I spent twenty-five years fighting redevelopment, working towards a goal of total abolition nationwide.

Not many people understand that in order to put this egregious practice (public money and eminent domain for private use) out of its misery, the entire body of federal, state and local legislation and court rulings called “Redevelopment Law” will need to be repealed.

These laws suspend the rights of some citizens for the benefit of others on the pretext of eliminating “blight”, which is blatantly described therein as property that public officials determine isn’t generating as much tax revenue as they think it should. I am not making this up.

Blight is defined as physical, social and economic decay, a threat to the health sand safety of the American people so dire it justifies suspending people’s rights and Liberty to eliminate. In this equation, the American people are not considered to be our nation’s greatest asset, but its greatest liability.

Redevelopment as it is practiced today (it is not an American tradition, despite what its proponents claim) began when Congress passed the Housing Act of 1949 which transferred a hated federal program to the States. California’s Community Redevelopment Law [Health & Safety Code Sec. 33000 et seq.] was adopted by the Legislature in 1952 and voters approved a Constitutional Amendment [Article XVI, Sec. 16] allowing local governments to use tax increment financing to pay for redevelopment projects the following year. Since then, voters have approved other constitutional amendments, like Prop. 22, that extend these powers.

In 2011 when Brown signed the bill to shut down California’s 400-odd Community Redevelopment Agencies, they did not repeal any of these laws. The project areas were not shut down, though, and they are still receiving property tax increment revenue to pay off what is left of redevelopment’s monumental debt. Although the anti-redevelopment movement is bi-partisan, in 2011 Republicans (except for Chris Norby) opposed shutting down the CRAs, maintaining the odd position that public debt and eminent domain abuse are good for the economy.

It is my opinion that fighting this outrage one project at a time, one city at a time, or one state at a time takes as much energy as working toward a nationwide movement for a Constitutional Amendment banning the use of public money and eminent domain for private development.

My hope is that everyone who steps up to the plate to stop their local redevelopment agency (or, as they will now be called in California, “Revitalization Authority”) from bulldozing people’s rights away will use every battle to argue for nationwide abolition.

This is how America’s 19th-century abolitionists eventually succeeded in putting a stop to slavery.

It can be done.