You say, "I'm afraid about all many of us can do is wish you and your friends luck." But there is, in fact, something that Americans can do.

Consider: Historians say increasingly that the first people to recognize the Civil War as a war for freedom were the self-emancipators, the escapees from slavery. The historic landscape most closely associated with self-emancipation is that of the Union's powerful--and powerfully symbolic--bastion in Confederate Virginia, namely, Fort Monroe. That makes Fort Monroe among the most prominent historic landscapes in America's slow-motion but unstoppable movement toward living up to the founding principles that our country is privileged to try to demonstrate for the rest of the planet. And as it happens, we're now in the midst of a sesquicentennial in which we profess to be seeking to understand ourselves and our past better. Moreover, especially after Hurrican Sandy, everybody knows that building what the Richmond paper called "swanky condos" on low-lying coastal land makes no sense. And then there's the issue of Big Money's unwarranted influence over most everything. So there's a national story here, in way more than just the historical or environmental realm.

What you can do is watch whatever national media you follow for signs of reporters or editors who would care about any of these stories, or about all of them. And when you spot one, please contact that journalist and ask her or him to look into what everyone in Tidewater, but no one in the national media, understands is a travesty now being cemented.

Now, as I said, it's probably too late. But still--what if Oprah Winfrey or the Wall Street Journal or a major magazine or network intervened? Virginia's leaders are not bad people. They're not corrupt or crooked. They're just wrong. And because they know that they're trashing their fiduciary duty to American civic memory, they're susceptible to being shamed.

So help us shame them. Contact a national journalist.

Thanks.

(P.S.: Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park has made a wonderful 10-minute movie about the need to unify the fake, bifurcated national monument. But they use this fine film to urge people to contact Virginia's governor. Problem is, at that level of local politics, this strategy will accomplish nothing. The Republican governor and the Democratic U.S. senators--both of whom are the immediate past governors--already judge their developer friends to have won. That's why national-level intervention is the only remaining hope.)

Steve, here's an idea. Why not contact Kurt Repanshenk and see if he would be amenable to publishing an article in Traveler by you or someone else to let Traveler's readers know of this? And has anyone thought of trying to enlist help from NPCA? (National Parks Conservation Association) You mention some other possible helps, such as Oprah. Has anyone actually made an effort to contact them or the Today Show or Good Morning America or PBS? Heck, maybe even NBC Nightly News or Diane Sawyer or even Ken Burns might be willing to lend an ear.

Kurt's contact information can be found by clicking the CONTACT button just below this website's headline.

Thanks, Lee.

In the August 2012 discussion that's linked from the second paragraph of this NPT posting, Kurt graciously included some of what I submitted, but he was worried that we were getting off the topic. I disagreed with that, but I respected it. I asked him if I could maybe submit a full posting of my own, and he said to wait 30 days and then do it. I never did it, but maybe I should have. (I've written about this many times in the Newport News, Norfolk and Richmond papers, and have even had two op-eds about it in the Washington Post, several years ago.)

As to NPCA, they're good people, but they're part of the problem in this case. The National Trust for Historic Preservation persuaded them and other big organizations to shoot only for the fake, token, split national monument. They too, therefore, never even tried to save Fort Monroe's overall sense of place as a Chesapeake Bay sand spit that looks all the way back to the time of Jamestown. (Maybe NPCA has repented and joined the present effort to save Fort Monroe after all.)

By the way, I'm sure NPCA would tell you that they did the right thing. But if they did, then why is every Fort Monroe stakeholder in Tidewater--except the politicans and some key, developer-friendly journalists--trying to repair the bizarrely broken national monument? Why does the Virginian-Pilot warn about a permanently "degraded" Fort Monroe?

Here's another one: Former Virginia delegate Tom Gear is the only politician who ever really stood up for Fort Monroe and against its parochial, unwise, and ironically costly misframing as a Hampton development plum. Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park formally honored him for his leadership. But he calls what's happening a Hampton "land grab" and he calls the national monument "phony." If NPCA and others did the right thing, then why is what they helped to engineer so angering to people who really know the Fort Monroe situation?

As to getting the attention of key people nationally--and I agree, Ken Burns could do wonders for the cause--I've devoted thousands of hours to that over the course of eight years. Others have tried too. We need help from citizens across the country.

Steve, it sounds as if you really have a big job ahead of you. You guys are fighting the same dragons park advocates face nationwide. I'm in Utah so approaching any of my Congresscritters would be a complete waste of time. (Rob Bishop is my "representative." That should explain it all if you know anything about his history.) Probably the only reason the entire state of Utah hasn't been sold off for development and mineral extraction is the existance of a dedicated group called the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and some others who have learned to fight a good fight.

One word of caution in whatever you do: Turn down some of the inflammatory language as you write. Words like "fake" and "bizarrely broken" may tend to push some people away. (If you've read much of what I've written here you'll know that I have a tendency to do the same thing. It may help release frustration, but sometimes turns others off.) No matter what you write anywhere, there will be some people who worship dollars, and you will really tick them off. Be prepared for a lot of blowback.

Another problem is that organizations like NPCA or SUWA are usually fighting battles on a number of fronts. Their reactions may reflect that their troops are already too thinly spread and they may simply have trouble taking on yet another war. Instead of writing angry letters, maybe see if you can organize some other like-minded people to approach some potential helpers in person. Face to face is usually much better than just a collection of verbs and nouns and adjectives. See if you can persuade any of them to meet with you on site so you can do a big show and tell.

You're not far from Wash DC, so maybe some personal journies to the Great Halls Of Power might help. Maybe approach National Geographic or Smithsonian and see if they might help. One of my most satisfying triumphs came a few years ago when we loaded a prominent editor into a truck and hauled him out to see first hand a parcel of land that needed protection. He is still helping us by providing some columns in one of his publications -- even though he lost a couple of large advertisers. You're fighting Big Money, and dollars are a very powerful -- too often negative -- motivator.

Churchill said, "Never give up!" Don't.

Lee, you observed that "organizations like NPCA...are usually fighting battles on a number of fronts." That is correct. It's also why, if you look back in our conversation above, you'll see me saying this: QUOTE But because Fort Monroe is a billion-dollar-scale piece of prime waterfront, and because preservationists have to pick their battles, the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) chose in 2005 mainly to try meekly to channel, rather than forthrightly to oppose, the enormous force of the development interests--a force exerted through the politicians whose campaigns the development industry bankrolls. UNQUOTE If you'd like some more background on this principle, let me know. I have eight years of it--eight solid years of weekends, leave days, and evenings. Maybe you have similar experience pressing for a hybrid, innovatively structured national park at a national treasure with international significance in the history of liberty.

As to the halls of power, besides enormous amounts of time in the local halls of power here in Tidewater, others and I have put in plenty of time over the years in Washington--which is of course not irrelevant, but it's the many times in the state capital, Richmond, that should have mattered most. However, unless you're willing to consider a fake national monument a success--and fake is what it is, whether or not that word is counterproductively startling--all of those years of going to Richmond didn't matter. Again: a national park stems not from Washington political momentum, but from political will within the given state, which then gets expressed and acted upon by the state's delegation in D.C. And the political will in Virginia has been to treat this national treasure of Fort Monroe as mainly a development project, with the addition in more recent years of the window dressing of a national monument deliberately engineered, on behalf of Big Money, to be fake. (Yes, you are correct when you write, "You're fighting Big Money, and dollars are a very powerful--too often negative--motivator.")

You also wrote, "No matter what you write anywhere, there will be some people who worship dollars, and you will really tick them off." Do you have a full week to invest full time while I tell you just the highlights of what others and I have learned about that? The irony, of course, is that what Fort Monroe's defenders advocate is actually _more_, not less, economically responsible and foresighted than is the biz-as-usual overdevelopment mindset that is prevailing.

And you wrote, "Be prepared for a lot of blowback." Blowback indeed. Tell me about it! For the backstory on that, please read the note that begins at the bottom of http://www.fortmonroenationalpark.org/ -- and please read the entire note, including the "more" link. You advised, "organize some other like-minded people to approach some potential helpers in person" -- as indeed others and I did, starting in 2006, my second year of activism in this. The note tells that backstory, and explains how ruthlessly NTHP (and NPCA and others) fought for the fake national monument that the organization I co-founded, Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park (CFMNP), now hopes, almost certainly in vain, to repair. Over my strong dissent in late 2010, CFMNP chose to gamble, hoping that a fake national monument could later be transformed into a real one. They didn't understand that NTHP and others (including NPCA, unless they have repented) had no intention of ever pressing toward creating a real national monument or national park,with its sense of place respected rather than "degraded." But now, in 2013, when it's probably too late, at CFMNP they understand that it's almost certainly not going to happen.

Here's something I'm trying to say: You sound like a good man. You sound like someone who wants to help. But with all due respect, you have very little idea what has gone on here in Virginia for the past eight years. The struggle has been enormously complex. But it's all but over, and is now all but lost. We've all understood the kinds of stuff you're talking about. It's good stuff, and we knew about it too, and we've worked hard on it. But Big Money is about to win, and sense of place at this national treasure with international implications is about to be lost forever. The only chance now is national media intervention to expose what has happened and what is about to be cemented. It's a long shot. Very long.

And as to "bizarrely broken," I agree that with some audiences, it's best to use duller language, as indeed I do, though not in NPT. Two thoughts:

First, If you want to see how I usually speak in public about this, while at the same time seeing why it's internationally important, please invest three minutes and watch the brief YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27e_85dm8s4 . It's an excerpt from a local PBS show.

Second, please look at the map-and-photo illustration at http://www.fortmonroenationalpark.org/ . To us in Virginia, it is self-evidently preposterous that the center of the sense-of-place-defining bayfront was omitted just to serve Big Money.

Yes indeed, the fake national monument is bizarrely broken. Eight years of decorously speaking less than the truth didn't stop us from losing. I will be damned if I will now go to my grave without at least standing up, now that we are in extremis, to tell the plain truth.

Thanks very much, Lee, for your concern, attention, thoughts and forbearance. If you think we're right in Virginia, please contact someone not in Congress, but in the national media. The politics is already set, and is sick. But the context for the politics could still conceivably become healthy.

There's a big national story here, central to the Civil War sesquicentennial, to the issue of unwise coastal development, and to the issue of Big Money pushing the rest of us around.

From the article: "The president has been criticized in the past for failing to designate more national monuments -- so far he's designated Fort Monroe National Monument in coastal Virginia and César E. Chávez National Monument in California ..."

That's not entirely correct. Pres. Obama has also designatd Ft. Ord in California and Chimney Rock in Colorado, under the jurisdiction of the BLM and the Forest Service respectively.

I’ve been watching the Fort Monroe situation unfold for several years, and I’ve known Steve Corneliussen for many years. (We both work in the national science community.) I’m glad that he and Lee Dalton are having this conversation, and I just want to add one thing: In my view Steve is right about the need for national attention to what Virginia is doing to Fort Monroe. Thanks.

Steve Corneliussen's passion to see proper stewardship of Fort Monroe is the single strongest force that has kept Virginia's politicians and developers from being able to ignore the unique and profoundly important historical significance of that location. Here's what those looking to build "swanky condos" don't know. At the place where Fort Monroe would one day be, almost 400 years ago, in August 1619 about two dozen Africans from Angola stepped into the New World. Like many of their European peers, the Angolans worked in the Jamestown Colony as indentured servants who ultimately earned their freedom. This class of Free Blacks gave birth to the Black middle-class. As slavery laws started being added to the Virginia Codes in the 1640s, Free Blacks also lost rights. Fast forward to May 1861 -- at the beginning of the Civil War -- three self-emancipators became the first to successfully claim their American Dream. The resulting Contraband of War policy meant that tens of thousands Black Americans gained their freedom before the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. This is profoundly important American History but we Americans are so reluctant to deal with the legacy of slavery nobody knows this stuff. In 2019 on the 400th anniversary of those first Angolans in America, Fort Monroe should be the location for international gatherings focused on peace and reconciliation. Virginia has a responsibility and a grand opportunity here. The 7,000 citizens who signed a petition to "Save Fort Monroe" eight years ago also agree, but a very bi-partisan swatch of our elected and appointed leaders do not. They are adept at ignoring the voices of ordinary Virginians. Steve Corneliussen is right about the need for national attention to what is happening at Fort Monroe. If there is ever to be a post-racial America then we need a place to talk. Fort Monroe's unique history makes that the place. If you agree, please help Save Fort Monroe. www.YouTube.com/juneteenthva