Abstract
Contemporary Sociology 11(5) (September 1982):550–51
This book is a treasure. It describes the efforts of hundreds of Minnesota farmers to stop the construction of a high-voltage powerline across hundreds of miles of their land. Interspersed with interviews of some of the farmers, the narrative is precise and well written, and lets the drama of the protest speak for itself. The result should fascinate sociologists interested in questions of law, power, energy, and social movements.
In 1973 two electric utilities announced plans to build a large electricity-generating plant in North Dakota, and to transport its output by a powerline to Minneapolis and St. Paul in eastern Minnesota. Rather than welcoming the increased availability of electricity that would result, the farmers opposed the encroachment on holdings that in many cases had been in families for generations and that were to be turned over intact to the next generation. They also worried about possible health and safety problems the powerline might cause.
Thus, these conservative men and women found themselves standing uncomfortably against not only the utilities but also the Minnesota state government, which firmly supported the powerline. They spoke in numerous hearings before state agencies and commissions, but found their words unheeded. They took their grievances into the courts, but found this other “conventional” channel a futile recourse. Frustrated within the system, they turned to protest.
Ironically, the farmers adopted and adapted many of the tactics of protest and civil disobedience of the civil rights and antiwar protesters with whom they would have disagreed on so many other issues. They also came up with some of their own tactics. They lay down in front of construction crews. They encircled construction sites with tractors. They chased surveyors off their land. They courted mass arrest by trespassing on construction areas. Juries typically found them not guilty, and in one case a county prosecutor resigned his post to avoid having to prosecute several arrested farmers. In a unique action, a group of farmers covered themselves with pig manure and dared state troopers to arrest them; reluctantly, the troopers did so.
After several years of delay costing the utilities and state millions of dollars, the powerline was built, but the farmers continued their protest by toppling more than a dozen steel towers ranging up to 150 feet in height. These acts of sabotage were continuing at the time of the book’s publication.
The authors, both teachers of political science at Carleton College in Minnesota, give a cogent picture of rural militancy that should interest sociologists. They do not mention a single theory in the book, but there should be more than enough data here to interest scholars exploring theories of the roots of social movements, the determinants of the success and failure of protest, the distribution of power in American society, and the nature of law in the United States.
My only regret is that the book does not have an index.