![]() ''We talk battle plan what they have to do to win,'' said Thompson, who is advising the Virgil Township group. Thompson, a former Hinsdale resident who now is executive director of the Central States Education Center in Champaign.Ĭentral States, which got its start in the late 1960s fighting a dam on the Sangamon River that would have flooded Allerton Park, now advises other protest groups on how to beat government on environmental controversies. They also contacted several other NIMBY groups in the area and John W. The Defenders, which now has a paid staff, an annual budget of more than $300,000 largely because of its recycling program, and a library in its headquarters on the square in downtown Woodstock, was one of the first organizations that Sauber`s group contacted for advice when they learned their area was considered for a landfill. ''In the old days-the early 1970s-we didn`t have any other groups to talk to.'' Marchi, a retired chemist and one of the founders of the McHenry County Defenders, a group that originated to fight the Fox Valley Freeway in 1970 and after winning that battle converted into an environmental organization. ''There is a great deal of interconnecting now,'' said Louis E. (The name stands for a classification of real estate zoning.)īecause they perceive a common enemy-government-E-3 is now talking on a regular basis with other protest groups. But a developer later proposed a subdivision in a cornfield behind Thompson`s house, and he was back in action within a year as head of E-3-a group fighting suburban-style subdivisions in rural areas. The tranquility lasted a couple of years until the state offered his yard as part of the site for the superconducting supercollider and he joined CATCH to fight it. He then moved to a rural area near Wasco in Kane County to get away from suburbia. Steven Thompson, a manufacturers` representative, got his start in west suburban Wheaton fighting an attempt by a fast-food chain to put an eatery alongside a nature trail. On rare occasions they become permanent organizations. Typically, NIMBY groups arise to meet a crisis and disappear when the threat is past. The groups have been most successful on the suburban fringe of the collar counties where there is still an environment to protect, and less so in Du Page County, where rapid growth overwhelmed resistance before anyone knew what happened. But the current NIMBY explosion in suburbia is less than 10 years old, with its roots going back only a little more than 20 years. Protest groups have been popping up in Chicago for generations, and community activist Saul Alinsky raised the phenomenon to a form of art several decades ago. In Kane County, a coalition of NIMBY groups is emerging that could evolve into a permanent watchdog organization and possibly a challenge to the existing Republican power structure.
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