Columnist Susan Snyder: Picking the right time to picket

Tuesday, July 31, 2001 | 8:27 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

It's been a long time since Elizabeth Meinhold carried a picket sign. About 34 years, actually.

"My parents were against the war in Vietnam, and when I was 10 years old we marched in New York City," Meinhold, 44, said. "I marched next to Allen Ginsberg."

Meinhold was to shoulder her protest sign with lesser-knowns in front of the Bureau of Land Management office this morning and oppose Las Vegas city officials' hopes to annex about 80 square miles of public land north of town.

The Las Vegas officials' request has Meinhold fit to be tied. The BLM already has opposed the idea. But Meinhold and her entourage of friends and Sierra Club members planned to be there as a welcoming party -- just to make sure their anger was known.

She says she learned of the city's hopes when a friend showed her a copy of a Thursday newspaper story giving the details.

"I called the city and said, 'You can't do this. You can't stick all those stucco houses and those Tudor mansions out there.' " Meinhold said. "If you don't say anything, they'll just quietly take it."

Indeed, they tried. The July 19 letter to BLM officials came as a complete surprise to county and federal land planners and managers. Las Vegas officials hoped to double the size of their sprawling mess by scarfing up 52,000 acres of federal land, stretching from Red Rock Canyon to the Sheep Range and north to Lee Canyon Road.

About half the land lies within the Desert National Wildlife Range, the largest national wildife refuge outside of Alaska. The popular Corn Creek area, site of the range's visitors' center, isn't in the proposed annex area. But it would be surrounded.

Meinhold has lived here since 1963. She graduated from Western High School and has watched the urban area spread like a rash. She's a financial planner and admits she's probably the most left-leaning person in her office.

"I finally figured out you can work the system, and then you invest the money in Greenpeace," she said, half joking.

But only half.

"I've always sent money to all the environmental groups, but I just sat back and let them do everything," she said. "I'd just shout at the TV. This time, I'm doing far more than complaining."

By Friday morning she was a full-blown activist, arranging her work schedule so she could pump the phone for promises of support from the Sierra Club, her friends and the BLM.

"The response has been amazing," she said. "I can't believe so many people have called. The people I work with claim to be outdoors people. This will be the true test."

By Sunday afternoon Meinhold's living room was stacked with homemade signs boasting such slogans as, "Enough is Enough," "Las Vegas is not L.A." and "Oscar, it's too big already."

She drove out on U.S. 95 north past Durango Sunday night, just for a little momentum.

If you haven't been out there in a while, you should go. It's positively vulgar. Housing developments go almost all the way to Kyle Canyon Road.

"It's like I waited too long already," Meinhold said. "And now they want another 28 miles. We just can't let them go any farther. It can't happen.

"I will never back down."