Little Pink House Part 28

NPR's Nina Totenberg stepped to her right shoulder and pushed a microphone in front of her. Pete Williams from the NBC Nightly News NBC Nightly News approached her left arm and extended his microphone. approached her left arm and extended his microphone.

"I was very encouraged by today's arguments with the justices," she began, her voice quivering.

Bullock, Berliner, and the rest of the plaintiffs crowded behind her as she answered questions. By the time the last question came-about the City of New London-the city's attorneys had shown up and were awaiting the chance to tell their side. By then, Susette had found her rhythm.

"They have more than enough room to develop everything that they want to develop," Susette said. "We just simply want to keep our homes."

As she stepped away and the press pool turned toward Wes Horton and Tom Londregan, a print journalist approached Susette. "Do you really really feel confident that the United States Supreme Court is going to side with the homeowners?" he asked. feel confident that the United States Supreme Court is going to side with the homeowners?" he asked.

"Well, why wouldn't they?" she asked, heading off to find LeBlanc.

He was safe. Her friends from the neighborhood had found him.

40.

FOR THE TAKINGS.

June 23, 2005 Scott Bullock and Dana Berliner hovered over his computer screen, repeatedly hitting the Refresh icon in hope of seeing a new posting about their case on a Supreme Court blog. With only two days remaining in the Court's session, they knew a decision was imminent. Anxious, Bullock had dispatched a paralegal to the Supreme Court to make sure they had a copy of the decision the moment it became available.

Soon after she left, the firm's receptionist informed Bullock that a clerk from the Supreme Court was on the line. Mellor, Kramer, and other staffers rushed into Bullock's office as he took the call.

"I'm calling about the Kelo Kelo case. I just want to let you know that the Court has issued an opinion and the decision was affirmed." case. I just want to let you know that the Court has issued an opinion and the decision was affirmed."

"Thank you," he said faintly, putting the phone down.

He looked up at his colleagues and said, "We lost."

No one spoke. No one moved. No one wanted to believe it.

A few minutes later Bullock's paralegal returned from the Court with the published decision.

"We know," Bullock told her as she entered the room.

"It was 54," she said.

Bullock and Berliner scanned the opinion. "Promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government," Justice John Paul Stevens had written for the majority. "Clearly, there is no basis for exempting economic development from our traditionally broad understanding of public purpose."

No basis for stopping a city from taking private homes to give to a private developer? Disgusted, Bullock flipped to the dissent, written by O'Connor. "Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power," she had written. "Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded." Disgusted, Bullock flipped to the dissent, written by O'Connor. "Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power," she had written. "Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded."

O'Connor was one of the justices with a reputation for supporting governmental power to take property under eminent domain. But her dissenting opinion made clear that the Kelo Kelo decision would go down in history as a breathtaking expansion of the power of eminent domain. "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property," the dissent continued. "Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall or any farm with a factory." decision would go down in history as a breathtaking expansion of the power of eminent domain. "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property," the dissent continued. "Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall or any farm with a factory."

Her dissent was right out of the inst.i.tute's brief. Bullock shook his head in disbelief. How could the five majority justices possibly vote for a decision that stood for taking a Motel 6 through eminent domain to replace it with a Ritz-Carlton?

Depressed, Bullock telephoned Susette at her home.

"Susette?"

"Yes."

We lost. The decision was 54."

Clutching the phone, Susette went silent. Her lips started quivering, and a tear worked its way down her face.

"I'm sorry, Susette," Bullock said, "really sorry."

Without saying a word, she put down the receiver and walked out to her front porch. What would she do now? Moving into the house in Old Lyme was not an option. The work required to remodel the place was much more extensive than she had antic.i.p.ated when she had purchased the house. And although her sons had offered free labor, Susette couldn't afford the building materials. It could be a year or two before the house was habitable.

The sea breeze caused her thirteen-star American flag, which was mounted to the front of the house, to flutter effortlessly. It was the kind of summer day that people in coastal New England live for. Sunlight and perfect blue sky blanketed the neighborhood.

Now her view and the neighborhood were going to disappear. She had consumed eight years of her life trying to hold on to her home. In the final a.n.a.lysis, five strangers in black robes had taken it away-five people who lived in the kinds of neighborhoods where eminent domain would never be a threat.

Anger suddenly overtook her sadness. She had gone to America's ultimate source of justice and found none. Instead, she had been insulted. The city had the power to take her home, and she was powerless to stop it. But if the city thought she was giving up, it was sadly mistaken. "I know you won, you a.s.sholes," she said. "Now come get us out."

If the courts wouldn't help her, she decided, she'd just take matters into her own hands. She went back inside and called Bullock back.

"If the city wants my home, they are going to have to drag me outta here," she told him.

She headed up the street to find Von Winkle and Matt Dery. Folks were starting to gather at Dery's house. None of them could believe the Court's decision. And none of them planned on going anywhere.

Dery insisted they had to find out their legal options. His eighty-seven-year-old mother, Wilhelmina, could not bear the thought of moving out. She had waited eight long years for someone to save her and her family from having to abandon the only home she had ever known. "We may have lost," Dery said. "But now come get us. Try."

Susette insisted she'd press Bullock to come up with a plan.

Von Winkle left to talk to a reporter out on the street. He compared the Supreme Court's decision to getting blindsided in a fight. "A crazy left hook out of nowhere," he said. "It was a hard blow, but it was no knockout. This is the third round of a fifteen-round bout. We're coming out swinging next round. We're not leaving, not by a long shot."

When Susette got back to her house, she already had voice mails from people from other parts of the country expressing sympathy, support, and fury. A woman from the South thanked her for her courage. Another woman a.s.sured her that the nation was behind her.

The calls kept coming from different area codes and time zones. "Ms. Kelo," one caller from Texas said, "it appears that we have something here in Texas that you folks in New London haven't heard of yet. It's called lock-and-load. If you need us, we'll be there."

Another guy, from nearby Rhode Island, said he had an Uzi and a boat. He offered to sail his boat down the river in front of her home and protect her place at gunpoint if necessary. "I'm serious," he said. "I'm ready and I'll be there."

So many calls came in that Susette never broke free to call Bullock back. Soon reporters and photographers were on her doorstep asking for her reaction.

"I'm tough," she told the reporters, fighting back emotion. Her bottom line was that she wasn't prepared to give up. There was too much at stake. "This isn't about me keeping my house anymore," she said. "It's about people's property rights all over the United States. I've gotten a lot of calls today from people who are disgusted-really disgusted." She paused. "I don't know what's going to happen. But I'm not going anywhere!"

A journalist asked what Susette and the others could do. After all, the Supreme Court had ruled.

"We'll fight," she said. "I know we will. We can't quit now."

Vindication. Tom Londregan and the city finally had it. The highest court in the land had endorsed their redevelopment plan and their methods for implementing it, including the use of eminent domain. The margin was razor thin: 54. But a win is a win. Wes Horton had done his job and the city didn't even owe him a legal fee, thanks to the deal Londregan had struck with him earlier on. Could things get any better?

With no more courts left to appeal to, Londregan figured the city could finally get on with its development.

With the mood at his law firm resembling that of a wake, Chip Mellor ducked into his private office and shut the door. For an hour he took no calls and accepted no visitors while he carefully read the decision.

He wasn't altogether surprised. Before the oral arguments he had polled some experts around Washington who were plugged in to the Supreme Court. He had been told privately that the outcome would be 72 in favor of the city. "You've got Scalia and Thomas," one source had told him. "But the rest is uphill. You'll be lucky to get Rehnquist."

Yet Rehnquist had voted the inst.i.tute's way. And so had O'Connor, the justice that Mellor had been told would never end up on their side. Mellor reread her dissent. One paragraph jumped out at him. "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party," O'Connor wrote. "But the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms. As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more."

In his career, Mellor couldn't remember reading a dissenting opinion that cried out for action more than O'Connor's. And judging from the majority opinion, the only way to fix the problem was to get all the states to reform their eminent-domain laws to specifically prohibit taking private property for the purpose of economic development. The Supreme Court's ruling said that "public use" was defined very broadly and that economic development could be considered a public use under the Fifth Amendment. But states remained free to define "public use" more narrowly under their respective state Const.i.tutions.

The more he thought about it, Mellor couldn't accept walking away empty after getting so close to victory. We can't just take this defeat We can't just take this defeat, Mellor thought. We have to rally. We have to figure out how to take this fight to the states. We have to rally. We have to figure out how to take this fight to the states.

At three that afternoon he emerged from his office and called a staff meeting. Mellor faced his troops and complimented them on their herculean effort over the previous four and a half years. He reminded them that their mission was twofold: litigation and public education. In four years' time they had taken a subject that most Americans had known nothing about, eminent domain, and put it on the tongues and minds of people all across the nation. In their journey to the Supreme Court, they had changed things in ways no one had thought possible. "We've come a long way," Mellor said. "And we took a tough blow today. But I can tell you this-it's not over!"

Bullock liked the sound of that. So did Berliner and Kramer.

Mellor knew the inst.i.tute had to get the states to adopt higher standards to protect against eminent-domain abuse. The question was how to make that happen. "I don't know what the next steps are," he said. "But when I come in tomorrow morning, I will let you know."

That night Mellor didn't sleep much. His mind wouldn't stop racing. Long before he created the Inst.i.tute for Justice he had read an old NAACP annual report that stressed the importance of the twenty-year public-education campaign that preceded the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Brown v. Board of Education decision, which desegregated schools. The NAACP report made clear that public education was an essential part of changing public policy. But Mellor saw a more subtle message: big change requires time and a ma.s.sive groundswell. decision, which desegregated schools. The NAACP report made clear that public education was an essential part of changing public policy. But Mellor saw a more subtle message: big change requires time and a ma.s.sive groundswell.

While his wife and two children slept, Mellor decided the inst.i.tute had to launch a nationwide public-outreach campaign aimed at getting every state in the union to pa.s.s legislation against abusive eminent-domain practices.

The next morning Mellor looked at the press reports. The Kelo Kelo decision was on the front page of papers all across the country, including the decision was on the front page of papers all across the country, including the New York Times New York Times with a headline reading: "Justices Uphold Taking Property for Development." The press panned the decision. And the public reaction was universal outrage. Unlike with a headline reading: "Justices Uphold Taking Property for Development." The press panned the decision. And the public reaction was universal outrage. Unlike Roe v. Wade Roe v. Wade, which had seemed to split the country along pro-life and pro-choice lines, the Kelo Kelo decision galvanized almost unanimous anger toward the Court. The combination of a hot-b.u.t.ton issue, an engaged media, and an outraged public had created a situation that was stoked for a firestorm. All the inst.i.tute had to do now was strike a match. decision galvanized almost unanimous anger toward the Court. The combination of a hot-b.u.t.ton issue, an engaged media, and an outraged public had created a situation that was stoked for a firestorm. All the inst.i.tute had to do now was strike a match.

Mellor was convinced that his instincts were right. The inst.i.tute had to launch a national campaign to turn a bad decision into a good outcome. As soon as he got to his office, he again called the entire staff into the conference room. "Next Wednesday, this is what we're going to do," he said. "We're going to hold a news conference at the National Press Club and announce a $3 million campaign to foment eminent-domain reform in as many states as we can across the nation."

He immediately had everyone's attention, especially Kramer's. It was Friday. Wednesday was only five days away.

"I don't know exactly how we're going to do it or what the campaign will be called," Mellor continued. "But that's what we're going to figure out this weekend."

The message was clear. The inst.i.tute wasn't packing it in and no one was getting the weekend off. Bullock, Berliner, and Kramer were totally on board. Determined to change things for the better, they felt their drive and inspiration bounce right back.

By the end of the weekend the group had decided to infuse money and manpower into the Castle Coalition, and use it to become a gra.s.sroots force to pressure states to change their laws. They came up with a name for their new campaign: Hands Off My Home. And they designed a logo: an image of an ominous hand engulfing a home.

With a brand and an image, the staff divided up responsibilities. Kramer took on the PR campaign. Berliner agreed to work on getting a hearing scheduled on Capitol Hill. She had a connection to a lawyer on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Bullock had responsibility for writing legislative testimony. Other staff was a.s.signed to mobilize gra.s.sroots organizers in states across the country. Mellor got the job of raising the money to pay for it all.

Having gotten their a.s.signments, everyone went to work.

41.

HISS.

July 5, 2005 Shoulder to shoulder and clutching wooden stakes attached to signs-"THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND" and "YOUR HOME IS YOUR CASTLE"-hundreds of people from across the country a.s.sembled on the steps of the New London City Hall.

Against a backdrop of yellow "DON'T TREAD ON ME" flags, they chanted: "It might be the law, but that doesn't make it right."

The New London City Council was convening for its first public meeting since the Supreme Court handed down the Kelo Kelo decision. Figuring it was the perfect place and time to kick off its nationwide Hands Off My Home campaign, Bullock and the inst.i.tute were on hand to lead a rally. Police barricades surrounded City Hall in an attempt to keep the crowd from blocking street traffic. Eminent-domain opponents were everywhere, along with television cameras and reporters. Most protesters were parents and grandparents, working-cla.s.s people who normally would never show up for an organized rally. decision. Figuring it was the perfect place and time to kick off its nationwide Hands Off My Home campaign, Bullock and the inst.i.tute were on hand to lead a rally. Police barricades surrounded City Hall in an attempt to keep the crowd from blocking street traffic. Eminent-domain opponents were everywhere, along with television cameras and reporters. Most protesters were parents and grandparents, working-cla.s.s people who normally would never show up for an organized rally.

"We're not here because mom and dad are supporting us while we write our thesis on what's wrong with the country," one fifty-six-year-old man from Maine told a reporter. "We're middle-cla.s.s Americans who have jobs to go to and families to support and we care very deeply about this."

A businessman facing the loss of his auto-body shop in Newark to eminent domain said: "We're here in support of Susette Kelo and anybody who's being abused by this plague of eminent domain across this country."

When Susette ascended the City Hall steps and approached a bank of microphones, the crowd cheered wildly. Overcome by the support, she pursed her lips and started to cry. Losers aren't supposed to get ovations.

"This has never been about money, as some people would have you believe," she said. "There is no amount of money that could replace our homes and our memories. This is where we chose to settle, and this is where we want to stay. This is America, the home of the free, isn't it?"

Her words drew cheers and chants of support. Bullock led the crowd in chants of "Let them stay!"

Inside City Hall, Tom Londregan was starting to think the world outside had gone mad. Earlier in the day, members of the U.S. Senate had expressed alarm at the Kelo Kelo decision and announced they were introducing federal legislation to give homeowners more protection against eminent domain. The U.S. House of Representatives even pa.s.sed a resolution formally condemning the decision and announced they were introducing federal legislation to give homeowners more protection against eminent domain. The U.S. House of Representatives even pa.s.sed a resolution formally condemning the Kelo Kelo decision. And pundits were branding it one of the worst opinions of the century. decision. And pundits were branding it one of the worst opinions of the century.

"I thought I won," Londregan said. "I thought I won. But n.o.body cares. America doesn't accept what the Supreme Court said."

Besides being on the front steps of the building, Susette had been in the morning paper with an editorial. "We will not leave our homes. We have not yet begun to fight," she wrote. "I will go on every radio talk show, every television show and tell this horror story about how the New London Development Corporation, the City of New London, and the United States Supreme Court are kicking seven homeowners out of their homes."

Londregan was beside himself. "As a lawyer, what more can I do?" he said, looking back. "I don't know."

The Supreme Court had settled the legal dispute over eminent domain. The burning question now was what to do about the seven underdog holdouts that stubbornly refused to accept the Court's answer. The city and the NLDC wanted to exercise their legal right to evict them, a process that promised to entail physically dragging people out of their homes, including more than one very elderly resident.

Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell didn't want to see it come to that. She also disagreed with the Supreme Court's decision and she didn't think the homeowners should be forced to give up their properties. While her top advisors closely monitored the situation in desperate search of a political solution, Rell let her frustrations be known. Saying she felt like she was fighting five robed justices in Washington, the governor compared the aftermath of the decision to the Boston Tea Party. "Governor Rell strongly believes that the rights of homeowners should not be trampled upon in favor of the advancement of economic-development interests," her spokesman said.

Determined to avert a street confrontation between the city and the Fort Trumbull residents, Governor Rell called for the state legislature to convene a special summer session to take up public concerns about eminent domain. She also called for a statewide moratorium on all eminent-domain actions while the lawmakers deliberated.

At the state's request, the NLDC promptly announced it would honor the moratorium and refrain from commencing eviction actions until the legislature determined whether it would modify the state's laws dealing with eminent domain.

Rell's response was like night and day compared to the att.i.tude of her predecessor, Governor John Rowland. Susette was so thrilled she began publicly praising Governor Rell and privately sending her e-mails expressing her grat.i.tude. For eight years the state had aided and abetted the NLDC in its aggressive tactics toward the residents. Finally, a political leader in Connecticut had stood up and said it was wrong to force these people out.

But Tom Londregan didn't appreciate the governor's actions one bit. To him, she was pandering, not leading. After all, she had been the lieutenant governor when Governor John Rowland had set the redevelopment plan in motion with Claire Gaudiani and Pfizer in 1998. Rell had been part of the administration that had appropriated the $70 million to the NLDC. Either she had been in the loop when all these decisions had gone down, or she had been incredibly aloof while the state had been charting this course and calling the shots in New London on this project. The NLDC, after all, had taken its marching orders from the Rowland administration, not from the city.

To Londregan it was clear: by wringing her hands over the Kelo Kelo decision, Governor Rell was ignoring the fact that the state had been behind the whole mess. But Londregan wasn't going to let her get away with it. He sent an open letter to the decision, Governor Rell was ignoring the fact that the state had been behind the whole mess. But Londregan wasn't going to let her get away with it. He sent an open letter to the Hartford Courant Hartford Courant pointing out her hypocrisy: pointing out her hypocrisy: I read with interest Governor Rell's statement that she is fighting five robed justices at the Supreme Court in Washington. The Governor would also be fighting the commissioners of the Department of Environmental Protection, the Office of Policy and Management and the Department of Economic and Community Development, all of whom approved this plan on her watch. She stated that the government took away the rights of property owners without giving them a voice. Governor Rell should remember that she was their voice as an elected official of the executive branch throughout this process. She agreed to invest $70,000,000 of the state taxpayers' monies to acquire Fort Trumbull, clean and remediate its land, reshape, reconstruct and redesign it. She further claimed that in New London the case to take property was not defensible. If that is the case, then why did the executive branch and the legislative branch agree to implement the plan?

As the inst.i.tute and the homeowners continued to gain political traction for keeping the homes, the NLDC became impatient. But it couldn't go after the state as Londregan had-that would be akin to biting the hand that fed it. Instead, the agency wanted to do something to undermine the homeowners' overwhelming public support, since that was what was fueling the political momentum.

Dave Goebel and the NLDC's new president, Michael Joplin, decided to make Susette the focal point of their attack. She was the ringleader; her pink house had emerged as the national symbol for eminent-domain opposition. More than anything, the NLDC wanted to bulldoze that d.a.m.n cottage into a pile of splinters. It gave the agency fits to see the house in so many prominent national publications and as a television-news backdrop to every story about the case. The picture of Susette's quaint, attractive cottage on the water said more than all the legal briefs and oral testimony about what was wrong with the city's justification for using eminent domain. Anyone who looked at that house could see that the argument for tearing it down wasn't based on necessity or blight. It was based on vengeance. And the more the house withstood demolition, the more people started comparing its stature to that of Lincoln's cabin.

To change public opinion, the NLDC went looking for dirt on Susette. When Joplin and Goebel learned she owned a second home in Old Lyme, they pounced. First, the NLDC spread word through the city that Susette owned an out-of-town residence and had lied on her mortgage application. Meanwhile, city council members received copies of Susette's deed and her mortgage, which indicated the house in Old Lyme was her primary residence.

The NLDC did not bother mentioning that Susette had purchased the house in 2004-right after the Connecticut Supreme Court had ruled that the city could seize her home in Fort Trumbull. She had never even moved into the Old Lyme house. Once the U.S. Supreme Court accepted her appeal, she had abandoned any thought of occupying it. She had only purchased it as a last option in case she was evicted. And to qualify for the mortgage, she claimed the Old Lyme house would be her primary residence, which it would have been if the city had taken her home in New London.

None of that mattered to the NLDC now. "Certainly the Inst.i.tute for Justice has used her as a poster child of someone who is losing her home," Michael Joplin told the press. "While we know she lives part-time in Old Lyme and basically told her bank that that's her full-time residence."

Goebel went harder at Susette. "The part that disturbs me is the lie that is told when she stands in front of the house and claims it as her home and says, 'I'm never going to leave my castle,' when she signed a piece of paper that she is living elsewhere," he said. "I do not like the lie that was told and the lie that the Inst.i.tute for Justice perpetuated around the country when she clearly didn't live there. If she did, she lied to the mortgage company. Either way, she was not a good woman during that period."

A reporter a.s.signed to do a story on the NLDC's charges went to Susette's house to get her reaction. After Susette confirmed that she never had lived in Old Lyme, the reporter warned her that Goebel had been "very unkind" in his statements about her.

The following morning Susette got the newspaper. When she read the words "she lied" and "not a good woman," Susette stopped reading. It was bad enough that the NLDC was taking her home. Now they were after her dignity and her reputation too.