Vermont: Town Meeting Revolt Over Iraq War

[Michael Hoover <hooverm@xxxxxxxxxx>]

In Vermont, a Town-Meeting revolt over Iraq war

Mon Feb 28,10:05 AM ET

On Tuesday, one-fifth of Vermont towns will consider what role the
state's
National Guard should play in the war.

By Sara B. Miller, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

HUNTINGTON, VT. - This is a town with no diners, one church, two general
stores, and 1,800 people. When the kindergarten teacher's son returned
from
Iraq (news - web sites) after 10 months, the potluck church dinner in
his
honor was so packed no one had room to sit.

Only a handful of the more than 200,000 men and women who have been
deployed to Iraq come from this sleepy whistle-stop. But everyone seems
to
know someone who has served, even died, there: a friend's husband, a
neighbor, the son of the town clerk's best friend.

Here, at the foot of Camel's Hump peak, the war is palpable, not just
something piped in over the nightly news. National Guardsmen from 200 of
Vermont's 251 towns and cities have been shipped to Iraq, and recent
statistics have shown that Vermont active service members have died
there
at a per capita rate higher than in any other state.

The closeness of the war, coupled with the state's penchant for taking
on
social causes, helps explain why a group of activists has gotten enough
signatures here and in some 50 other Vermont communities to place
resolutions about Iraq on the agendas of their Town Meetings, a New
England
ritual as local as tapped maple trees and as old as the American
Revolution.

On Tuesday, one-fifth of Vermont towns will consider what role the
Vermont
National Guard should play in the war, and whether American troops
should
be withdrawn.

Foes call the resolution so much "poppycock," and complain activists
have
hijacked an annual event they say is better suited to debate on
snowplows
and school roof repairs. But to supporters, the war in Iraq is the
essence
of town business: It's about the men and women who live, work, and raise
families in the community.

Even as debate continues over whether the resolution is antiwar
propaganda
or a legitimate community concern, many say the state's Town Meeting
resolutions - the most widespread referendums about Iraq to date -
foreshadow grass-roots initiatives emerging around the country.

The Vermont model "brings into discussion the very people who should be
discussing the impact of this war: National Guard families, local
politicians, police departments, school officials," says Nancy Lessin,
co-founder of Military Families Speak Out, an antiwar organization. The
group is planning a state-based campaign that urges local officials to
study the effects that the war, especially the deployment of National
Guard
units, is having on communities from Oregon to Maine.

The Vermont resolutions grew out of a peace rally in late 2004. A few
activists now working as the Vermont Network on Iraq War Resolutions
decided Town Meeting Day was an ideal venue for debate, says Montpelier
attorney Ben Scotch. He crafted the resolution template, discarding 19
drafts before settling on the wording, though each town can modify its
own
resolution.

His proposal has three parts. It calls on the Vermont state legislature
to
establish a commission to examine how National Guard deployments are
affecting state readiness. It asks the state's congressional delegation
to
work to restore a proper federal and state balance over Guard units. And
it
implores both the president and Congress to take steps to withdraw
American
troops from Iraq.

Since the state does not control National Guard deployments, and because
the resolutions are legally nonbinding, they have no real teeth. But
they
have symbolic potential. Five percent of the voters in towns had to sign
a
petition to put it on the agenda.

To Mr. Scotch, who makes buttons reading "Only Resolution Can Stop War"
in
his dining room, it's the best approach available. To many others, it is
nothing short of antiwar propaganda. "If you call a meeting in Town
Square
to denounce [President] Bush, that is fine," says John McClaughry,
moderator of the Kirby Town Meeting since 1967. "But they are hijacking
Town Meeting ... to protest a completely different agenda."

Scotch has received e-mail calling him foxy, guileful, insidious, sly,
and
devious, among other things. But he maintains that the movement is not
easily defined along political lines.

The reaction of Lt. Veronica Saffo, a state National Guard spokeswoman,
seems to bear that out. She says that the views of Guard members run the
gamut, but there is no widespread distress about the resolutions.
"Vermont
is a small state. There are [guardsmen] coming from the flower shop,
it's
the mechanic, or someone's babysitter. It's not just a conflict, or
American international policy. It's Vermonters."

This is not the first time that a national issue has found itself on the
agenda. Town Meeting has fueled debate on the USA Patriot Act and the
nuclear weapons freeze movement of the 1980s.

"There's a legitimate debate that goes on about what is appropriate for
discussion at Town Meeting," says Deb Markowitz, Vermont's secretary of
state. "To the extent we get sidetracked with national and international
issues, we lose energy for doing the real work of Town Meeting. Yet
[such
issues] do affect our towns."

That debate is playing out in Huntington. Last week, in a vacant 19th
century church soon to house an expanded town library, Heidi Racht
mulled
over what she would say Tuesday.

Ms. Racht, who helped shepherd Huntington's petition, says she doesn't
want
to cause more hardship for families with loved ones in Iraq. "But I feel
we
have a state National Guard that's in Iraq and shouldn't be there.
People
who went into the Guard thought they would be doing things like floods.
They weren't expecting to go and be part of an army fighting a war."

Across the street at Beaudry's general store, where locals talk over
coffee
and still run up tabs, former selectman and grain salesman Grant Lewis
says
the debate neither belongs at Town Meeting nor anywhere else. "It isn't
going to do any good; you can't just stop something if you start
something," he says. "You've got to support [the war], because people
have
gotten killed."

Yet if their opinions are separated by the one main road in town, no one
expects views Tuesday to be as neatly divided. Becky Cozzens, who
teaches
kindergarten, says she's already changed her mind. Had Town Meeting Day
been three months ago, when her son, Josh, was still in Iraq, when she
and
her husband refused to turn on their television set, she'd have voted
for
anything that might get him home sooner.

But at the meeting Tuesday, she will vote "no." "I'm unsure about the
way
it started," she says of the war. But Josh has convinced her that a no
vote
is the right thing to do. "A year ago," she says, "it would have been
different."

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