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“Like them,” the Chronicle reported Claire’s saying to the Baptist congregation, “I’m operating outside my specialty. Does that mean I’m going to make mistakes? Yes.” But in her speech Claire urged the congregation to support her work. “Jesus is calling us in this city to witness,” she said. “You and I are called to be transforming interveners, like the Messiah, like Martin Luther King.”

The board of trustees had a huge problem on its hands; its financial woes and the internal battle between Claire and the faculty had oozed into public view.

Shapiro instantly saw the change in Claire. One of the things she most admired about Claire was her physical beauty and her fearlessness about showcasing it through a bold wardrobe. Suddenly, Claire was showing up for work looking terrible, after staying up until four in the morning each night dealing with a crisis. “She had such a vision,” Shapiro lamented. “In many ways it may have been unrealistic.”

25

TIME IS NOT ON OUR SIDE

Steve Hallquist had secured an appointment with Scott Sawyer. John and Sarah Steffian planned to attend. But other members of the coalition feared that a local lawyer wouldn’t have enough firepower to stop the city. “This is bigger than us,” said Peter Kreckovic, a local artist who had joined the coalition. “We need outside help.”

No one disagreed. Yet no one knew any out-of-town law firms that specialized in personal-property rights. Plus, the cost of landing that kind of firm seemed prohibitive.

Suddenly, someone in the group brought up a public-interest law firm—the Institute for Justice—that handled property-rights cases. Based in Washington, D.C., the firm operated as a nonprofit that did not accept legal fees from its clients.

It had been in the news for helping an elderly widow fend off the State of New Jersey from taking her home. The state had planned to condemn the widow’s home and a couple of neighboring properties in order to sell the land to Donald Trump, who planned to convert it into a limousine waiting area and a lawn for one of his Atlantic City casinos. Legal experts had given the widow no chance of prevailing. The case had made national headlines when a Superior Court judge ruled against the state, saying that any public benefit from condemning the properties was far outweighed by the overwhelming private benefit being passed on to Trump. The victory inspired the institute to start a major campaign to revive the public-use requirement in eminent-domain takings, which land-use lawyers and judges had considered a lost cause for decades.

To the coalition, New London’s attempt to take land for the benefit of Pfizer sounded a lot like the New Jersey case. Everyone agreed it would be a coup to get the institute engaged in the fight in New London. It all sounded good to Susette. But she had never heard of a law firm that didn’t collect legal fees, and she figured the chances of getting the institute to help were probably slim to none.

Hallquist and Steffian insisted they’d press on with trying to retain Scott Sawyer.

“Well, are we going to contact the Institute for Justice?” Peter Kreckovic asked, looking directly at Fred Paxton.

“Why don’t you do it, Peter?” Paxton said. Others nodded in agreement.

Shy and self-conscious, Kreckovic doubted he was the right person to contact a Washington law firm. But he feared no one else would get to it. So that afternoon he sat down in front of his manual typewriter. “Dear Sir, I am writing to you on behalf of the Coalition to Save Fort Trumbull Neighborhood,” he began, explaining that the state had given millions of dollars to the NLDC to redevelop the neighborhood. “Their plan is to demolish all the houses and commercial buildings to give a clear field to the developers, who can then build high-income condominiums, a hotel and health club on the site. These would support the 220 million dollar research facility being built by Pfizer Pharmaceutical next door.”

Efforts by the grassroots organization to seek justice had been ignored. “Demolitions