The act of paying attention to noise will elevate you to a role of leadership. Organize a noise-defense unit in your community. Power structures tend to respond more readily to group pressure. An organization also facilitates the development of strategy and tactics, and the opening of lines of communication.
Do not be deterred from organizing because there may be a government noise abatement function, or a government task force on noise. Government represents all interests equally—but the vested interests more equally than the public's.
If funds are a problem and overhead must be kept to a minimum, it might be worth while to activate a noise abatement committee within an already existing organization. One advantage of this kind of affiliation is that your issue gains immediate entry into the body politic.
If funds will be available without having to offer a tax deductibility, forego that luxury and be free to lobby for necessary legislation.
Either way, raise funds for the task to be done. It is a myth that civic non-profit efforts must be amateurish and saddled with economic sacrifice. You are preparing for a knock-down, drag-out fight, not the Olympics. Raise funds for the necessary office operations, for special skills, for advertising, publicity, research, and legal battles. Travel funds will make possible attendance at the various noise abatement meetings now springing up; a speaker fund will bring noise abatement expertise to your own meeting.
Organize volunteers, the lifeblood of a grassroots movement.
Now you are ready to think strategy and employ tactics. Look upon the fight for quiet as a chess game played against the indifferent. Plan to bypass the ineffectual pawns, harass the more powerful rooks, bishops, and knights, and ultimately checkmate the noisemaker king.
Do not be insular in your organizing activities. For example, seek to win the cooperation of the farmer and his wife—for the common purpose of environmental survival. The farmer can offer urban man Congressional support; a well-funded Department of Agriculture; direct aid through the extension services operated by the land-grant colleges and financed by the Federal government.
Go further, and seek an urban-suburban-rural coalition.
Place noise abatement on the agenda of a civic organization. Provide substantiating background material. Work up an anti-noise resolution, and help win support for it.
A demonstration is a great convincer. When the late Lucy Milligan invited me to appear before the New York Federation of Women's Clubs, I plugged in a small electric motor mounted on a wooden base. It had the irritating whine of a vacuum cleaner. Then, like a magician, I made three successive moves. The whine disappeared and the motor was barely audible. Noise control expert Francis Kirschner had prepared a noise-control-in-practice kit for me to use. The noise disappeared with the insertion of makeshift mufflers.
"Now, ladies," I told the audience, "if anyone tells you noise is the price of progress, remember what you have just seen and heard." The resolution was passed with what I was told was an unusual unanimity.