Bumping into Agenda 21 at the National Building Museum

Today I visited the National Building Museum, a private, non-profit organization. The exhibits occupied about ten percent of the building. The rest were halls for lectures and other activities. The imposing, three-story atrium was being readied for a lavish fund-raising gala and was being draped in shades of arresting purple, imitating a huge circus tent, three stories high, in line with the leit-motif, “the cirque.” It did not take long to exhaust the exhibits and the Lego construction room, show casing a few famous landmarks built to scale from hundreds of thousands of grey and clear Lego pieces.

The gargantuan inner Corinthian columns appeared to support the entire building, yet they seemed anachronistic in comparison to the red-bricked exterior surrounded by a yellow frieze of civil war soldiers. A simple silver plaque listed annual donors to the private museum and the list contained unusual people and organizations: USAID, World Bank, U.S. Department of Energy, Rockefeller Brothers, U.S. Department of Transportation, U.S. Green Building Council, Home Depot, Fannie Mae Foundation, Freddie Mac Foundation, American Planning Association, National Association of Realtors, to name just a few. I could be mistaken but I thought Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had received bailout funds and were asking again for round two of handouts from taxpayers to the tune of billions. They are broke but are charitable to private organizations with our taxpayer dollars.

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One of the halls was holding a lecture on “temporary urbanism.” Being a very curious person by nature, I became intrigued and joined the audience. I was going to learn about the role of streetscape design in attracting retailers, restaurants, and other small businesses to abandoned or neglected urban properties. The lecturer introduced us to the D.C. Office of Planning’s Temporary Urbanism Initiative, which “seeks to transform vacant spaces into vibrant destinations and animated showcases” through unique uses in commercial corridors of pop-up buildings made of “repurposed materials and lighting.” The young man was extolling the virtues of the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT and their rapid proto-typing of housing and Internet through “Fab Labs” working around the world in countries like Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, India, Costa Rica, Norway, and Afghanistan. I moved on to the museum bookstore, a place usually unavoidable, but this bookstore I had to see. An entire wall of bookshelves from top to bottom was dedicated to Smart Growth, Green Building, Sustainability, and everything Sustainable Green World propaganda. As I was leafing through various expensive tomes, I was struck by the realization that I could not escape the Green Monster of UN Agenda 21 even in a museum. My plan was to spend an enjoyable afternoon learning more about the history of buildings in Washington, D.C., hoping to escape the heavy traffic, the bleak, daily economic outlook, and political news from the Capitol and here I was bumping heads again with UN Agenda 21. The main exhibit showed samples of building materials, wall covers, and portraits of various architects and philanthropists who contributed to famous buildings around D.C. and the country. Most interestingly, I found out that the activist and community organizer, Sammie Abdullah Abbott (1908-1990) had built a multiracial, grassroots organization called the Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis (ECTC) to halt the building of freeways in the District of Columbia. The headline in 1969 was “Freeway Cancer Hits D.C.” ECTC coordinated similar activism across the country. “Congestion cancer” in northern Virginia from insufficient roads is a more accurate description today. Who knew that community organizers and agitators were so powerful so long ago? ECTC fought the destruction of black neighborhoods in the path of new roadways. The racist propaganda at the time screamed that the North Central Freeway was “A White Man’s Road thru a Black Man’s Home!” In the manner of Acorn, ECTC lobbied public officials, picketed Congress and Mayor Walter Washington’s home, held sit-ins, and testified at public hearings to prevent construction of the North Central Freeway. They were so successful that a National Coalition on the Transportation Crisis was formed. In 1976, the battle was resolved when the U.S. Department of Transportation paid for the district’s share of the Metro and the planned bridges and freeways were never built. The three concentric rings of expressways proposed in 1950 by the National Capital Park and Planning Commission were never built thanks to this activist organization. The Capitol Beltway, the single ring completed and a few unconnected segments survive from the proposed inner loop. Now I know why the D.C. area and suburbs are the most congested in the country and who is responsible for the dearth of roads to handle the traffic. The community activism, which began with curtailing freeways, is now entering phase two, curtailing building “sprawl” in suburbia and rural areas by concentrating population in high density approved zones in order to “save the planet.” It was an interesting and fruitful trip to the museum.