[Peace-discuss] DI editorial board votes against democracy

[Robert Naiman]

This is incredible, even by recent DI standards. "Out of our jurisdiction."?

We should demand right-of-response in the form of an opinion piece. Time is
short: just a few weeks left in the semester...


On 4/18/06, David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Editorial: UC attempt to end war fails
> Township meeting neglects problems of the city in
> favor of worthless referenda
>
> Posted: 4/18/06
>
> On April 11 at the annual Champaign Township meeting,
> citizens got together to discuss items slightly out of
> their jurisdiction - the war in Iraq and the
> impeachment of President George W. Bush.
>
> The Township voted to place two referenda on the
> November ballot. One will ask the voters whether they
> want to withdraw the troops from Iraq, and the other
> will ask them if they want to tell Rep. Tim Johnson
> (R-15) to support the impeachment of President Bush.
>
> Ignoring first the question of how a handful of
> citizens in central Illinois know enough to declare
> the need to pull out troops from Iraq, or to say that
> the president has committed a crime that requires an
> impeachment proceeding, the Champaign Township just
> wasted a whole lot of time. No one outside central
> Illinois cares at all what the Champaign township
> government has to say about the war in Iraq. And
> wasting a once-a-year meeting to discuss it is
> ludicrous.
>
> Whether or not you agree with the war or the job the
> president is doing, the Champaign Township meeting and
> the Urbana City Council are not the right forums.
>
> Every community has a representative in the House for
> a reason. Johnson is Champaign-Urbana's conduit to the
> federal government. He exists to take the community's
> concerns to the national level. If a citizen had a
> problem with his or her neighbor's fence, they would
> not call Johnson, because it is entirely
> counter-intuitive. Instead they would bring it up at
> the next zoning board meeting or city council session.
>
>
> In the same way, the citizens of Champaign, who
> determine the agendas of the township meetings, have
> lost their focus. Instead of concentrating on the
> considerable problems facing the city and the
> community, they have instead chosen to waste a meeting
> on something that has no place in city politics. This
> is reminiscent of the Illinois Student Government's
> referendum denouncing the war. The ISG, the
> predecessor to the Illinois Student Senate, spent one
> of their last meetings in a fiery debate on the
> referendum, which, as we all know, stopped the U.S.
> from invading Iraq.
>
> If the citizens of Champaign had the right idea, they
> would demand a town hall meeting with Johnson to
> discuss Iraq and Bush, but instead they waste city
> time that could be used to address problems in the
> Champaign schools, the streets that invariably flood
> every time there is hard rain, or a number of other
> issues that would affect the citizens of the city
> daily. If the citizens want to have direct contact
> with Johnson, they could call either of his offices,
> locally at 217-403-4690 or in Washington at
> 202-225-2371.
>
> What makes this worse is that Urbana decided on a
> similar resolution in March at a city council meeting,
> where the agendas are not directly decided by the
> citizens, they go through a number of screenings
> before they get to be heard before the council. At
> that meeting, one of the members of the council, who
> was unfortunately in the minority, Lynne Barnes (Ward
> 4) said, "I feel it's advisable not to discuss these
> issues. My job description is to drive and direct
> matters in this town."
>
> It is too bad the rest of the community did not feel
> the same way.
>
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>
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--
RN
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