imposed grievances, such as nuclear accidents, and the older and more
widely studied protest processes emerging among such deprived collectivi-
ties as African Americans or women. These protests over the sitings of mod-
ern incinerators promised to provide multiple comparable instances of
increasingly common but less-studied protests against new technologies.

We came across a number of grassroots groups from at-risk communities
successfully challenging political and economic elites, although we did not
find a positive relationship between democratic processes and successful sit-
ings. Ordinary people increasingly confront large bureaucracies over which
they feel they have little or no control, but the evidence in the following
chapters reveals that corporate power is more fragile than many citizens
imagine. Despite multimillion-dollar budgets and claims to scientific truth,
some new technologies are shortsighted and have serious flaws that are
checked only by the mobilization of countervailing grassroots political
power. In response to demeaning corporate accusations that they are NIM-
BYs (Not-in-my-backyarders) or BANANAs (Build-absolutely-nothing-any-
where-near-anythings), increasing numbers of citizen challengers define
themselves as legitimate defenders of a common good being threatened by
corporate shortsightedness and greed.

We also found enough evidence to caution against any headiness about
U.S. society's having achieved a balance between corporate and grassroots
power. In the course of our research, we encountered too many people who
were intimidated by societal elites and modern technologies. Perceiving
themselves, families, or friends as vulnerable to economic retaliation, they
became immobilized by fear and/or cynicism. Some were wearied and/or
confused with the exaggeration and name-calling by proponents as well as
opponents in these sometimes heated disputes. Corporate sponsors of such
technologies too often arrogantly ridicule the alleged ignorance of grass-
roots opponents, while some of the latter caricature the former as greedy,
diabolical incarnations rather than as businesspersons attempting to find
financially profitable solutions to challenging technical and political prob-
lems. In the cases examined here, each side insisted that the other had prosti-
tuted "science" by using intentionally bogus data in support of its own
economic and political agenda. After hearing such charges and counter-
charges, some people in the surrounding areas said -- more often with ac-
tions than in these specific words -- "A plague on both your houses" and
went about living their own private lives without becoming involved.

Yet the evidence against the wisdom of such public passivity continues to
accumulate. Serious recycling of municipal wastes was not even a significant

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