Or, Why I Sued the EPA
The first step in nonviolent action is “collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist.” –Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
In times like these, it is natural to worry about the capacity of the executive branch to do its job. You might also worry about how to change that. We have elections every four years, and the legislative check on executive power is renewed every two. But what to do in the meantime? In 1973, Gene Sharp published a handy checklist of 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action, and I expect that there are many more methods to be found in his more recent works. It turns out that there is no magic in making sure that the government runs well between elections, only diligent work on practical things.
One of the roles and legal responsibilities of the government is to make public and preserve information for posterity. In the Internet era, particularly active work on this happens at the end of each President’s term, when a public/private team works to “crawl” and preserve government websites that might be lost in the shuffle. Someone in an outgoing or incoming administration also might delete electronic records illegally for personal or political reasons. So the crawl works to reinforce the legal obligations of agencies to preserve their records.
As a librarian, I know that preserving government work in the form of records is important, and so I was active in suggesting starting points for the 2016/17 end-of-term web crawl and preservation. For a while, this fulfilled my desire to do something about my concerns regarding the executive branch.
As that work wound down, I wondered what to do next. It occurred to me I could use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to try to find out about particular parts of the government that I was interested in.
I had often advised researchers in my job that if they were unable to find the information that they needed from federal government agencies, they could always submit a FOIA request (States have their own information access laws, too). But I had never done it myself. It turns out that it is surprisingly easy. There are plenty of tutorials and guides available online (for example, here and here).
So I chose a subject of personal and professional interest, the environment, and sent in a FOIA request. Usually you simply send the request and wait for the answer. But if the government denies your request for a reason outside the law, you can argue in court to get the information. This is what I am doing now, with the help of the lawyers at Public Citizen.
Gene Sharp did not list FOIA in his list of 198 types of actions, but it would be a good addition if it doesn’t appear in his later works. I encourage people to #FindOut what their government is doing these days. Find an issue that you care about. Learn what information is available online and in print. If you need to know more, submit a FOIA request. You’ll be glad that you did.
Today, in the 2017 Inauguration, we saw President and Mrs. Obama firmly and calmly modeling the peaceful transition of power that is so important to our democracy. But let us not think that all is at peace with President Obama. This is a man whose 
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GeoClark 