Town Meeting Day
Last Tuesday was Town Meeting Day here in Vermont – a State holiday that allows voters in small and mid-sized towns to get together and debate the coming year. In my rural town, more than half of our 903 residents turned out to discuss the annual school budget, the purchase of a new fire truck, and how much support we should offer to a library in a neighboring town. Children colored and played in a near-by schoolroom, and in the middle of the meeting the town recessed to share a lunch of shepherd’s pie and jello salad.
The discussion was civil and orderly, governed by Robert’s ubiquitous Rules of Order. Everyone who wanted to have a say on a given issue, for or against, was given the chance to speak and make their case. The whole affair was eerily reminiscent of the Norman Rockwell painting Freedom of Speech, in which a weatherbeaten rural citizen — with more than a slight resemblance to Abraham Lincoln — rises to speak his mind at a public meeting, the rest of the crowd leaning in the better to hear him.
The proverbial “town meeting” might strike more jaded Americans as a throwback to an idyllic past, but in fact it’s the cornerstone of our civic culture. The idea that citizens should decide personally and collectively how to spend public resources, with transparent debate and each allowed to have his or her say, is the principle on which this country was founded. At the risk of sounding sentimental, attending our local town meeting is always a stirring affair – seeing citizens assert their rights inspires feelings of pride and fellowship. The fact that those rights are explicitly guaranteed, perhaps even taken for granted, also inspires appreciation and respect.
Citizens in a lot of other places do not enjoy these rights, these traditions, and the result is often communities with little or no sense of civic responsibility, no opportunity to come together and express opinions or identify common goals. I find that it’s the absence of this very sense of ownership – this feeling of pride and appreciation for the role I and my peers have for shaping our common future – that prevents communities abroad from addressing their challenges effectively or achieving forward progress. Because when citizens are empowered to change their circumstances – to fix a problem, start a business, effect a change of leadership, reform public policy – it results not just in tangible benefits such as a new road, more steady income, or increased opportunity, but also in intangible benefits: the sense that they can make a difference, that they have the power to create their own future, that the community is theirs to manage and theirs to mold as they see fit.
This is why ISC was founded back in 1991. To export Vermont’s, and America’s, tradition of grassroots organizing and advocacy to communities in their democratic infancy – those in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, for example – with no tradition, mechanisms, or concept of what it means for individuals to have the right, privilege, and responsibility to advocate for what they think is right. There are many facets to establishing such a tradition, and to instituting sustainable mechanisms that allow that tradition to take root. We’ll be exploring these in future posts, but today, in the wake of Town Meeting Day, and with pride in my little town of 903, I just wanted to say again: it’s an endeavor well worth undertaking.
Tags: advocacy, community, isc, town meeting, vermont