Top 12 Things I Learned From Bradwood

Bradwood was a long, hard-fought struggle waged by local residents to prevent an LNG facility from being located on the Columbia River and having an associated pipeline run across many properties in Oregon including my own.  Here are the 12 things I learned from the experience:

12  The key advantage of local opposition is low travel costs. 

11 Nine-tenths of opposition work is just showing up.

 

10 Every vote counts.

 

09  A bad plan executed well is still a bad plan.

 

08 The quality of legal representation is not at all correlated with billing rates.

 

07  When you are a rag-tag opposition fighting a guerilla war, it is best not to judge any one’s rags to be taggier than another’s.  It will take efforts of all, no matter how bumbling, halting or small.

06  The odds of winning aren’t really that low, but it’s better that you are convinced that they are.

 

05  It is more likely  to stop a freight train by putting it on a very long track than to derail it in a single act.

04  You can hire front men with fancy resumes.  You can hire legal firms with fancy offices.  You can hire local help.  But you can’t hire truth.

 

03  When a stranger offers you candy it is best to focus on the strangeness of the offer and not the imagined sweetness of the  candy.

02 "If I can read an EIS I can read Ulysses."

01   Victory isn’t actually sweet; it tastes more like beer.