Welcome to our new site
We recently launched an online petition at carnegieforever.org. With over 13,000 supporters and after tons of emails, tweets and facebook messages it was clear that we needed to replace the single page petition site with something else. Our first addition was a twitter account (follow @carnegieforever for important updates) and now we are happy to launch this site. It’s a work in progress but we hope you find it a valuable resource and come back often. We are looking forward to work with all Carnegie off-road entusiasts and everybody else that supports our mission.
Check out all the pages and links and let us know what you think and what you’d like to see here.
Thank you for your support!
My blood is boiling. I am speechless with rage. I am mad as hell and I am not going to take this anymore. My dreams are of revenge and bloodshed. I woke up this morning in tears from a dream where the lawyers for the powers that be were absconding with the spare parts for my beloved CRF-450R. I have been riding Carnegie since the nineteen-seventies and I know what the dream was about. That being said, I am a fifty-nine year old female attorney who after fifteen years practicing law has given up in disgust, although I am still a member in good standing with the state bar. Justice is just a word to pacify the masses and as my law professor said in the 1980s the “J” word has nothing to do with the law.
The beginning of the twenty-first century is the era of the big grab. The rich and powerful want it all now and they are using the political system and the justice system to further these aims. The bankers, the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the rich ad nauseam, are in charge. The voters elect the leaders and the campaign contributors call all the shots. Is this change that we can believe in? Does either of the political parties stand up for American ideals of freedom and justice? NOT!!!!!!!! What is happening to Carnegie is just another symptom of this malaise.
Just think of the arrogance and the unmitigated gall of these people. An adjacent landowner (Connolly) who privately owns two thousand acres that he and his wealthy friends use for their own personal recreational pursuits is attempting to shut down a State Park created and managed by the State for the recreational use of the People of California. I never dreamed that this could happen. One hundred thousand people a year use our state park. Does he think that he is some kind of feudal lord? “Let them eat cake”. This is way bigger than any other challenge we have ever faced. One selfish individual, his friends and an activist judge are usurping the recreational and economic interests of the state of California.
Our green-sticker funds and entrance fees pay for the maintenance and environmental upkeep of Carnegie. This self-styled aristocrat is using pseudo science, lies and political alliances (he is married to Celeste Garamendi, sister of John Garamendi elected to represent the tenth district of California in the House of Representatives) to take away the park that we cherish. What an egocentric psychopath he is to deny us the sport we love. What would he think if he were prevented from partaking in his form of recreation whether it is playing golf, fishing, hiking or hunting? This well-connected wealthy landowner does not make the connection and I doubt that he values family sports like off roading.
The rangers have said that if this lawsuit is successful none of our parks are safe. There are rumors over the Internet that Freedom of Information Requests has already been made in relation to Hollister. This is the prelude, using the same strategy used against Carnegie, to shut down Hollister for lack of industrial discharge reports as though our state recreational parks produce toxins that are released into the watershed. Already Hollister and Metcalf are advising people to call before coming because people are being turned away due to the parks reaching their saturation point during the weekends. These monsters have the money and influence to destroy all off road riding and competition in California.
I was inspired by the Carnegie Freedom Day rally of January 11th 2010. I knew most of the speakers and I never felt more part of a family than I felt that day and on the days afterwards when other riders waved as we passed on the trail. The Pledge of Allegiance recited that day says it all: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands… with liberty and justice for all”. The hero of that event was a little person less than four feet tall who said what everybody was thinking and what nobody dared to say; “Screw the judge…this is our home…we want the judge no more”. No more eloquent words were spoken. We need to investigate the judge’s connection to Connolly and his wife. Has he ever attended one of Connolly’s shindigs? It is all so bizarre, like something out of a John Grisham novel. A Superior Court judge shuts down a state run park on the flimsiest of evidence. There has to be more to this.
As my husband says off road vehicle enthusiasts are being accused of killing imaginary fish in an imaginary stream so that the litigants can kill real fish in a real stream. What’s with that? And, meanwhile, a super fund site sits on the other side of the creek. Heavy metals and other elements have been leaching out of the soil for aeons and deposited in the Carnegie flood plain from many sources. Even if heavy metals do exist, how can the judge have arrived at the conclusion that their accumulation was caused by off road use? Beyond that question is the question of whether these miniscule levels are really harmful when the San Francisco Chronicle reported in Sunday, December 27, 2009 that the government was touting the benefits of coal waste containing heavy metals like mercury, arsenic and lead for use as fertilizer on farmers fields. Doesn’t this stuff leach into the water supply? And lastly, a brick making enterprise was located at the present site of Carnegie where the kilns used to treat the bricks were heated by coal. What happened to the burnt coal after the site was closed?
Very well written Diana. I don’t have anything to add but this. It is always darkest before the dawn. We have to dig in and look for that elusive traction to get us to the top of the hill. We are fighting for more than just a state park here, that is becoming painfully obvious.