Carmen Anderson is the 2008 Maloney Environmental Service Award honoree. The award is given in recognition of her 40 years of voluntarism to ensure that the public good was considered in decisions about land use in Prince George’s County.
Cecilia Maloney, Mike Maloney’s widow, said “Mike and I always thought so highly of Carmen. She accomplished so much. She was such an activist. She is a wonderful person.”
Carmen has an incisive mind and prodigious memory. She is super-organized, dogged in pursuit of facts, committed to fair treatment of people, fearless spokesperson for everyday people, and “in it for the long haul.” Carmen is a role model for younger activists, with an irresistible style of leading by example. Said Millie Kriemelmeyer, “Carmen had amazing energy, she worked all night every night [as an emergency room nurse], yet found time to take on case after case.”
Starting in the 1960s, Carmen and her cohort worked on countless campaigns to protect communities and their environment against ill-placed development, attending hearings and advisory committees, filing lawsuits and appeals, making statements, and stuffing mailboxes. When Metro was first being planned, she advocated for extension of the lines to Waldorf. The prediction of the cost of “no transit” to South County was borne out, as decades were spent fighting construction of new roads and Carmen helped defeat them. She opposed proposals for gravel mines because they lead to dangerous, truck-crushed roads, contaminated streams, and dust. Carmen was part of the successful fight for term limits and the TRIM tax cap, both of them Charter amendments.
Renowned for her highly detailed testimony and eagle-eyed exposition of deals with monied interests, she was the voice of Prince Georgeians in land use matters for decades. Better than a lawyer, she would dig into the files. And the things she would uncover!
At some point Carmen began to focus on zoning, as the fundamental enabler of what goes where. She remains the county’s leading non-atttorney expert on the county’s zoning ordinance and decision-making processes.
Some advice from Carmen, first about democracy: “Zoning only takes place every four years, on Election Day. Because if you’ve lost it on Election Day, you might as well stay home the next four years. I can’t make that a stronger statement. Our failing has always been that the public and activists never seem to come up with the money, and the involvement that it takes to overcome developer money. There’s always been a dirty-trick way to get around the spirit of fairness in our laws and Charter. But most of it is we need to overcome public apathy and get the right people in office.”
Second, about perseverance: “If we didn’t fight it, they’d get exactly what they wanted, ignoring the public good. These things go on for years and years. You can’t ever stop fighting.
Third, the need to motivate people. Carmen is tough as nails, but is also a people person who inspired people to join her. She shares information and is always open and above board.
Comments by Chip Reilly, Chair, Prince George’s Sierra Club Group, Jun 21, 2008