Stand Your Ground

Stand Your Ground

The ground trembled, my old mobile home shook and rattled me awake from a dream. My sixteen-year-old daughter came running into my room crying.

“Mom, Mom, their squashing all the pretty, yellow, Prickly Pear cactus flowers! Oh, Mom their bull dozing our yard!”

I jumped up out of bed and together we ran outside; still in our night shorts and tank tops, barefooted, breast bouncing, we ran, and we stood in the path of the roaring machines.

The lead dozer slid to a screeching halt just feet away from us. We stood our ground, as a burly, Hispanic man dismounted his beast and stomped up to us yelling and waving his fist.

“Get out the way, you stupid girls”, he shouted in our face, spittle flying from his snarl.

The two bull dozers behind him also stopped and the drivers came to back up their boss. They were yelling at us in Spanish, we didn’t understand them, but we knew they were cuss words.

“Fuck you”! My daughter yelled back defiantly.

“Get off my property” I shouted. “You're trespassing on private property”!

The argument was interrupted by sirens, as several Sheriff’s Department trucks rumbled down the narrow dirt road. All I could see was the blur of red and blue flashing lights. My was heart pounding in my head, sweat rolled down my face, and as the dirt settled it stuck to me, caking in my eyes.

“Ms. Albright, what do you think you’re doing. You were at the county broad meetings; you know damn well they own this right of way. There is nothing more you can say or do. The road is gonna be paved. Ain’t that what you people wanted anyway?”

“No, that’s not what any of us wanted. We’ve been asking for years to just get a little maintenance done after the monsoons,” I asserted, hands on my hips. “They are not paving it for me and my neighbors, they're doing it for the multimillion-dollar retirement community plan”!

I had already been fighting both counties for a few years. Since the beginning of the retirement community development project my property was getting flooded from their runoff. My neighbors and I, all filed complaints over the road being flooded every summer. I ran for and was elected for the local “Village Council”. I spoke at many public meetings (with my knees shaking), to represent my many neighbors, who were opposed to over development of our little town and the destruction of the desert environment.

"You can’t stop progress. It’s happening, TODAY! Whether you like it or not. Now go back inside, before I arrest you both for Civil Disobedience”! The Sherriff declared, kicking a stone with his pointy, black cowboy boot.

I put my arm around my daughter and as we turned to walk away, she spit a big loogy onto the bulldozer.

We went inside, pulling the rickety, metal door closed. The bulldozers snorted as they restarted their engines and commenced to ravishing the desert. We could hear the old growth Mesquite trees screaming as their roots were being torn from the earth. Our home shook and filled with dirt.

“Oh Mom, what are we gonna do now?”

“I don’t know, but this isn't over for me. I can’t give up. I won’t give up. This home may not be much but it’s all we have. I’ve been working so hard and struggling for over twenty years just to hang on to it: our little piece of land, our home.” I said weeping and picking up the heavy phone book. “I’ll find help, somebody's got to help us, we have rights too, even if we’re poor.”

“It just aint fair: it aint right.” My daughter yelled, slamming her bedroom door.

“Hurry up and get ready for school. I can’t be late for work. I’ll figure it out.” I’ll figure it all out, somehow.

I fought and I fought. Every week I made phone calls to government officials, filed numerous complaints. I spent untold hours researching online, all between my two part-time jobs and being a full-time student. I took classes in Ecology and Community Mobilization. I even rallied an Environmental Conservation Group. It wasn't just about me and my little acre. We protested to protect the endangered Pigmy Owls, which nested in the ancient, giant Saguaro Cactuses on the state land. We tried to protect the rare Pineapple Cactus, and tiny Pincushion Cactus. There were herds of deer living there, and Gila Monsters and too many species to even list. The Sonoran Desert is a delicate ecosystem. We gained national attention, but lost every battle. A Supreme Court Judge ruled that the Pigmy Owls were not a genetically distinct species. Big money, with big law teams always won.

Months passed. The constant destruction of the once pristine desert continued all winter into spring. The dozers even ran on the weekends. They cleared over one thousand acres of state-owned land, across the road from me. The Master Plan for the Resort Retirement Community would bring the state and county millions in revenues. It would be built in several phases, the plan was for over twenty thousand homes, three golf courses and swimming pools. In the desert?

School ended as the summer crawled in with daily temperatures of one hundred degrees or above. With school closed I was no longer working as a “Lunch Lady”, being down to only one of my two part-time jobs, I had a little more time to go to the University of Arizona to do more research in the Law Library. I researched many case law studies concerning private property rights and imminent domain laws. I looked up County Government laws and zoning regulations, I delved into Arizona State Laws and Flood Plane Management rules. I called every Lawyer in the phone book, of course I couldn't afford to hire any of them.

I contacted The Center for Social Justice. They would not represent my case, but took the time to explain my rights in an “Imminent Domain Case”. The U.S. Constitution states in the Fifth Amendment “... nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Also, the Arizona State Constitution, Article 2, section 17, declares: “our Constitution does not permit property to be taken or damaged without just compensation having first been made”.

I took all my research, case studies and my Constitutional Rights back to the County Board of Directors and personally pleaded my case. They sent out a survey team and a representative. I walked the road with them. They looked through their transit, they spray painted lines in the dirt showing me the county line, the road width and the legal setbacks of thirty feet from the proposed new road. They told me they already owned the right of way, this was not an Imminent Domain issue, and with the legal setback my trailer home was not set back far enough and would have to be moved out of their right of way or they would condemn my home and fine me.

“We don’t have to pay you a cent!” The county official scoffed.

My heart sank. My head ached: stress always gave me horrible migraines. I cried and cried, then the monsoons came. The sky burst with booming thunder, intense lightening and torrents of rain. The construction came to a temporary halt. The bulldozers were all stuck in the mud!

As we celebrated my daughter’s birthday, we came up with a plan. With the help of her big, strong boyfriend we began demolishing the old trailer. It was cathartic. We laughed and cried as we kicked down the walls. All the memories, good, bad and ugly: all the battles, the rage and anger, the years of struggle, brought down into a heap of metal, to be recycled.

I stayed one step ahead of the game. My daughter moved in with her boyfriend and I borrowed money and bought a small R.V and set it up on my land. My two sons had already moved out the prior year. I stayed, alone, to stand my ground.

It rained long and hard, every day, for months. The dry wash along the edge of my property over flowed. It turned into a twenty-foot deep by ten-foot-wide raging river. There was a six-foot high waterfall coming off the edge of the development, down into my front yard. The road also became a river, flooding me totally out. The R.V. almost became my boat. Many of my neighbors' properties were damaged as well. It doesn’t take a genius or an engineer to know the simple fact that water runs downhill.

I screamed and cried, out in the drenching rain, flood water up to my knees, “Almighty God, Great Spirit, help me!" Maybe I'm being a fool, Maybe I should just drive away, give up, move on. I went back inside, changed out of my soaked clothes and watched the nightly news on the tiny T.V. I bought at the Thrift store. After the weather report there was a special segment; the reporter did human interest stories and defended people against injustices. Thunder cracked, lightening light up the night, and I had a flash of brilliance. I got up and did a happy dance. That’s it, my next strategic move!

I called that news station first thing in the morning. I went door to door, throughout the neighborhood. We all formed a Community Coalition, filed more complaints with the county and prepared for one more battle. The following week the news station came out with a film crew and interviewed me. I showed them my property damages, photos and ‘Google Earth’ satellite images of before and after the retirement community project and the road project.

They interviewed several of my neighbors too. The story was featured on the prime-time news!

A few days later a county lawyer called me up and said, “We will be sending out a property appraiser, to arrange to pay you fair compensation for the damages to your land.”

They also sent appraisers to several homes along the road. They paid for damages or made repairs for my neighbors. My property was totally inundated and destroyed. There was no space large enough for me to build a new house on so they had to purchase the entire acre

My acre became another little piece of land added to the Sonoran Desert Conversation Plan. It is now designated a riparian preserve and wildlife corridor!

This was a 10-year long fight, from 1998-2008. It took another year after that until I actually received a check for my property. Meanwhile I spent years living in the R.V.

My new home, is in The Colorado Rocky Mountains, on 10 acres!!

STAND YOUR GROUND!