By Roy Brown
As the Co-Founder of the Community Coalition Action Network (CCAN) of St. Helena Island, I feel it necessary to respond to the letter published in your March 28-April 3, 2024 issue by Inez Miller entitled: “Respect St. Helena’s Cultural Protection Overlay.”
I’m not responding to the supposed “author” of the letter, Miller, a St. Helena Island native and longtime Penn Center volunteer. Rather this response is directly to the group of puppet masters, who’ve been purposefully using the black and brown faces and voices of our St. Helena Island community for their own agenda. The group I’m referring to – the actual author of Miller’s letter – is the S.C. Coastal Conservation League.
Over the past three years, we’ve all witnessed a deliberate and calculated disinformation campaign by the CCL and its local agents during which they’ve preyed on our community’s most vulnerable citizens
and used them as pawns. They don’t care about our community. They care about lining their own pockets, one fundraiser at a time, on the backs of our people. They intentionally withhold information from us to create anger and fear, and then use that fear in whatever method fits their agenda.
In fact, I’ve sat with the “authors” of many of the anti-Pine Island golf community development letters like Miller’s, broken bread with their families, and listened closely. Every single person has told me, not only have they not been given the facts of the proposed development in our community, but they’ve been forced into standing up in public, signing their names to letters, and placing signs on their lawns by a group people claiming to “protect” them.
I urge the St. Helena Island community to beware: CCL has done this before. They’re doing the same thing now. And they’ll do it again. It’s our responsibility not to allow this to continue.
CCAN was founded in 2023 to oppose this type of behavior, and to allow for actual community collaboration built on fact-based decisions for our future.
We don’t hide behind comprehensive plans; we read them. We disagree with the statement that “our future is already laid out in the 2040 Comprehensive Plan,” because that plan provides nothing for the future of our island. But perhaps that’s the CCL’s plan for us.
In its book, “A Wholly Admirable Thing,” the S.C. Coastal Conservation League describes its planning and execution of a decades-long defense of nature on the S.C. coast. In their words, “We developed a vision for the future, but at the same time we were opportunistic. And we were shamelessly manipulative in capitalizing on those opportunities.”
Does that sound like an organization advocating for the St. Helena community to develop a vision for its future on its own terms? They go on, “We concluded that communities do not adopt or discard narratives easily or quickly. Instead … we found it was more effective to reframe conservation efforts so they are consistent with long-standing narratives.
Every time you see a “No Gates, No Golf” sign, remember who it actually comes from – an organization that shamelessly reframes facts to accomplish its own agenda. We don’t find that admirable … we find it disgusting. And so should you!
At CCAN, we agree that “problems can and should be addressed on our own terms.” But we advocate for our community to do so free from the paternalistic puppet strings of the Coastal Conservation League.
Roy R. Brown is the Co-Founder of the Community Coalition Action Network (CCAN) of St. Helena Island.
