[Peace-discuss] VT anti-war vote

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Clout and clarity: Vermonters debate the war
	By Kathryn Casa | Vermont Guardian

For a moment on Town Meeting Day, the world's attention shifted, at least
in part, from the roiling streets of Baghdad and Mosul to town halls in
Weathersfield and Randolph, where Vermonters, noted for leading the
discourse on controversial issues, again let their voices be heard.

The state that leads the nation with the highest per capita death rate in
Iraq was also the first to hold a popular referendum on the war when 46 of
53 towns this week passed intensely personal resolutions on the deployment
of National Guard troops in Iraq.

"My partner is in Mississippi right now for training and then on the way
to Iraq," said Robyn Jenks at her Putney town meeting. With a national
proposal to extend the length of National Guard deployment, she said,
Putney's resolution, which passed unanimously by voice vote, was "a place
to start."

Although the measures varied from town to town, most called on Vermont's
congressional delegation to urge Congress to limit federal control over
state National Guard units; they asked the Legislature to investigate the
deployment of Vermont troops, and to examine the impact of their
deployment on the ability of the Guard to safeguard Vermont.

Brattleboro organizer Ellen Kaye said the results are a mandate for the
state's leaders. "Fifty-three towns is great but it's not the whole state.
We want to hear from the whole state what the effect of these deployments
are."

State Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, said the referendum was "largely
symbolic, because once the Guard is called up they're under the
jurisdiction of the local government." Still, she said of the voting, the
Legislature must "pay attention to it, and appoint a committee to study
it."

Rep. Steve Darrow, D-Putney, cites Vermont's Constitution, which exhorts:
"As standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought
not to be kept up, and the military should be kept under strict
subordination to and governed by the civil power."

"This resolution is more about the federal government pre-empting our
constitution," Darrow said. Referring to efforts on the national level to
prolong the length of National Guard deployment -- a move opposed by
Vermont Adjutant Gen. Martha Rainville and Vermont's Republican
administration -- Darrow said, "Gov. Douglas says extending the terms of
the National Guard alters the mission of the Guard. I say sending the
Guard overseas alters the mission of the Guard."

Responding to the town meeting votes, Sen. James Jeffords, I-VT, said he
has been examining federal statutes that govern activation of the National
Guard. "I believe this issue warrants careful investigation," he said.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT, also chimed in on the vote.

"As National Guard Caucus co-chair in the Senate I am going to continue to
fight for the men and women of the National Guard to keep them from being
overextended and mistreated," Leahy said. "That also means working against
unsound policies that lead to extended call-ups and ensuring that Guard
members and their families have such critical benefits as health
insurance."

Meanwhile, Kaye said activists in other states are using the Vermont
resolutions as a template. Two weeks ago, 400 members of a coalition of
peace activists meeting in St. Louis unanimously endorsed a proposal to
spread the campaign nationwide.

Dialogue seen as key

Some Town Meeting Day discussions were brief. Others went on for nearly an
hour. Some towns endorsed their resolution unanimously. Others turned
thumbs down. But organizers said more than the end result, it was the
means -- the discussion -- that counts.

"It's a level that we haven't gotten to in a way that matters," said Kaye.
"That absolutely has to happen when a nation commits war in everybody's
name."

And from Tokyo to Milan to New York, the world tuned in.

Reporters from major media in Israel, Italy, and Japan covered the story.
So did The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, The
Christian Science Monitor, and other major U.S. papers. MSNBC had Kaye on
tap for a primetime Town Meeting Day live feed until the story was
pre-empted by the Supreme Court's death-penalty ruling, and Fox News had
her lined up for a March 2 interview.

"I would say there is a growing concern about the way this war is going
on," said Shingo Egi, a New York-based correspondent for the Japanese
daily Asahi Shimbun, as he leaned against a Formica table in Dummerston's
school cafeteria, waiting for residents to wrap up discussion on where the
town should buy sand and salt next year.

"In Japan, there is no such system," he said, nodding at the small sea of
fleece and Sorels before him.

Meanwhile, a New York Times photographer worked the crowd, moving in tight
for a shot of a knitter and rocking back on his haunches for a
ground-level view of an older man with a graying ponytail who rose to
speak.

It was vintage town meeting.

Vermont's world view

Vermonters are accustomed to shifting with equal zeal between school
budgets and civil liberties at town meeting. Two years ago, residents in
more than a dozen towns rebuffed the USA PATRIOT Act. And two decades
before that, activists found grassroots support in 161 of 185 towns for a
U.S.-Soviet freeze on nuclear weapons -- discussions that some say helped
move more than a quarter-million protesters into the streets in a march on
UN headquarters three months later.

"I don't think it's the quaintness of Vermont, I think that's been done,"
organizer Ben Scotch, a former director of the Vermont chapter of the
American Civil Liberties Union, said of this year's media attention.

"Despite all of the recent propaganda -- columnists like [The New York
Times' Thomas] Friedman saying the whole Middle East is looking at Iraq
and becoming democratic -- I'd be really careful about looking at the
credits of a war that should not have been," said Scotch. "I would urge
people to let the world take a spin or two before drawing any conclusions.
I certainly hope there is stability in Iraq, but whether democracy should
take place at the end of a barrel is a very different conversation. Part
of that conversation took place in Vermont today."

Although the resolutions were different in each town, many called on the
president and Congress to "take steps to withdraw American troops from
Iraq, consistently with the mandate of international humanitarian law."

In Dummerston, Victor Burdo backed an amendment, which ultimately failed,
to delete that clause. "Our administration right now is probably racking
its brains trying to figure out how to get out of Iraq," he said.

Ed Anthes supported a specific reference to the withdrawal of Vermont's
troops. "The essence of our concern is that people from Vermont have been
sent to Iraq and are being called upon to do things they would not chose
to do, things we would not have them do in our name. And when they come
home, we're the ones who are going to care for them," Anthes said. But
that amendment, too, did not survive.

Charles Ranney was one of only a handful of "nays" when the Dummerston
crowd voted overwhelmingly in favor of the original measure. His
opposition was dignified and dispassionate. Afterward, he said he
disagreed with the troop withdrawal clause because "things have already
happened and we can't get out of it. The administration is trying, but
we've been refused by our allies and we're left to it."

Ranney also foresaw a slippery slope. If Vermont successfully challenged
federal control of the National Guard, he predicted, "the military
establishment will recognize that they can't use the Guard, so they will
beef up the Army reserves, which they have full control of."

Without the National Guard's heft, which constitutes some 40 percent of
the U.S. force in Iraq, Ranney worried Washington could revert to a draft.

That's exactly the kind of thinking organizers said they hoped the
resolutions would spark.

"People talk to each other over dinner tables, in the street -- but this
required a deeper level of discussion and thinking," Kaye said.

In Underhill, in Chittenden County, one of six towns that defeated the
resolution, organizer Nat Michael said the discussion was "lively, and
that was the goal."

Opposition was galvanized, Michael said, by comments from an Afghan war
veteran who saw the resolution as "a kick in the pants to anybody that was
serving in Iraq, which is exactly the opposite of the goal of the
resolution."

"We're American citizens," Michael said later. "This is being done in our
name; this is our families, our money. Just to have that on the floor is a
wonderful thing -- whichever way it goes -- just to be able to discuss
it."

Scotch said the conversations proved to people that they could air closely
guarded feelings about the war on either side of the issue -- "that there
could be an important civil conversation and the community is not
destroyed. I sensed big sighs of relief that we can talk about this."

The conversation began with the National Guard, he said, "because the
Guard is close. It's local. The conversations went to how we could protect
the Guard, and then they went to this larger point about the war."

The following Vermont towns voted to support Iraq war resolutions:

Bethel, Brattleboro, Burlington, Cabot, Calais, Cavendish, Dummerston,
East Montpelier, Fayston, Greensboro, Guilford, Hinesburg, Huntington,
Jamaica, Jericho, Johnson, Marlboro, Marshfield, Middlebury, Middletown
Springs, Monkton, Montgomery, Montpelier, Moretown, Newfane, New Haven,
Norwich, Plainfield, Putney, Randolph, Rochester, Rockingham, Roxbury,
Salisbury, Sharon, Strafford, Thetford, Tinmouth, Waitsfield, Warren,
Weathersfield, Westford, Westminster, Weybridge, Wheelock, Windham,
Worcester, Woodbury

The resolution was defeated in the following towns:

Athens, Craftsbury (tie vote resulted in defeat), Lincoln (passed over),
Starksboro (passed over), Underhill (voted no), Wardsboro (passed over),
Waterville (voted no)

Posted March 2, 2005
 
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