[Peace-discuss] Carbondale Mayor Stifles Anti-War Resolution

[Jim Buell]

Carbondale's mayor choked off debate on a pending City Council resolution 
opposing war in Iraq last night, calling for an immediate vote which lost 
3-2. This despite scores of people in attendance at the meeting to address 
the council on the issue, and nearly a thousand signatures on a petition 
calling for the resolution. The information below comes from the Shawnee 
Greens, who were among those supporting the measure.

SIU's student paper, the Daily Egyptian, has a story on the meeting as 
well: http://newshound.de.siu.edu/spring03/stories/storyReader$1237

peace,
Jim

>To: IllinoisGreensFocus at yahoogroups.com
>From: "eghughes2001" <eghughes2001 at yahoo.com>
>Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 15:05:23 -0000
>Subject: [IllinoisGreensFocus] "AMERKAN DEMOKRACY" CARBODALE STYLE
>
>
>
>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE           Contacts: E.G. Hughes, (618) 549-1409
>March 18, 2003                     Richard J. Whitney, (618) 942-4308
>
>Shawnee Green Party Protests Suppression of Free Speech at Carbondale
>City Council Meeting; Applauds and Endorses Maggie Flanagan for Brave
>Stance on Anti-War Resolution
>
>         Democratic process took a knee in the groin at the March 18th
>meeting of the Carbondale City Council, when Mayor Neil Dillard
>foreclosed citizen discussion of the Resolution Opposing War Against
>Iraq that had been submitted by the local peace movement, despite the
>presentation of nearly 1,000 petition signatures supporting the
>Resolution. Despite the presence of scores of interested citizens who
>wanted debate and discussion on the Resolution, both pro and con,
>Mayor Dillard short-circuited popular deliberation by calling for a
>roll-call vote almost immediately after a motion in support of the
>Resolution was made and seconded. The Resolution then fell to defeat,
>2-3, with Councilwomen Corene McDaniel and Maggie Flanagan voting in
>favor.
>         The Shawnee Green Party protests this suppression of free
>speech and democratic process by the Mayor. Although Mayor Dillard
>may not have been legally required to permit citizen discussion and
>debate on the issue, he clearly had a moral and ethical obligation to
>do so, and his departure from the norm of providing for citizen input
>was an abuse of his discretion as chairperson of the Council.  One
>Green Party activist at the meeting, Vietnam War veteran Charlie
>Howe, was planning on speaking in favor of the Resolution. After
>observing Mayor Dillard's performance, he commented, "The war issue
>is a red herring. The real issue is whether this county as a
>democracy is going to survive."
>         Although Mayor Dillard expressed legitimate concern over
>the "divisiveness" that the issue had brought to the community, and
>noted that the City had received angry comments from Southern
>Illinoisans who vowed not to shop or do business in Carbondale if the
>Council approved the Resolution, the Shawnee Green Party opposes
>government stifling debate out of fear. This is  in keeping with its
>founding Ten Key Values, including the value of "grassroots
>democracy."
>         Ironically, Carbondale attorney Rich Whitney, who was slated
>to speak on behalf of the Party at the meeting, had prepared a
>statement on the importance of citizen dissent to American democracy,
>and had planned to state that "there is nothing more democratic or
>All-American as town-hall meetings and resolutions like these to
>convey the message of the people to the President and Congress when
>we come to the conclusion that their actions are
>wrong." "Unfortunately, I never got to present my statement about the
>virtues of such democratic process because the democratic process was
>suppressed at this meeting," Whitney commented after the meeting. The
>full text of his prepared statement in favor of the Resolution is
>appended to this press release.
>         In keeping with a previous decision of the Party, the Shawnee
>Green Party now endorses and fully supports Maggie Flanagan, in her
>race for Mayor of Carbondale. Longtime peace activist and Green Party
>member Hugh Muldoon, who initially introduced the Resolution before
>the City Council, noted that Maggie Flanagan stuck to her guns and
>voted for her principles despite receiving some angry comments
>herself.. "For that she needs and deserves our full support," Muldoon
>commented. The Shawnee Green Party, like much of the local antiwar
>movement, fully agrees and will work hard to get her elected.
>
>
>
>Appendix
>
>[Note: This is the text of the Shawnee Green Party statement that was
>not allowed to be presented.]
>
>Statement in Support of the Resolution Opposing War Against Iraq
>
>by Rich Whitney, for the Shawnee Green Party, 3/18/03
>To the Carbondale City Council and Hon. Mayor Dillard:
>
>         I speak tonight as a representative of the Shawnee Green
>Party. In the last general election, 21 percent of the voters in
>Carbondale cast their vote for the Green Party in the race for state
>representative. The Party has asked me to speak on behalf of that
>constituency tonight. The values on which the Party is based include
>the values of non-violence and grassroots democracy, and on that
>basis, we ask you to please vote in favor of the Resolution.
>
>         That we oppose going to war against Iraq is no secret. But I
>would like to focus tonight on the democratic principles underlying
>this Resolution. It has been suggested by some proponents of war that
>true patriotic Americans must rally around the President at this time
>and that dissent is somehow anti-American. It has been suggested by
>at least one member of this Council that this Resolution is
>inappropriate, because it should be the City's role to support our
>troops, and telling the President that we don't want them to be
>fighting this war will somehow disrespect or undermine them.
>
>         If any of you hold these notions, I ask you to reconsider.
>For with all due respect, these notions are profoundly mistaken, and
>go against everything this nation is supposed to stand for.
>
>         In our democratic republic, it is the role of the people and
>their elected representatives to ultimately determine whether the
>nation should engage in war in the first place. Criticism of an
>executive decision to go to war is not the same thing as criticism of
>the troops fighting it and I think it insults the intelligence of our
>service men and women to presume that they can't understand that
>clear and basic distinction. In any event, the amended version of the
>Resolution makes that point explicit.
>
>         It is most unfortunate that Congress has abdicated its own
>Constitutional duty to declare or not declare war, and ceded it to
>the President. However, our constitutional scheme presupposes that
>the people are the fourth branch of government. The executive branch,
>including the President and the armed forces, is supposed to be the
>servant of 'We The People.'  We fought a revolution to establish the
>right of the people to have that control over government. It is not
>only our American right and privilege, it is our duty to raise our
>voices and criticize our government when it is in error. As Thomas
>Jefferson once warned, "Every government degenerates when trusted to
>the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only
>safe depositories."1
>
>         Another renowned President, Teddy Roosevelt, who was not
>exactly a pacifist, agreed. He once proclaimed, "To announce that
>there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand
>by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile,
>but is morally treasonable to the American public."2
>
>         And there is nothing more democratic or All-American than
>town-hall meetings and resolutions like these to convey the message
>of the people to the President and Congress when we come to the
>conclusion that their actions are wrong.
>
>         These principles apply in times of war no less than in times
>of peace. As Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur Schlesinger,
>Jr., opined recently, "Of all the decisions a free people must face,
>the question of war and peace is the most crucial. Before sending
>young Americans to kill and die in foreign lands, a democracy has a
>sacred obligation to permit full and searching discussion of the
>issues at stake. There is no obligation to bow down before an
>imperial presidency."3
>
>         Schlesinger cited a number of examples of famous American
>dissent against war, including Mark Twain's scathing criticism of the
>Spanish-American War, and another one that should have special
>meaning to us:
>
>In 1848 the House of Representatives itself resolved that the Mexican
>War had been "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the
>President of the United States." A few days later a young congressman
>attacked the presidential justification for the war as "from
>beginning to end, the sheerest deception." Explaining to a friend his
>opposition to the war, Rep. Abraham Lincoln of Illinois challenged
>what is known today as the Bush Doctrine of anticipatory self-
>defense: "Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation,
>whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion... and you
>allow him to make war at pleasure." The Founding Fathers, he
>continued, "resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man
>should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us."
>
>         Of course, the current plan to attack Iraq is even less
>justifiable, as there is no "invasion" for us to repel. And that
>really gets us to the heart of the matter. For despite President
>Bush's best efforts to rationalize it, there is no getting around the
>fact that he would have the U.S. government attack and invade another
>sovereign nation that has not attacked us ­ or attacked any other
>nation, for that matter, in 12 years. He would make us the aggressor,
>at a terrible human and economic cost, disregarding international law
>and the U.N. process, inflaming world opinion against us, and
>probably generating a good deal more of the very terrorism that he
>professes to be fighting.
>
>         In this regard, we would do well to consider the words of the
>first "George W" ­ George Washington ­ who once warned:
>
>I have always given it as my decided opinion that no nation has a
>right to intermeddle in the internal concerns of another . . . and
>that if this country could, consistently with its engagements,
>maintain a strict neutrality and thereby preserve peace, it was bound
>to do so by motives of policy, interest, and every other
>consideration.4
>
>         Mr. Mayor and Council, if you truly believe that there is
>justification for our government to attack Iraq, then let us hear the
>justification and debate it. But do not rest your argument on the
>ground that dissent during wartime is un-American or unpatriotic. If
>we are correct that our Chief Executive is jeopardizing human life
>for no good or just reason, then our dissent is very much a part of a
>long and proud American tradition, it is our moral and civic
>obligation, and it is more patriotic than remaining silent.