By the Daily Post staff
David Crosby of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young isn’t just a singer-songwriter and guitarist.
He’s also a policy wonk. Yesterday (April 19), readers of the San Francisco Chronicle’s opinion pages saw Crosby’s byline atop a 700-word guest opinion piece that argued California shouldn’t bring back redevelopment agencies because they abuse eminent domain laws.
Who knew that the co-author of songs such as “Eight Miles High,” “In My Dreams” and “Shadow Captain” had an interest in public policy?
The giveaway that the author was the same David Crosby of CSN&Y fame was the note at the end in italics that said, “David Crosby was twice inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
In the opinion piece, Crosby talked about the New London, Conn., woman who lost her home to a redevelopment project to benefit Pfizer, which wanted to locate in that city.
That woman, Susette Kelo, took her fight against the local redevelopment agency all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against her in a 2005 case that has become famous with eminent domain opponents.
Crosby, 76, got involved in the anti-eminent domain movement when he was asked to write a song for the documentary “Little Pink House” that tells Kelo’s story.
President Trump liked the Kelo decision, and Crosby doesn’t like Trump. Crosby told Billboard magazine in February that his former bandmates are “all mad at me. But they dislike Donald Trump very much … So a reunion is possible. We don’t like each other, but we like Trump a whole lot less.”
Eminent domain is wrong. It has been misused time and time again by politicians for their own gain.
Thank you David Crosby for getting in the fight against eminent domain.
I have my own story. Dale Swanson verses J.J. CaFaro Spotsylvania, Va
I hope that you, Crosby and others who feel that way, will be just as vocal once the State of California attempts to plow through dozens of miles of the Bay Area with their bullet train to nowhere boondoggle.