Film on Eminent Domain

I recently attended a screening of a not-yet-released documentary film about the impact of eminent domain laws on individual citizens. It is called “Greetings from Asbury Park.”

The movie focuses on eminent domain’s impact on one woman, the 91-year-old Angie, who had spent half her life in her small home in Asbury Park, since arriving as an immigrant. We see her making phone calls, hiring a lawyer and "storming city hall" to fight for her rights.

Asbury is my old home town and the filmmaker, Christina Eliopoulos, also grew up there. It's a formerly vibrant beach resort town that has deteriorated over the last 40 years due to race riots, corrupt politicians and extreme welfare-statism which moved in large numbers of the mentally ill and of welfare-dependent people. This combined with high property taxes and high crime rates sent most, but not all, of the remaining sane, working, law-abiding residents packing.

As a result, irreplaceable buildings like the gorgeous Mayfair Theatre, which could no longer draw an audience and pay the high property taxes, were torn down. My own brief home movies of its demolition are shown in the documentary.

However, the film is primarily about the current government's use of eminent domain laws to drive out the remaining residents by force, and demolish their homes and businesses, to make way for condominiums.

I was surprised and delighted to see that Dana Berliner, of the pro-property rights Institute for Justice, is featured in the film. (She is the daughter of former Ayn Rand Institute Executive Director, Michael Berliner). Although there are some comments by individuals criticizing the city’s redevelopment plan as “Trickle Down Reaganomics” and someone calls for government-funded low-income housing, overall the movie is clearly focused on the injustice of a government taking over private property, in a moving way.

If you’d like to screen the film or donate money to assist in the film’s final editing, distribution and promotion, please contact Kerry Margaret Butch by emailing her at kerrymbutch@yahoo.com. You may also email Christina Eliopoulos at celiop99@mac.com. Say Greg Zeigerson sent you!

There will be a screening hosted by the Institute for Justice's Castle Coalition featuring guest speaker Dana Berliner at Jersey Shore Arts Center in Ocean Grove, NJ on June 22nd, 2007.