Cherishing Town Meeting
Excerpts from the book 'All Those in Favor' by Frank Bryan and Susan Clark
|
|
A view of the Plainfield Town Meeting. File photo by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur |
Toolbox
Published: February 27, 2005
Note to the reader:
In a book published just in time for Town Meeting Day, the first Tuesday in March, central Vermont educator Susan Clark and University of Vermont political science professor Frank Bryan take a new look at Vermont's most venerable political tradition. Within the context of today's political realities, the authors examine the strengths, vulnerabilities and prospects of the Town Meeting institution, and then offer tips for strengthening it. The following is excerpted from their book, "All Those In Favor: Rediscovering the Secrets of Town Meeting and Community"(RavenMark, 2005).
In many ways these are hopeful times for Vermont.
In many ways they are troubled times.
The same can be said for America and the world.
In our hearts, hope prevails. But hope without action withers into paralysis and (worse) resignation.
This book, therefore, is a call to action.
Hope and action are rooted in connections: connections in space and time. From Bennington, Brighton, Burlington and Brattleboro to Baghdad - the four corners of Vermont to the four corners of the world - from Athens, Greece in the year 500 BC to Athens, Vermont in the year 2005 AD - the beginning of recorded time to our own time - a question has haunted the human race.
How can we live in peace?
In our beloved Vermont at the dawn of the post-modern era, we can help answer this question. And (like it or not) we shall help answer it, either by our action or by our inaction. Indeed, we are called upon to answer, for we are uniquely positioned to do so. Vermonters still practice (and practice most thoroughly) the planet's single best example of the single best way to live in peace. For us this way of resolving human problems humanely, this way of combining our natural and inescapable longings for both liberty and community, this way of common enterprise - this way of peace - is a way of life.
The world calls it democracy.
We call it town meeting.
In the spring of 2004 as this book was taking shape we were contacted by a woman responsible for working out democratic ways of governance in the mountains of Afghanistan. Could we help her arrange a visit to Vermont by a group of Afghan tribal leaders to watch how town meetings work?
"Of course," we said, but cautioned: "As you know, the conditions here are profoundly different, perhaps unimaginably different than in Afghanistan. We are very lucky in Vermont. No one threatens us. No foreign invaders have occupied us for over 200 years. We are remarkably affluent, in fact indescribably affluent in the eyes of most of the world's population. Our ancestors gave us democracy intact, bequeathed to us a full-blown operation, up and running. We have every advantage to understand and practice democracy here: education, spare time, and most of all, a society that teaches us democracy from our earliest recollections."
"Yes," she said. "But the fundamentals are the same. Afghans are people too! And the point is to give them a glimpse of how it could be. The point is to show them a living example of a real democracy. The point is to provide them not a ready-made democracy, but a sense of democratic hope. Proof that somewhere in the world local people come together and debate local matters, speak openly about them and then resolve the issue with a vote."
"On the other hand," we warned, "serious conflict often breaks out at town meetings. People get angry. Feelings are hurt. Besides, it takes a certain amount of preparation to understand how direct democracy works."
The woman in Afghanistan chuckled. "Feelings are hurt? Well, at least no one is carrying an Ak-47! Americans are so spoiled!" (She might have said "And so smugly elitist.") "All we want is proof democracy exists somewhere. You must understand what it would mean for an Afghan woman to see another woman stand openly in public and engage in a political debate with a man or another woman over some matter important to her community. It's hope we are after here. And there is no better place to look for democratic hope than in your state."
The truth of her words may be difficult for us to accept. For we have long taken our opportunity to practice democracy for granted. And they remind us that all too often the most beautiful and important things in our lives are the most ignored. Her words also impart responsibility, and responsibility imparts burdens. Anticipation of these burdens may trigger a natural tendency to skepticism. "Why should we believe that Vermont leads the world in democracy? Maple syrup? Sure. Liberal politicians? Maybe. But democracy?
Yes, democracy.
- - -
All Eyes on Vermont
In 1982, over 150 Vermont town meetings had passed resolutions calling for a freeze on the development of nuclear bombs by the United States and the Soviet Union. This act caught the attention of the world. Preceding an address to the nation on the issue by President Ronald Reagan, PBS's Jim Lehrer interviewed then-U.S. Senator Dan Quayle (later to become Vice President to George H.W. Bush). Lehrer asked Quayle: "You said it's not going to be the folks at town meeting who are going to resolve this thing, but isn't that what has happened? Isn't that the reason we're here tonight? Isn't that the reason the President's speaking on it tonight because the people at town meetings raised the issue?" Quayle did not deny it, saying only that military experts would not pay attention to "some grassroots caucus taking place in Vermont."
Why did the world pay attention to Vermont in 1982? It was clearly not because our citizens in their town meetings were experts on foreign affairs or nuclear weapons. It was because the world knows that town meetings are authentic, democratic governments and Vermont has the healthiest system of this kind of government anywhere. It was because in town meeting governments, no elected representatives intervene between the citizen and what the government says or how it acts.
In a Vermont town every citizen is a legislator. In a Vermont town the government truly is by and of the people. Town meetings are not public hearings, opinion polls or what Quayle derisively called "grass-roots caucuses." They are legislatures operated by ordinary citizens that don't leave their lawmaking to someone else.
The world listened to us because of the historic reservoir of respect and admiration it has for the way we govern ourselves. It listened to us because for generations we had routinely come together to buy ourselves trucks to fix our roads, decide whether to build a local library, set the salaries of local officials, vote face to face on kindergartens for our kids, leash laws for our pets, speed limits on our roads and street lights for our villages. It is because we do these things democratically all of the time that the world listens to us when we give it a bit of down-home advice on matters of global import.
The world trusts us because we trust ourselves.
As Henry David Thoreau said, town meetings truly are a "people's congress."
If this is so, why don't we cherish them more?
- - -
A foundation for civil society
Trusting our neighbors, lending a hand in community groups, believing in equality and showing tolerance for differences - these are the things political scientists examine when they measure "civil" society. More importantly, they are what we all hope for the communities in which our children grow up. A number of studies allow Vermonters to make the remarkable claim that Vermont is among the most "civil" states in America. Evidence strongly indicates a link between how "civil" we are, and how we govern ourselves. Five of the six New England states - the only places in America where town meeting is fully practiced - rank in the top 10 states for civil society.
From the framing of Vermont's Constitution (the world's first to outlaw slavery and provide for full manhood suffrage) to our ferocious and sustained hostility to slavery in the American South, from our leading role in the defeat of McCarthyism in the mid 20th century to our ground-breaking public debates on civil unions in the 1990s, from providing the world with its first ecologist in George Perkins Marsh to our national leadership in the modern environmental revolution with Act 250 - and the list could go on in so many areas of human achievement and enterprise - it is hard to name, pound-for-pound, a state that has given more richly debated, thoughtful social innovation to America than Vermont.
Indeed, at the turn of the 21st century, no state in America more consistently places better on indices of achievement in the areas of good government, civil society, social capital, collective generosity and political tolerance than our own state of Vermont.
It is important that every Vermonter know this.
It is also important for every Vermonter to understand that these remarkable contributions and rankings flow from our most crowning achievement, our town meeting democracy. It is no accident that the one historical constant and commonality in this homeland of ours is town meeting. It is no accident that the state that leads America in these measures of good government also leads America in the percentage of its citizens that practice face-to-face democracy as citizen legislators at town meeting.
We have demonstrated to the world that ordinary people can govern themselves. We have kept our town meetings. Surely it is this practice and this faith that have created and nourished the unique people we are, and the people we hope to continue to be.
- - -
Thinking about change
When we think about the history of Vermont from our rock-ribbed landscape to the kinds of people who have lived here, it is difficult to name anything more resilient than our democratic instinct to practice real democracy - that is, face-to-face community decision making in the style of the Greeks of ancient Athens where the word "democracy" originated.
It took more than 100 centuries for nature to produce the land of primeval forests - populated for many generations by the first native Vermonters and then developed by Europeans beginning in about 1763.
It took but one century (1770-1870) for us to strip most of it clean. It took but one more (1870-1970) for us to abandon most of the land we had worked so hard to manicure into a remarkable maze of stone-walled homesteads and clustered villages. Our hillsides, first burned down for potash and cut down for lumber, then covered with sheep, then covered with cows, are becoming covered again - now with man-made "generations" of small trees and brush. In short, Vermont's landscape has been in dramatic and constant flux over the nearly two and a half centuries Europeans have been here.
Through all this, town meeting has remained a constant.
In the beginning, the newcomers were mostly English and mostly Protestants. Yet soon, Vermont had drawn an amazing array of religious sects and other groups practicing alternative lifestyles often shunned by other states. It began with Ethan Allen with his anti-Christian beliefs that horrified established New England Protestantism. But that was only the beginning. To Guilford came the Dorrilites. In Sharon, Joseph Smith was born and from him came the Mormons. In Woodstock, the "Pilgrims" held their property in common and adopted biblical lifestyles. In Hardwick were formed the "New Lights"; then came the Millerites, who later created the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Ferrisburg was home to Quakers, Putney to the infamous Perfectionists.
Throughout all this social ferment, town meeting remained a constant.
Moreover, Vermont has always had more ethnic diversity than most imagine. To the northern counties came the French Canadians, almost always representing from 10 to 20 percent of the state's population. To Barre came the Italians to quarry granite. To Fair Haven came the Welsh to work the slate mines. Towns in southwestern Vermont saw considerable Dutch settlement. In Ryegate and Craftsbury and the surrounding towns of Caledonia and Orleans counties there is an enduring and self-conscious Scot settlement. Poles came to Bellows Falls, Swedes to Proctor, Russians to Springfield, Lithuanians to Arlington and Irish to Fairfield. A community of Rusyn-Carpathians arrived in Proctor to quarry marble, and in Brattleboro a Russian Orthodox Church had to be built to serve the arrivals from Minsk. Small in absolute terms but much larger in relative terms, these groups make clear that the assimilation of peoples of different tongues and ethnic backgrounds into Vermont society has always been a recurring process.
Throughout all this change, town meeting stood firm.
When first we came to Vermont, we came on foot. Pushing wheelbarrows. Leading milk cows. But within two generations, we had fashioned a complex pattern of roads over most of Vermont and we traveled by horse and wagon. Then came the railroads. They pushed into and through Vermont with amazing rapidity, changing where we lived, how we farmed, whom we loved. After them the automobile did the same, and now 64 percent of all Vermonters live in or adjacent to a town or city through which an interstate highway passes.
But town meeting held fast.
The first citizens of the new state of Vermont lived in log cabins, subsisted on food that changed only with the season, suffered through headaches and toothaches and died at an early age. They had callused hands - all of them, men, women and children. A light in the house after dark was a luxury. Today we live in a world and share a lifestyle that would be unimaginable to ordinary citizens attending their town meetings before the Civil War and even those attending their town meetings in the early part of the 20th century. Everything has changed so much.
Except for town meeting.
Vermonters of 1830 would be astonished traveling through today's Vermont to attend a town meeting. (Driving, for instance, in a heated car going 40 miles an hour over paved roads and listening to a radio - a radio! - while sipping hot coffee and eating a sticky bun.) But once inside the local school gym or town hall or fire station where the town meeting was held, once the moderator had called the meeting to order, once she had read the words: "The people of Craftsbury are warned to be at the Craftsbury Common School on Tuesday, the 4th of March 2004, at 9 in the forenoon to act on the following articles" these Vermonters of long ago would know precisely what to do. Town meeting would be perfectly familiar to them.
They would be home again.
Practicing real democracy.
Should we not shudder at the possibility that it might be our generation that let it slip away?
- - -
FIVE THINGS YOU CAN DO NOW TO IMPROVE YOUR TOWN MEETING
You can take action in your town today to make your town meeting better attended and town meeting discussion even more vibrant.
1. Highlight the issues.
Hot issues are one of the most important factors in determining whether people come to town meeting. You knew this already: Vermonters turn out when they know something interesting and important is going to happen.
In the interest of democracy, we're tempted to suggest that every town invent a provocative warning item (Ban alcohol within town limits? Choose your explosive issue!) just to get folks off their couches. But you don't need to be this devious. Almost every town meeting has something interesting happening. Selectboard members can choose key budget items and make them separate articles, to make sure every citizen knows they are on the warning. And if selectboard members are unwilling to attract attention to pet items, citizens need to make this request loud and clear.
2. Arrange for child care during town meeting.
Happily, one of the most important methods proven to increase town meeting attendance is also relatively simple: Provide child care during the meeting. Statistics show that this can improve attendance measurably, especially among women. While children's attendance at town meeting should be encouraged, most small children won't have the patience for the full meeting, and offering child care will help parents participate more fully.
3. Enjoy food together.
The best-attended town meetings include food. And small wonder. Breaking bread together has a long history of bringing people closer. A town clerk of one high-attendance town recalled, "The secret is refreshments. Either the Grange or the school puts on a lunch. There are always doughnuts around the edges - I think that's the preschool. The Girl Scouts deliver the cookies that have been ordered." Recalled another clerk, "One year we didn't have food, and it was terrible! That was the only year I can say our attendance dropped off some."
Don't be discouraged by the lack of facilities to serve a meal. In Strafford, a delicious potluck lunch is served despite the fact that their hall has no running water, no kitchen, and the only heat source is the woodstoves!
4. Say "thank you."
Appreciation is one of the most valuable incentives on Earth, and it doesn't have to cost a penny. Towns wanting to increase participation can start by publicly acknowledging those who participate now.
In many towns, the town report is dedicated to a special person or group as a show of gratitude. In Greensboro, the much-anticipated Greensboro Award goes to an honored citizen annually. In Stowe, the Conservation Commission uses town meeting as its opportunity to make an annual Conservation Award. And in Hyde Park, the moderator makes a point of saying a simple thank you to the businesses that allow their employees to take time off to attend town meeting.
5. Remember that it takes a team to make a great town meeting.
A successful town meeting is never just one person's creation. Leaders and citizens must share responsibility in order to have shared success.
Town officers should actively seek out community volunteers. Citizens can assist with everything from helping to shape the content of the meeting and contributing to the town report to coordinating food and child care. In many towns, community groups have taken on such tasks completely over the years, freeing up officials for other duties.
- - -
FIVE THINGS YOU CAN DO OVER TIME TO IMPROVE YOUR TOWN MEETING
Big changes take time. But we can start now to improve our local democracy for years to come.
1. Use the Australian ballot as little as possible.
In a well-intentioned effort to include more people in decision-making, an increasing number of Vermont towns are destroying their town meeting in the process.
The "Australian" ballot allows citizens to avoid town meeting altogether and vote on warned items on a simple "yes-no" basis: Voters go to the polls, are checked off and use a pre-printed ballot to vote in a booth just as they do when they vote for the president of the United States.
The Australian ballot is quick, easy, private, unaccountable and, most important, simple. It is also deadly. In a way, the Australian ballot is worse than deadly, because it doesn't kill town meeting quickly. And the execution is dishonest. We are told it will save town meeting, while the reality is that it poisons it and lets it die slowly, sparing the executioner the moment of death and the acceptance of responsibility.
The Australian ballot takes away your right to legislate-to be part of the lawmaking process-and it doesn't even replace it with a deliberative body that represents you. It simply allows you to vote up or down, yes or no, on an issue prepared by the selectboard or in many cases by a small group of private citizens with a special interest. In short, it leaves the town with neither a legislature nor a town meeting.
Studies make clear that traditional town meeting does not deny participation to large numbers of people who would otherwise participate. As long as there is no important systematic bias against certain groups of people, a small deficit in the quantity of participation should not be used as a reason to destroy the magnificent surplus in the quality of participation town meeting offers:
2. Help make Town Meeting Day a real democracy holiday.
Many people are required to lose a day's pay to attend town meeting, yet they attend anyway - an impressive sign of people's interest in local democracy. But it's not fair, and it has to change. We should: celebrate Town Meeting Day; publicly recognize those businesses that encourage employees to participate in local democracy; and encourage lawmakers to ensure that all Vermonters who want to can receive time off from work to attend town meeting.
3. Combine school and town meetings.
The best-attended town meetings are those that combine school and town meetings on the same day. Some towns are choosing to switch their school meeting to a separate day and/or to Australian ballot. When they do, it not only cuts into the quality of the school meeting; in addition, studies show clearly that it will reduce attendance at the town meeting.
4. Be an advocate for creative localism.
Town meeting attendance is highest, and democracy works best, when important issues are at stake. In recent decades, however, towns have lost much decision-making power to the state and federal governments. Much can be done to take advantage of and increase the power accorded to Vermont's local citizens. We should encourage state leaders to re-entrust our localities with expanded decision-making power.
5. Create a "Democracy Matters" committee in your town.
We have societies to preserve our local history, commissions for conservation, bureaus for better business. Why not a committee to safeguard local democracy? These volunteer committees would keep an eye on town meeting attendance and participation, and work to improve both. While they could not be entirely responsible for protecting democracy - that's everyone's job - they could sound the alarm when it is in decline and take local action. The committee could provide child care at town meeting, foster cross-community communication, encourage young voters to participate, and take on other endeavors.
22