiral as he walked past Connecticut College students and coalition members telling him not to displace poor homeowners to make way for his museum. The farther Stillman walked down the street, the uglier it got. Susette looked down from her porch. ”The coast guard is supposed to save people, not drown them,” she said.
Her pink home looked out of place on a street that otherwise looked like it had endured a military bombing. Stillman had heard about Susette's house and her determination to hold on to it. She had made her own sign for the admiral and stuck it near some beautiful mums. Shaped like a Halloween pumpkin, it read: ”Cackle, Cackle, Screamie, Screamie, Taking People's Homes Is Awful Meanie.”
The admiral didn't like what he saw. The coast guard didn't need to get dragged into a street fight between residents and the NLDC. He penned Susette a letter.
”I understand and can fully appreciate your concerns regarding the future of the land bordered by Smith, Trumbull, East and Walbach Streets,” he wrote. ”As a property owner, you justifiably have the right to voice your concerns over the matter. If placed in a similar situation, I too would exercise my right to ensure that my viewpoint was made known to the decision-makers with regard to the proposed use of the land.”
He said there had been some public confusion concerning the coast guard's intent. He outlined the purpose and scope of the museum, along with the type of site the museum required.
”In closing, and on behalf of the Commandant, I'd like to state that we are not committed to the property bordered by Smith, Trumbull, East and Walbach Streets as the site for the U.S. Coast Guard Museum,” he wrote.
Susette faxed a copy to Scott Bullock's law office.
To defuse the impa.s.se with the faculty, Claire and the board of trustees planned to propose a sabbatical for Claire. But too many faculty members wanted Claire gone permanently. Students were clamoring for her removal too. About two hundred of them had marched on campus, chanting: ”Hey hey, ho ho, we'd like to know where'd our money go?”
But Claire maintained the criticisms levied at her over school finances were unfounded. ”Connecticut College is extremely well-planned and well-managed financially,” she told the Chronicle of Higher Education. Chronicle of Higher Education.
Yet the college newspaper continued to hammer away at Claire. Front-page stories highlighted the controversy surrounding Claire and the NLDC's attempts to seize homes by eminent domain. Students wrote letters to the editor blasting Claire. ”Please feel free to explain to the community how tearing down the Fort Trumbull neighborhood for a hotel that will only be used by Pfizer employees will accomplish any of this [social justice],” one student wrote. ”We will not allow you to destroy people's homes and we will not allow you to destroy New London's heritage. We will lead the way to social justice.” The editorial-page cartoonist went after Claire, depicting her straddling the back of a collapsed camel. ”The camel's back is not broken. In fact it is stronger than ever,” read the words coming from Claire's mouth. The paper also ran a color photo on the front page showing Susette on campus, protesting with students.
The scene was surreal to a visiting scholar at Connecticut College who watched as faculty and students tried to push Claire out. ”She wasn't a woman that you pushed,” the scholar said. ”She is a person with pa.s.sion. When she takes something on she believes she is absolutely right, and she will do whatever she needs to do. There is a fanaticism-'I have a direct marching order from a higher being.'”