|
CROSSING
BORDERS BY CHANGING TABLES
Bldg Blog - Baarle-Hertog
borders the Netherlands - but, because of its unique history
of political division, the town is sort of marbled with competing
national loyalties. In other words, pockets of the town are Dutch;
most of the town is Belgian. You can thus wander from country
to country on an afternoon stroll. . .
Wikipedia Apart from the
main piece (called Zondereigen) located north of the Belgian
town of Merksplas, there are twenty Belgian exclaves in the Netherlands
and three other pieces on the Dutch-Belgian border. There are
also seven Dutch exclaves within the Belgian exclaves.
The border is so complicated
that there are some houses that are divided between the two countries.
There was a time when according to Dutch laws restaurants had
to close earlier. For some restaurants on the border it meant
that the clients simply had to change their tables to the Belgian
side.
Sarah Laitner, at the
Financial Times, adds that "women are able to choose the
nationality of their child depending on the location of the room
in which they give birth." Another website, apparently drawing
from the Michelin Guide to the Netherlands, explains the origins
of Baarle-Hertog's bizarre geography: it can all be traced back
to the 12th century, it seems, when the town was first divided.
The northern half of the town became part of the Barony of Breda
(later home to the Nassau family), and the southern half went
to the Duke of Brabant (Hertog means Duke in Dutch). But that
same website also mentions this:
"The municipality
limits are very complicated. Nowadays, each municipality has
its city hall, church, police, school and post office. The houses
of the two nationalities are totally mixed. They are identified
by the shield bearing their number: the national flag is included
on it.". . .
While we're on the subject
of micro-sovereignties, though, be sure to check out Neutral
Moresnet, a tiny, politically independent non-state formed around
a zinc mining operation in eastern Belgium. There's also Cospaia,
"a small former republic in Italy" which "unexpectedly
gained independence in 1440" after Pope Eugene IV sold the
land it stood on. "By error," we read, "a small
strip of land went unmentioned in the sale treaty, and its inhabitants
promptly declared themselves independent." The Free State
Bottleneck, Åland Islands, and the Sovereign Military Order
of Malta are all also worth checking out.
STATES WITH FOREIGN POLICIES
MARK K. MATTHEWS, STATELINE, APRIL
26 - Maine may not have a seat at
the United Nations, but its state lawmakers are dealing with
Caracas, Havana and Khartoum as if those foreign capitals were
nearby Boston. In the past few months, Maine Gov. John Baldacci
(D) has engineered a controversial oil deal with Venezuela, met
with maligned Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and supported an effort
to divest state funds from Sudan to protest human rights violations
there. . . The diplomacy isn't limited to Maine. States increasingly
are becoming more assertive on the international stage.
More than 30 states now
export goods to Cuba despite tight U.S. trade restrictions. Organizations
in eight states brokered deals to import heating oil for the
poor this winter from Venezuela, despite strained relations between
the White House and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Three states
-- Illinois, New Jersey and Oregon -- passed laws to divest state
funds from companies with interests in war-scarred Sudan. In
the Southwest, states are engaging in bilateral talks with Mexico
to stop crime along the border.
COMMISSION RECOMMENDS GOVERNORS
HAVE CONTROL OF ALL MILITARY IN STATE DURING DISASTERS
|
POCKET PARADIGM
What works so well in the manufacture
of a Ford Taurus -- efficiency of scale and mass production --
fails to work in social policy because, unlike a Taurus, humans
think, cry, love, get distracted, criticize, worry or don't give
a shit. Yet we keep acting as though such traits don't exist
or don't matter. We have come to accept the notion that the enormous
institutions of government, media, industry and academia are
natural to the human condition and then wonder why they don't
work better than they do. In fact, as ecological planner Ernest
Callenbach pointed out, "we are medium-sized animals who
naturally live in small groups -- perhaps 20 or so -- as opposed
to bees or antelopes who live in very large groups. When managers
or generals or architects force us into large groups, we speedily
try to break them down into sub-units of comfortable size."
- Sam Smith |
COMMUNITY LAND TRUSTS
SCHUMACHER SOCIETY - A Community Land Trust
is a form of common land ownership with a charter based on the
principles of sustainable and ecologically-sound stewardship
and use. The land in a CLT is held in trust by a democratically-governed
non-profit corporation. Through an inheritable and renewable
long-term lease, the trust removes land from the speculative
market and [encourages] multiple uses such as affordable housing,
village improvement, commercial space, agriculture, recreation,
and open space preservation. Individual leaseholders own the
buildings and other improvements on the land created by their
labor and investment, but do not own the land itself. Resale
agreements on the buildings ensure that the land value of a site
is not included in future sales, but rather held in perpetuity
on behalf of the regional community.
The first community land trust was formed
in 1967 in Albany, Georgia by Robert Swann and Slater King, seeking
a way to achieve secure access to land for African American farmers.
The movement has grown to include over 200 community land trusts
throughout the US and is widely understood as the best model
for developing permamently affordable homeownership opportunities
in regions of escalating land prices.
http://www.schumachersociety.org/clts.html
SWITZERLAND
DIETRICH FISCHER, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 1991:
[A] conflict developed in the 1950s in the canton Bern in Switzerland,
where a French speaking Catholic minority in the Jura region
felt constantly overruled by the German speaking Protestant majority.
The cantonal government in Bern sought to persuade the French
speaking minority that it was in their own best interest to remain
with the canton, since they received economic subsidies.
But only the people of the Jura themselves
could decide what they valued more, economic subsidies or self-government.
As the process dragged on, demonstrations became more frequent,
and some cases of politically motivated arson occurred. No one
was killed, but there is little doubt that if the conflict had
remained unsolved, it could ultimately have developed into a
civil war like that in Northern Ireland.
After a long delay, the Bernese government
finally agreed to hold a referendum to let the people in the
Jura decide whether they preferred to form their own canton or
to remain within the canton Bern. The first vote was about evenly
split. So a second vote was held separately in each of six districts.
Three districts, bordering on the German speaking part of the
canton, had majorities preferring the old arrangement, while
the three districts that were farther removed from the center
preferred separation.
After that vote, each community along the
borderline was allowed to choose whether it preferred to stay
where it was or switch sides. Some switched. In 1978 the new
canton Jura was founded and welcomed by the voters of Switzerland
as a member of the confederation. Since then, the violence has
subsided, since most people got what they wanted, or respected
the verdict of the voters.
Self-determination is an effective means
of conflict resolution. It does not guarantee that the optimal
decision will be taken in all cases. But if people make a mistake
and suffer the consequences, they have nobody but themselves
to blame, and they simply have to try to do better at the next
opportunity. If, however, some far removed central government
makes a decision for the people and they suffer, they have good
reason to project their anger at those responsible. . .
The secret of Switzerland's long-lasting
unity and stability may lie in its diversity. It does not impose
uniformity from a center, but allows a great deal of local self-determination.
Cooperation is the result of negotiations between all of the
parties involved and is entirely voluntary, not forced upon them.
SWITZERLAND VS. THE MIDDLE EAST
DIETRICH FISCHER, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 1991
- A number of factors involved in the Swiss case have been absent
in the Middle East:
- Opportunity for self-determination
- Flexibility in drawing borders based
on small scale preferences that reflect community desires rather
than those of nation states.
- The substantial devolution of power so
that subcultures call their own shots wherever possible.
- Change by negotiation and cooperation.
LOCAL CURRENCIES
Widely used in the United States in the early 1900s, local currencies
are a legal, but underutilized tool for citizens to support local
economies. Local currencies function on a regional scale the
same way that national currencies have functioned on a national
scale - building the regional economy by creating a protective
membrane that is defined by the currency itself. Local businesses
that accept the currency are distinguished from chain stores
that do not, building greater affinity between citizens of the
region and their local merchants. Individuals choosing to use
the currency make a conscious commitment to buy locally first,
taking personal responsibility for the health and wellbeing of
their community, laying the foundation of a truly vibrant, thriving
local economy.
Deli Dollars, a single store scrip issued in Great Barrington,
Massachusetts in 1989 with help of E. F. Schumacher Society staff,
drew national media to the Berkshire region, helped renew public
interest in local currencies as a tool for community economic
revitalization, and led to the current issue of Berkshares, a
local currency for the Southern Berkshires. Berkshares are exchanged
for federal dollars at participating local Berkshire banks and
circulate at a wide variety of local businesses.
BERKSHARES
http://www.berkshares.org
EF SCHUMACHER SOCIETY
http://prorev.com/www.schumachersociety.org/
ITHACA HOURS
http://www.ithacahours.org/
LOCAL CURRENCIES
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/ref/list_of_community_currencies_in_the_united_states'
TIME DOLLAR NETWORK
http://www.cfg.com/timedollar
TIME DOLLAR
http://www.timedollar.org/
DEVOLUTION IN THE U.S.
WIKIPEDIA - In the United States region
of New England, cities and towns practice limited home rule and,
for the most part, govern themselves in a directly-democratic
fashion known as the New England town meeting.
In Texas, counties do not have home rule.
Cities are not allowed home rule until population reaches 5,000,
whereupon the city may vote to adopt home rule via a city charter.
The Wisconsin Constitution gives cities
and villages the right to determine their own local affairs and
government; counties, however, are given their powers by legislative
acts. The state legislature, in addition to powers specifically
granted to it by the constitution, can only pass laws of state-wide
interest which uniformly affect all cities and villages.
In the United States only the federal government
and the state governments are recognized by the United States
Constitution. The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
implies that local governments are regulated by the state or
the people.
Local governments such as municipalities,
counties, parishes, boroughs, school districts, and other types
of local government entities are devolved. They are established,
regulated, and subject to governance by the laws of the state
in which they reside. U.S. state legislatures, in most cases,
have the power to change laws that affect local government structures.
In some states, the governor may also have power over local government
affairs.
Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands,
American Samoa and other territories are subject to their governments
being directly regulated by congressional acts. Unlike state
governments which have reserved powers according to the U.S.
Constitution, U.S. territorial governments can constitutionally
be directly regulated by Congress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devolved_government
WIKIPEDIA - In the United States region
of New England, cities and towns practice limited home rule and,
for the most part, govern themselves in a directly-democratic
fashion known as the New England town meeting.
In Texas, counties do not have home rule.
Cities are not allowed home rule until population reaches 5,000,
whereupon the city may vote to adopt home rule via a city charter.
The Wisconsin Constitution gives cities
and villages the right to determine their own local affairs and
government; counties, however, are given their powers by legislative
acts. The state legislature, in addition to powers specifically
granted to it by the constitution, can only pass laws of state-wide
interest which uniformly affect all cities and villages.
In the United States only the federal government
and the state governments are recognized by the United States
Constitution. The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
implies that local governments are regulated by the state or
the people.
Local governments such as municipalities,
counties, parishes, boroughs, school districts, and other types
of local government entities are devolved. They are established,
regulated, and subject to governance by the laws of the state
in which they reside. U.S. state legislatures, in most cases,
have the power to change laws that affect local government structures.
In some states, the governor may also have power over local government
affairs.
Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands,
American Samoa and other territories are subject to their governments
being directly regulated by congressional acts. Unlike state
governments which have reserved powers according to the U.S.
Constitution, U.S. territorial governments can constitutionally
be directly regulated by Congress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devolved_government
GETTING LIBERALS
& PROGRESSIVES TO THINK SMALL
SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 1993 - A
couple of summers ago at the annual convention of the longtime
liberal group, Americans for Democratic Action, I proposed a
resolution on the decentralization of power. Permit me to recycle
a portion:
|||| There is growing evidence that old
ideological conflicts such as between left and right, and between
capitalism and communism, are becoming far less important as
the world confronts the social and economic results of a century
marked by increasing concentration of power in countries of widely
varying political persuasion. A new ideology is rising, the ideology
of devolution -- the decentralization of power. Already it has
swept through the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
Its voice is heard in Spain, in Quebec
and in Northern Ireland. It is the voice of people attempting
to regain control over societies that have become increasingly
authoritarian, unresponsive, and insensitive, a revolt of ordinary
humans against the excesses of the state. . .
All around us is evidence of the disintegration
of effective government and a growing alienation of the people
from that government as a result. Our systems of governance have
become too big, too corrupt, too inflexible and too remote from
democratic concerns to respond equitably and rationally to the
changing needs of the people. Government has many beneficial
functions it can perform, but these can only be achieved when
the government itself is structured so as to reflect -- and not
thwart -- the will of the people.
Therefore we embrace the devolutionary
spirit of the times and, recognizing that the ideology of scale
must now be considered as carefully as the ideology of liberal
and conservative, we urge that this nation begin devolving power
back to the people -- that we correct a decades-long course which
has too often led to increasingly centralized power with increasingly
ineffective and undemocratic results. To this end, we propose
the following critical issues to fellow liberals and progressives
to consider, debate and act upon while there is still time to
reverse the authoritarian course of the American government:
- How do we end the growing concentration
of power in the presidency and return to the tripartite system
of government intended by the Constitution? How can Congress
reassert its constitutional role in the federal government?
- How do we prevent federal government
green-mail of the states -- the granting or withholding of federal
funds to force state legislation -- from being used as a way
around the powers constitutionally granted the states?
- How can we decentralize federal agencies
to the state and local level?
- How do we create a new respect for state
and local rights? The bitter struggle to establish the federal
government's primacy in the protection of civil rights of all
its citizens has been used far too long as an excuse to concentrate
all forms of power in Washington. That legal battle has been
won. We must now recognize the importance of state and local
government in creative, responsive governance and not continue
to assume that good government can only come from within the
Beltway.
- How do we reduce restrictions on federal
funds granted states and localities in order to foster imaginative
local application of those funds and to prevent the sort of federal
abuse apparent, for example, in restrictions on family planning
advice?
- How do we encourage -- including funding
-- neighborhood government in our cities so that the people most
affected by the American urban disaster can try their own hand
at rebuilding their communities?
The principle that all government should
be devolved to the lowest practical level should be raised to
its proper primacy in the progressive agenda. We cannot overstate
the peril involved in continuing to concentrate governmental
power in the federal executive.|||||
The resolution proved too much for the
traditional liberals of ADA and the resolution was roundly defeated
in committee. Many voters, however, have divined the problem
of excessive scale while remaining, unsurprisingly, confused
as to what to do about it. False prophets on the right tout a
phony "empowerment," The media muddles the matter with
its usual in-depth cliches. What is lacking is not devolutionary
theory, nor grand schemes, nor useful experiments, but rather
a practical progressive politics of devolution. We need to apply
our theories and our experience to the every day politics of
ordinary citizens. If we do, I think we will surprise ourselves
and others in a discovery of where the American mainstream really
flows.
Here, for starters, are a few suggestions
of devolutionary issues progressives could press:
- Public schools: In the sixties there
was a strong movement for community control of the schools. Because
it came largely from minority communities and because the majority
was not adequately distressed about public education it faltered.
- Neighborhood government: Real neighborhood
government would not be merely advisory as is the case with Washington
DC's neighborhood commissions. It would include the power to
sue the city government, to incorporate, to run its own programs,
to contract to provide those of city hall, and to have some measure
of budgetary authority over city expenditures within its boundaries.
Not the least among its powers should be a role in the justice
system, since it is impossible to recreate order in our communities
while denying communities any place in maintaining order.
We should create the "small republics,"
that Jefferson dreamed of, autonomous communities where every
citizen became "an acting member of the common government,
transacting in person a great portion of its rights and duties,
subordinate indeed, yet important, and entirely within his own
competence."
- States' rights: While maintaining federal
preeminence in fields such as civil rights, progressives should
be strong advocates of states' rights on issues not properly
the federal government's business such as raising the drinking
age or the 55 mph speed limit. Such advocacy would help to form
new coalitions and stir up the ideological pot. In particular,
progressives should oppose the use of federal green-mail -- forcing
states and localities to take measures at the risk of losing
federal funding -- as a clear end run around the 10th amendment
of the Bill of Rights. As the Supreme Court noted in Kansas v.
Colorado, this amendment "discloses the widespread fear
that the national government might, under the pressure of supposed
general welfare, attempt to exercise powers which had not been
granted."
- Federal spending: In an important and
necessary break with liberal thinking, progressives should become
advocates of a much smaller federal government by pressing for
the direct distribution of funds to the state and local level.
Whatever problems of malfeasance or nonfeasance may result, they
are almost guaranteed to be less than the misuse of these funds
at the federal level. As Congress' own auditor, Comptroller General
Charles Bowsher, recently told a hearing that "there are
hardly any [federal] agencies that are well managed." The
flaw in liberal thinking is that federal housing funds are used
for housing, agriculture funds for farmers and so forth. In fact,
an extraordinary percentage of these moneys are used to maintain
a superstructure to carry out poor housing policy or bad farm
policy. The basic principle should be to get the money to the
streets or the farms as quickly -- and with as few intermediaries
-- as possible.
Further, progressives should challenge
the presumption that the feds know best. At the present time,
much of the best government is at the state and local level.
It could do even better without the paperwork and the restrictions
dreamed up in Washington to fill the working day. And even when
that doesn't prove true, you don't have to drive as far to make
your political anger known.
- Small business: Many progressives act
as though an economy isn't necessary. It would pay great dividends
if the progressive agenda included support for small businesses.
Small businesses generate an extraordinary number of new jobs.
Further, small business is where many of the values of the progressive
movement can be best expressed in an economic context. While
ideally many of these businesses should be cooperatives, even
within the strictures of conventional capitalism they offer significant
advantages over the mega-corporation. Writing in the New York
Times, brokerage firm president Muriel Siebert said recently:
Unlike monolithic Fortune 500 companies, small businesses behave
like families. [A study] indicated that one reason for the durability
of businesses owned by women is the value they place on their
workers. It showed that small businesses hold on to workers through
periods when revenues decline. Rather than eliminate workers,
they tend to cut other expenses, including their own salaries...
Nearly half of the workers laid off by large companies have to
swallow pay reductions when they find new full-time work; two
out of three work for at least 20 percent less money than before."
As Jon Rowe says of Korean family-run groceries,
"a family operates on loyalty and trust, the market operates
on contract and law."
- Decentralizing the federal government:
There are a number of federal agencies that are already quite
decentralized. Interestingly, these agencies are among those
most often praised. The National Park Service, the Peace Corps,
the Coast Guard, and US Attorneys all have dispersed units with
a relatively high degree of autonomy and a strong sense of turf
responsibility by their employees. A further example can be found
within the postal service. While many complain about mail service,
you rarely hear them gripe about their own mail carrier, who
is given a finite task in a finite geographical area. I stumbled
across this phenomenon while serving in the Coast Guard. At the
time, the Guard had about 1800 units worldwide but only 3000
officers, with many of the officers concentrated on larger ships
and in headquarters units. Thus there were scores of units run
by enlisted personnel who rarely saw an officer. The system worked
extremely well. It worked because, once training and adequate
equipment had been provided, there was relatively little a bureaucratic
superstructure could do to improve the operations of a lifeboat
or loran station. As with education, a bureaucracy in such circumstances
can do itself far more good than it can do anyone in the field.
Similarly, a former Peace Corps regional
director told me that in his agency's far-flung and decentralized
system, there was no way he could control activities in the two
dozen countries under his purview, yet the Peace Corps became
one of the most popular federal programs in recent times. Can
the success of these decentralized agencies be replicated, say,
in housing or urban development? Why not give it a try? If federal
housing moneys were distributed by 50 state directors who were
given considerable leeway in the mix of policies they could fund
and approve, we would, for starters, begin to have a better idea
of which programs work and which don't.
- Raising the issue: Every policy and piece
of legislation should be subjected to evaluation not only according
to the old rules of right and left but according to the ideology
of scale. We must constantly be asking not only whether what
is proposed is right, but whether it is being done at the right
level of society's organization.
These are just a few examples of how a
politics of devolution might begin to develop. It is needed if
for no other reason than it is our best defense against the increasing
authoritarianism of the federal government and the monopolization
of economic activity. It is also needed because, without it,
democracy becomes little more than a choice between alternative
propaganda machines. In the 1960s, Robert McNamara declared,
"Running any large organization is the same, whether it's
the Ford Motor Company, the Catholic Church or the Department
of Defense. Once you get the certain scale, they're all the same."
And so, increasingly to our detriment, they are. We must learn
and teach, and make a central part of our politics, that while
small is not always beautiful, it has -- for our ecology, our
liberties, and our souls -- become absolutely essential.
EUROPEAN
UNION
Subsidiarity was established in EU law
by the Treaty of Maastricht, 1992. The present formulation:
"The Community shall act within the limits of the powers
conferred upon it by this Treaty and of the objectives assigned
to it therein. In areas which do not fall within its exclusive
competence, the Community shall take action, in accordance with
the principle of subsidiarity, only if and in so far as the objectives
of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the
Member States and can therefore, by reason of the scale or effects
of the proposed action, be better achieved by the Community.
Any action by the Community shall not go beyond what is necessary
to achieve the objectives of this Treaty."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity
THE DC STATEHOOD PARTY
PLATFORM
In the early 1970s, your editor drafted
a platform that formed the basis for one approved by DC's new
third party, the DC Statehood Party. The platform was perhaps
the most eclectic, radical and prescient collection of policies
one could have found anywhere at the time and a number of the
planks dealt with devolution to the local level. Among them:
- Neighborhood authorities and neighborhood
housing banks
- Elected neighborhood legislative councils
and neighborhood executives with power over selection of neighborhood
police officials, selection of neighborhood school superintendent,
school site selection and proposed roads.
- Low-rent facilities in new commercial
centers for small businesses
- Enclosed and open stalls for artisans,
craftsmen and other small operators.
- The end of the forced displacement of
small business.
- The construction of public markets
- The conversion of banks and public utilities
to cooperatives.
- Ownership of liquor stores by neighborhood
cooperatives
- Division of police into a uniformed crime-fighting
force and a neighborhood constabulary
- Community control of the schools
- Creation of an equal service commission
to ensure equal distribution of public services throughout the
city
- Ward balance in capital improvements
and government personnel
- Varied curriculum, services and teaching
methods in the schools
THE
PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF VERMONT
IAN BALDWIN AND FRANK BRYAN, WASHINGTON
POST - The winds of secession are blowing in the Green Mountain
State. Vermont was once an independent republic, and it can be
one again. We think the time to make that happen is now. Over
the past 50 years, the U.S. government has grown too big, too
corrupt and too aggressive toward the world, toward its own citizens
and toward local democratic institutions. It has abandoned the
democratic vision of its founders and eroded Americans' fundamental
freedoms.
Vermont did not join the Union to
become part of an empire. Some of us therefore seek permission
to leave.
A decade before the War of Independence,
Vermont became New England's first frontier, settled by pioneers
escaping colonial bondage who hewed settlements across a lush
region whose spine is the Green Mountains. These independent
folk brought with them what Henry David Thoreau called the "true
American Congress" -- the New England town meeting, which
is still the legislature for nearly all of Vermont's 237 towns.
Here every citizen is a legislator who helps fashion the rules
that govern the locality.
Today, however, Vermont no longer
controls even its own National Guard, a domestic emergency force
that is now employed in an imperial war 6,000 miles away. The
9/11 commission report says that "the American homeland
is the planet." To defend this "homeland," the
United States spends six times as much on its military as China,
the next highest-spending nation, funding more than 730 military
bases in more than 130 countries, abetted by more than 100 military
space satellites and more than 100,000 seaborne battle-ready
forces. This is the greatest military colossus ever forged. .
.
The two of us are typical of the
diversity of Vermont's secessionist movement: one descended from
old Vermonter stock, the other a more recent arrival -- a "flatlander"
from down country. Our Vermont homeland remains economically
conservative and socially liberal. And the love of freedom runs
deep in its psyche.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/30/AR2007033002076.html
SECOND VERMONT REPUBLIC - The Second
Vermont Republic is a peaceful, decentralist voluntary association
and think tank opposed to the tyranny of multinational corporations
and the U.S. government, and committed to the return of Vermont
to its status as an independent republic, and more broadly, to
the peaceful dissolution of the United States as an empireSupporters
of the Second Vermont Republic subscribe to the following set
of principles:
1. Political Independence. Our primary
objectives are political independence for Vermont and the peaceful
dissolution of the Union.
2. Human Scale. We believe life
should be lived on a human scale. Small is still beautiful.
3. Sustainability. We celebrate
and support Vermont's small, clean, green, sustainable, socially
responsible towns, farms, businesses, schools, and churches.
We encourage family-owned farms and businesses to produce innovative,
premium-quality, healthy products. We also believe that energy
independence is an essential goal towards which to strive.
4. Economic Solidarity. We encourage
Vermonters to buy locally produced products from small local
merchants rather than purchase from giant, out-of-state megastores.
We support trade with nearby states and provinces.
5. Power Sharing. Vermont's strong
democratic tradition is grounded in its town meetings . We favor
devolution of political power from the state back to local communities,
making the governing structure for towns, schools, hospitals,
and social services much like that of Switzerland. Shared power
also underlies our approach to international relations.
6. Equal Access. We support equal
access for all Vermont citizens to quality education, health
care, housing, and employment.
7. Tension Reduction. Consistent
with Vermont's long tradition of "live and let live"
and nonviolence, we do not condone state-sponsored violence inflicted
either by the military or law enforcement officials. We support
a voluntary citizens' brigade to reduce tension and restore order
in the event of political unrest and to provide assistance when
natural disasters occur. We are opposed to any form of military
conscription. Tension reduction is the bedrock principle on which
all international conflicts are to be resolved.
8. Mutuality. Both our citizens
and our neighbors should be treated with mutual respect.
http://www.vermontrepublic.org/
DEVOLUTION
IN THE NETHERLANDS
WIKIPEDIA - The constituent countries
of the Kingdom of the Netherlands are: The Netherlands, Netherlands
Antilles, Aruba. Each of the three constituent parts has its
own constitution. Each of the three constituent parts also has
its own administration and parliament. Together, they form a
federation under a monarch as a single head of state.
The Kingdom of the Netherlands is
a member of the European Union. However the Netherlands Antilles
and Aruba are not considered part of the EU, but rather have
the status of overseas countries and territories. Since citizenship
is handled by the kingdom, and not distinguished for the three
constituent countries, citizens from all three constituent countries
are also EU citizens.
THE
DEVOLUTION OF POLITICAL & SOCIAL ACTIVISM
Avoiding the systems
we're trying to change
Sam Smith
Like other systems, our systems
of political and social organizing have become greatly inflated
and excessively complicated in recent years. Part of it has been
due to television - which has moved us from actual to only virtual
contact with one another; part of it has been a cost of population
growth; and part has been a result of mental and verbal seepage
from the reactionary capitalism of the past quarter century.
It is hard to talk about because
so many have known little else and have bought into assumptions
of which they may not even be aware, such as believing that social
and political change is largely the product of marketing and
advertising or of management practices promulgated by business
schools.
Although people still talk about
grass roots organizing, there is far less of it going on and
it is hard to generate excitement on its behalf. There is ritualistic
talk of movements but in too many cases, a movement is little
more than a mailing list being asked constantly for money and
an occasional letter to members of Congress. The leadership of
these so-called movements often have more in common with Washington
corporate lobbyists than with those they are supposed to be leading.
And whatever their inner desires, their outer manner is heavily
influenced by the centrist foundations that feed them.
It is not a conscious thing; it
has just become part of the contemporary culture of activism.
Even Green Party members, hardly part of the establishment, seem
far easier to engage on the topic of which presidential candidate
they favor to get all 2 percent of the vote next time than in
how you elect Greens to school boards and state legislatures.
We have been taught in so many ways that only the large matters.
Over the years, I have approached
this topic from a number of angles. Here are a few excerpts:
WHY BOTHER, 2001 - One of the bad habits we have acquired
from the bullies who now run the place is undue reliance on traditional
political, legal and rhetorical tools. Politically active Americans
have been taught that even at the risk of losing our planet and
our democracy, we must go about it all in a rational manner,
never raising our voice, never doing the unlikely or trying the
improbable, let alone screaming for help.
We have lost much of what was gained
in the 1960s and 1970s because we traded in our passion, our
energy, our magic and our music for the rational, technocratic
and media ways of our leaders. We will not overcome the current
crisis solely with political logic. We need living rooms like
those in which women once discovered they were not alone. The
freedom schools of SNCC. The politics of the folk guitar. The
plays of Vaclav Havel. The pain of James Baldwin. The laughter
of Abbie Hoffman. The strategy of Gandhi and King. Unexpected
gatherings and unpredicted coalitions. People coming together
because they disagree on every subject save one: the need to
preserve the human. Savage satire and gentle poetry. Boisterous
revival and silent meditation. Grand assemblies and simple suppers.
WHY BOTHER - Sometimes democracy's
guerrillas take just a small piece of our disabled and distorted
culture to revive -- a school, a neighborhood, an untried idea,
or a group the larger society has rejected. These people will
tell you they are not politicians, but in their very choice of
community over institutions they have become another cell of
transformational politics. And they instinctively accept the
notion that John L. McKnight put well in a 1987 issue of Social
Policy:
"The structure of institutions
is a design established to create control of people. On the other
hand, the structure of associations is the result of people acting
through consent. . . You will know that you are in a community
if you often hear laughter and singing. You will know you are
in an institution, corporation, or bureaucracy if you hear the
silence of long halls and reasoned meetings."
Here are some of the characteristics McKnight found among associations
in contrast to institutions:
- Interdependency. "If the
local newspaper closes, the garden club and the township meeting
will each diminish as they lose a voice."
- Community is built around a recognition
of fallibility rather than the ideal.
- Community groups are better at
finding a place for everyone.
- Associations can respond quickly
since they lack the bureaucracy of large institutions.
- Associations engage in non-hierarchical
creativity
THE POLITICAL REPAIR MANUAL,
1997 - Liberals are afraid
to criticize big government because they think it makes them
sound like Republicans. In fact, the idea of devolution -- having
government carried out at the lowest practical level -- dates
back at least to that good Democrat, Thomas Jefferson. Even FDR
managed to fight the depression with a staff smaller than Hillary
Clinton's and World War II with one smaller than Al Gore's. And
conservative columnist William Safire admits that "in a
general sense, devolution is a synonym for 'power sharing,' a
movement that grew popular in the sixties and seventies as charges
of 'bureaucracy' were often leveled at centralized authority."
The modern liberals' embrace of
centralized authority makes them vulnerable to the charge that
their politics is one of intentions rather than results -- symbolized
by huge agencies like the Department of Housing & Urban Development
that fail miserably to produce policies worthy of their name.
Conservatives, on the other hand, often confuse the devolution
of government with its destruction. Thus while the liberals are
underachieving, the conservatives are undermining.
In fact, a sensible and democratic
devolution of power should be high on the American repair list.
The question must be repeatedly asked of new and present policies:
how can these programs be brought close to the supposed beneficiaries,
the citizens? And how can government money go where it's supposed
to go?
Because such questions are not asked
often enough, we find huge disparities in the effectiveness of
federal programs. For example, both social security and the earned
income tax credit function well with little overhead. In such
programs, the government serves primarily as a redistribution
center for tax revenues.
On the other hand, an environmentalist
who ran a weatherization program told me that she figured it
cost $30,000 in federal and local overhead for each $1600 in
weather-proofing provided a low income home.
Similarly, a study of Milwaukee
County in 1988 found government agencies spending more than $1
billion annually on fighting poverty. If this money had been
given in cash to the poor, it would have meant more than $33,000
for each low income family -- well above the poverty level.
SHADOWS OF HOPE, 1994 - Not surprisingly, public advocacy groups
have taken to responding to the establishment's legalisms with
more of their own. Go back to the 60s and Ralph Nader was about
the only public interest lawyer in town who wore a suit and his
wasn't pressed. Today, many advocacy groups have drifted into
the lawyerly style and pace of the establishment they are supposedly
trying to change. They have, in their own way, become capital
institutions, part of the ritualized, status-conscious, and very
safe, trench warfare of the city. . .
GREEN HORIZON QUARTERLY - America's third parties have been immensely
important to the country as catalysts of political and social
progress. Their efforts lent weight to the anti-slavery movement,
to the institution of an income tax, and to women's rights. While
most of the power in 20th century politics was held by centrist
or conservative white Protestants and Irish Catholics, the major
reforms of that period stemmed from three third party movements:
the Populists, the Progressives and the Socialists.
One reason journalists and historians
tend to discount the impact of third parties is because of their
obsession with apexes of power and those who inhabit them. In
reality, however, change often comes not from the top or the
center but from the edges. Ecologists and biologists appreciate
the importance of edges as sources of life and change, whether
they be the boundary of a forest, the shore of a bay or the earth's
patina so essential to our being that we call the atmosphere.
The political edge, at least metaphorically, has many of the
same critical attributes. . .
If you want to affect national politics
with a national third party presidential run, history suggests
that getting over 5% - preferably closer to 10% - is a good way
to start. Otherwise, you can probably expect a less direct impact
for your efforts, perhaps decades in the future. And, in any
case, you can expect your swing at presidential politics to be
fairly short-lived.
That does not mean, however, that
these parties - like certain insects - were merely born, had
sex, and then died. In fact, some of the third parties had long,
healthy lives, in large part because they were as concerned with
local as with national results. The Socialist Party is the most
dramatic recent example, with a history dating back over 100
years. The party's own history suggest that eclecticism didn't
hurt:
<<< From the beginning
the Socialist Party was the ecumenical organization for American
radicals. Its membership included Marxists of various kinds,
Christian socialists, Zionist and anti-Zionist Jewish socialists,
foreign-language speaking sections, single-taxers and virtually
every variety of American radical. On the divisive issue of "reform
vs. revolution," the Socialist Party from the beginning
adopted a compromise formula, producing platforms calling for
revolutionary change but also making "immediate demands"
of a reformist nature. A perennially unresolved issue was whether
revolutionary change could come about without violence; there
were always pacifists and evolutionists in the Party as well
as those opposed to both those views. The Socialist Party historically
stressed cooperatives as much as labor unions, and included the
concepts of revolution by education and of 'building the new
society within the shell of the old.'" >>>
By World War I it had elected 70
mayors, two members of Congress, and numerous state and local
officials. Milwaukee alone had three Socialist mayors in the
last century, including Frank Zeidler who held office for 12
years ending in 1960. And the party reports that Karen Kubby,
Socialist councilwoman, won her re-election bid in 1992 with
the highest vote total in Iowa City history.
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 2004 - At present the Green Party seems exceedingly
concerned with whom it will run for president, if anyone. This
is a time-consuming, agenda-skewing, image-monopolizing business.
. . But what if the Green Party declared itself the party of
the countryside, of free America, and set its sights on organizing
not just the survival, resistance, and rebellion of the unoccupied
homeland, but its revival, its discovery of self-reliance, and
its energetic practice of democracy and decency? There is a wealth
of electoral opportunity. For example, in 15 states more than
half the state legislative seats are presently won without a
contest. . .
SHADOWS OF HOPE - Come with me for a moment to a time of when
politics was so much a part of New York City that Tammany Hall
had to rent Madison Square Gardens for its meetings of committeemen
- all 32,000 of them. In contrast, when the Democratic National
Committee decided to send a mailing to its workers some years
back, it found that no one had kept a list. The party had come
to care only about its donors.
One 19th century Tammany politician,
George Washington Plunkitt, claimed to know every person in his
district, their likes and their dislikes:
"A young feller gains a reputation
as a baseball player in a vacant lot. I bring him into our baseball
club. That fixes him. You'll find him workin' for my ticket at
the polls next election day. . . I rope them all in by givin'
them opportunities to show themselves off. I don't trouble them
with political arguments. I just study human nature and act accordin'."
In the world of Plunkitt, politics
was not something handed down to the people through distant intermediaries.
What defined politics was an unbroken chain of human experience,
memory and gratitude.
So the first non-logical but necessary
thing we must do to reclaim politics is to bring it back into
our communities, into our hearts . . . to bring it back home.
We must not only make politics a
part of our culture but make our culture a part of our politics.
. .
TALK TO MONTGOMERY COUNTY GREENS, MD , 2005 - We must
bear in mind that most politics today is largely based on acceptance
of the tyranny of television and other forms of mass media. This
is, among other things, extremely costly. It is also inevitably
top down politics. You can't have a decentralized democratic
movement run by TV. But viral politics - whether done through
traditional local organizing or through more modern tools such
as the Internet - has not been eliminated by the media but merely
obscured. It is widely used, for example, by the Christian right.
And Howard Dean didn't do badly with it, either. . .
SECURING THE HOMELAND - Even in these dismal times, a few lights
shine. More than a hundred communities and several states have
voted resolutions deeply critical of the so-called Patriot Act.
In California all the major candidates in the gubernatorial race
supported a position on medical marijuana strongly opposed by
the federal government. And the Washington Post reports that
"in Seattle, the public library printed 3,000 bookmarks
to alert patrons that the FBI could, in the name of national
security, seek permission from a secret federal court to inspect
their reading and computer records -- and prohibit librarians
from revealing that a search had taken place. . . In Hillsboro,
Ore., Police Chief Ron Louie has ordered his officers to refuse
to assist any federal terrorism investigations that his department
believes violate state law or constitutional right."
When one reviews such brave acts
and words of Americans still loyal to the ideals of their land
and its constitution, it is striking is how few of them emanate
from the nation's capital. Officials and the media in Washington
have generally accepted the assault on constitutional and democratic
government with all the adaptability of the Vichy French of Paris
getting used to the Germans. . .
Strange as it may seem, it is in
this dismal dichotomy between countryside and the political and
economic capitals that the hope for saving America's soul resides.
The geographical and conceptual parochialism of those who have
made this mess leaves vast acres of our land still free in which
to nurture hopes, dreams, and perhaps even to foster the eventual
eviction of those who have done us such wrong. . .
Almost all great changes in American
politics and culture have had their roots either in the countryside
or among minorities within the major cities. From religious 'great
awakenings' to the abolitionist movement, to the labor movement,
to populism, to the 1960s and civil rights, America has been
repeatedly moved by viral politics rather than by the pyramidal
processes outlined in great man theories of change promulgated
by the elite and its media and academies.
Successfully confronting the present
disaster will require far more than attempting to serially blockade
its serial evils, necessary as this is. There must also be a
guerilla democracy that defends, fosters, and celebrates our
better selves - not only to provide an alternative but to create
physical space for decent Americans to enjoy their lives while
waiting for things to get better. It may, after all, take the
rest of their lifetimes. We must not only condemn the worst,
but offer witness for the better. And create places in which
to live it. . .
I found myself reflecting on the
Solidarity movement of Poland. We will get out of this mess,
I thought, when we can do in our own way what the Poles did in
theirs.
I had occasion to test these thoughts
as I read John Rensenbrink's excellent contemporary account of
the movement: Poland Challenges a Divided World. For all the
differences - for one thing we confront right-wingers instead
of communists - I was pleasantly surprised to find myself encouraged
again.
At the heart of the Solidarity achievement
was something with which the Internet has made us familiar -
a form of politics that spread not by the precise decisions of
a small number of rulers but by the aggregated tiny and vaguer
decisions of a mass of citizens. In a sense, Solidarity was an
early unwired flash mob. . .
Rensenbrink tells me that some of
Solidarity's early organizing took place on the trains that many
of the workers rode to the shipyards. In our own history, there
are innumerable examples of change owing a debt to the simple
serendipity of people of like values and sensibilities coming
together. For example, the rise of the Irish politician in this
country was aided considerably by the Irish bar's role as an
ethnic DMZ and a center for the exchange of information. Here
is another example from the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute:
<<< Mother Jones often
organized the women in mining towns to become an active and vital
part of the struggle for worker's rights. One tactic she used
was the "dishpan brigade." When coal miners were on
strike in Arnot, Pennsylvania, in 1900, Mother Jones organized
the women to prevent replacement, or scab, workers from taking
the striking workers' jobs. The women gathered at the mine, banging
together their pots, pans, brooms and mops, while screaming and
shouting at the scab workers. "From that day on the women
kept continual watch of the mines to see that the company did
not bring in scabs. Every day women with brooms or mops in one
hand and babies in the other arm, wrapped in little blankets,
went to the mines and watched that no one went in. And all night
long they kept watch," wrote Mother Jones. >>>
We tend to discount the importance
of unplanned moments because of our fealty to the business school
paradigm in which change properly occurs because of a careful
strategic plan, an organized vision, procedures, and process.
During the past quarter century when such ideas have been in
ascendancy, however, America has demonstratively deteriorated
as a political, economic, and moral force. In reality, many of
the best things happen by accident and indirection. While it
may be true, as the Roman said, that "fortune smiles on
the well prepared" part of that preparation is to be in
the right place at the right time. In other words, it is necessary
to create an ecology of change rather than a precise and often
illusory process. . .
We can not at this moment imagine
the manner in which America's recovery could occur. To attempt
to do so, in fact, invites an apathetic fatalism for there seems
no solution. What exists, however, are the means by which to
cultivate an environment in which solutions may sprout. This
may not seem as glamorous but it is absolutely necessary. And
it is work that by its nature devolves to the smallest places
of our land where change is still possible, where ideals are
still preserved, and where imagination still exists. Where the
soil of freedom and democracy are still fertile and unpolluted
and where spring can show its wonders once again.
http://prorev.com/securing.htm
SHADOWS OF HOPE Writer John Gall has said that "systems
tend to oppose their proper functions." The ideal proper
function of the American system is life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. Yet as it gropes its way through its third century,
the system in reality increasingly endangers human life, denies
personal liberty and represses individual happiness. . .
Unfortunately, complex failing systems
have little capacity to save themselves. In part this is because
the solutions come from the same source as the problem. The public
rarely questions the common provenance; official Washington and
the media honor it. Even a failure as miserable as that of Vietnam
had little effect on the careers of its major protagonists, those
men who not only were wrong but were wrong at the cost of 50,000
American lives. . .
Complex systems usually try to save
themselves by doing the same they have been doing badly all along
-- only harder. This is because the salvation of the system is
implicitly considered far more important than the solution of
any problems causing the system to fail. . .
Ironically, we have come to our
present unhappy state in no small part because of our willingness
to turn over individual and communal functions to the very systems
we now ask to save us. . .
Bart Giamatti, long before he became
baseball commissioner, wrote:
"Baseball is about going home
and how hard it is to get there and how driven is our need. It
tells us how good home is. Its wisdom says you can go home again
but that you cannot stay. The journey must always start once
more, the bat and oar over the shoulder, until there is an end
to all journeying."
True politics, in imitation of baseball,
the great American metaphor, is also about going home. Members
of Congress consider it the sine qua non of their routine. Presidential
candidates engage in an elaborate if disingenuous ceremony of
finding the American home during primary season. And in between,
everyone in politics pays extraordinary attention to political
shamans like Gallup and Roper whose magical powers center upon
their understanding of what's happening "at home."
Yet like so much in our national
life, we are only going through the motions, paying ritualistic
obeisance to a faith we no longer follow. In fact, we have lost
our way home.
UNITED KINGDOM
WIKIPEDIA - The constituent countries of
the United Kingdom are England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales.
These four constituent countries of the United Kingdom are sometimes
also referred to as Home Nations. The word country does not necessarily
connote political independence (thus Basque country), so that
it may, according to context, be used to refer either to the
UK or one of its constituents. Thus, for example, the website
of the British Prime Minister refers to "countries within
a country", stating "The United Kingdom is made up
of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
. .
All four have always had and continue to have distinctive variations
in legislative and administrative status and England and Scotland
were originally independent states. All four are still generally
regarded as possessing distinct nationalities, although they
have no distinct citizenships. . . .
Northern Ireland was the first part of the UK to have a devolved
government, under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, until the
Parliament of Northern Ireland was suspended in 1972. Subsequent
attempts at reinstating a form of devolved government in Northern
Ireland have stalled, and the area is currently governed directly
by the UK government. . .
Scotland and Wales adopted devolved governments
in the 1990s, but have long been described as countries in their
own right. Although England lacks a devolved government of its
own, and no real legal existence, except as part of "England
and Wales", it is almost universally thought of as a country
and a nation.
All four constituent countries of the United
Kingdom have political parties campaigning for further self-government
or independence. In the case of Northern Ireland, both the desire
for union with the Republic of Ireland and a small movement for
independence from both the Republic and the UK have existed.
There is a movement for self-government in Cornwall which has
campaigned for Cornwall to be recognized as a constituent country
of the UK, rather than its current status as an English county.
SPAIN
WIKIPEDIA - Spain's fifty provinces are
grouped into seventeen autonomous communities, in addition to
two African autonomous cities. Centralism, nationalism and separatism
played an important role in the Spanish transition. For fear
that separatism would lead to instability and a dictatorial backlash,
a compromise was struck among the moderate political parties
taking part in the drafting of the Spanish Constitution of 1978.
The aim was to appease separatist forces and so disarm the extreme
right. A highly decentralized state was established, compared
both with the previous Francoist regime and with most modern
territorial arrangements in Western European nations.
The autonomous communities have wide legislative
and executive autonomy, with their own parliaments and regional
governments. The distribution of powers is different for every
community, as laid out in the "autonomy statute". There
is a de facto distinction between "historic" communities
and the rest. The historic ones initially received more functions,
including the ability of the regional presidents to choose the
timing of the regional elections. As another example, the Basque
Country and Catalonia have full-range police forces of their
own. . .
URBAN
STATEHOOD
Sam Smith
What does New York City have more of than
Rhode Island, Montana, South Dakota, Delaware, North Dakota,
Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming, all put together?
People.
What do New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana,
South Dakota, Delaware, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming
have that New York City doesn't have?
Sixteen US Senators.
New York City gets to share two senators
with the residue of New York state, which is also larger than
all these other states put together. In fact, there are 18 states
with a combined population less than New York in its entirety.
This discrimination is, of course, not
unique to New York. The larger states of California and Texas
have it worse. And the capital colony of Washington DC lacks
even partial representation in the Senate.
The results of this constitutional but
crazy apportionment of America's upper house means, among other
things, that ethnic minorities are underrepresented in a manner
officially permitted hardly anywhere else in American culture.
If the Senate had been a school district it would have been under
court-ordered bussing for the past few decades. If it were a
private club, you'd want to resign from it before running for
public office.
In fact, the malapportionment of the Senate
is perhaps the most important, undiscussed issue in the country
today for there is hardly a matter of political importance that
would not be affected if that body were to reflect 21st century
rather than 19th century demographics.
Curiously, however, leaders of constituencies
that would clearly benefit - with cities at the top of the list
- show little interest.
One reason for this is misunderstanding.
It is widely believed that admitting new states requires a constitutional
amendment and that a state, once created, can't be split. In
truth, it is easier to spawn a new state than it was to give
women the right to vote or to pass an income tax. A simple majority
in Congress and the president's signature - plus approval of
an affected state's legislature - and the job is permanently
done.
Then there is the argument that creating
new states is a political impossibility. But it has happened
37 times since the creation of the republic and in a number of
cases - Kentucky, Vermont, West Virginia, and Maine - new states
were formed out of existing ones.
If you don't care about history, think
of the future. In not too many years, white Americans will cease
to be in the majority. Even leaving moral questions aside, how
much longer will it be politically practical to tell blacks and
latinos that the rules can't be changed to let them into the
Senate in some reasonable number?
Despite Washington's small size, ethnic
prejudice and all the other problems faced by weak and debilitated
colonies, a statehood movement got far enough to win editorial
encouragement from the New York Times and Washington Post, hold
a constitutional convention, attract the transitory enthusiasm
of presidential candidate Bill Clinton, win a respectable number
of votes in its one House test, and even elect Jesse Jackson
to the only electoral office he ever held, albeit briefly --
the position of surrogate or "statehood senator," a
popularly elected lobbyist for prospective states. The DC Statehood
Party, which later merged with the DC Greens, held a city council
seat for over 25 years.
If citizens of such weak clout as those
in DC can get this far, imagine what the powerful folk of New
York City could do if they rose up in righteous anger against
their lack of equitable representation in the US Senate. Imagine
a Million Mensch March - led perhaps by Abe Bloomberg and Al
Sharpton -- descending on Washington to press the cause, a cause
which is not just that of New York but of every American city
and every group frustrated by the undemocratic hereditary power
of the landed states that got there first. Urban states are the
sina qua non of a better America. Let a dozen of them bloom.
[The original version of this article appeared
in the NY Press]
BRINGING
DEVOLUTION TO THE 'HOOD
Sam Smith
[Remarks at a conference on neighborhood
commissions in 2006]
WASHINGTON'S advisory neighborhood commissions
came out of a time that seems distant today, a time before 9/11,
George Bush, the closing of DC's public hospital and the socio-ethnic
cleansing of DC.
Sure, we were still recovering from the
riots, but the very word 'recover' - one you don't hear much
today - implied that there was a least a chance you would. The
writer Dorothy Allison described the spirit of the times: "I
had the idea that if you took America and shook it really hard
it would do the right thing."
And so you proposed all sorts of new ideas
and just talking about them made you feel hopeful. Central to
a lot the talk was devolution - the idea that people could control
things better if they were brought down to the local level. We
tend to forget this now, but back then, decentralization and
community power were important progressive ideas.
I wrote about them a lot the 1960s and
suggested that Washington needed neighborhood councils with members
representing small districts that would get to approve the local
police commander, help direct the schools, set up a neighborhood
development corporation and so forth.
In the early 1970s, those of us in the
new DC Statehood Party added the idea to our platform. We wanted:
- Neighborhood authorities and neighborhood
housing banks
- Elected neighborhood legislative councils
and neighborhood executives with power over selection of neighborhood
police officials, selection of neighborhood school superintendent,
school site selection and proposed roads.
- Community control of the schools
We even suggested that liquor stors be
turned into neighborhood cooperatives.
Then, as sometimes happens with ideas,
something happened. Don Frasier, a progressive member of Congress
from Minneapolis - where they already had advisory neighborhood
commissions - added the plan to the DC home rule bill then under
consideration.
It wasn't well received by the local powers
that wannatobe, the ones who were in line to personally benefit
from the pending congressional approval of an elected mayor and
council for the District colony. For all their talk of democracy,
they weren't happy to see some of their pending power being distributed
to others. . .
The home rule bill passed and the ANC referendum
was easily approved but the legislation had not fully defined
the nature and power of the commissions. That was to be left
to the new city government.
A group of us formed a citizens lobby to
proposed rules under which the ANCs would function. At one meeting,
someone suggested that the commissions' views be given "great
weight" by the city government.
"What does that term mean," asked
a lawyer.
"Damned if I know," I replied,
"but let's put it in and find out."
As luck would have it, the court case deciding
what it meant would come out of my neighborhood commission district
and I, as the commissioner, would be one of the plaintiffs. It
was a tough one for me for not only did it force me to betray
my roots - it involved an Irish bar - but one of the owners,
the bar's lawyer and all of the complaining petitioners lived
in my district. I had tried to get them all together but it didn't
work. In the end, the court handed down a decision on "great
weight" that favored the commissions.
Our new commission worked remarkably well
considering that all of us were playing it by ear. We made some
simple rules that helped. For example, we would only deal with
local issues. That way our national and citywide conflicts wouldn't
ruin our meetings.
And we also developed some good habits,
such as retiring to the Zebra Room to debrief over drinks after
each meeting. We accepted our differences and played by the rules,
remained friends, and it all worked pretty well.
I was named chair of the education, recreation,
and agriculture committee. I added that last term because we
had the largest community garden in DC. Soon I wished I hadn't
because a big dispute developed over how long people should retain
their garden rights on public land. I proposed what I thought
was a modest compromise - seven years - but the gardeners saw
that proposal as the moral equivalent of eminent domain.
I had more luck with the Great Hearst Playground
Dispute. A hundred and fifty tennis players came to me with a
petition to have a backboard constructed at Hearst playground.
Knee jerk politician that I was, I successfully pressed for the
backboard. The Recreation Department, however, constructed the
backboard without consulting anyone and made a huge cinderblock
wall that blocked some of the neighbors' view of the playground.
Next thing I knew, there was a petition from 150 neighbors wanting
the backboard removed.
The matter was ultimately resolved during
a five hour meeting with the Rec Department and disputing parties.
I proposed that a new backboard be placed at a 90 degree angle
so it didn't block anyone's view. Geometry worked where politics
had failed.
I was overwhelmed with problems, some solvable,
many not. I had far less clout that many residents thought but
I worked overtime to conceal the fact. This didn't help. Their
expectations just seemed to mount.
As I looked around the city, things weren't
going as well as I had hoped. For one thing, the rules the city
council had passed deliberately restricted the councils' power:
no incorporation, no spending of public funds in joint projects
with other commissions and so forth.
From the beginning, and to this day, the
city government considered the ANCs to be an annoyance to be
controlled more than to be included. I had argued from the start
that our prime goal should be to take the "A" out of
ANC. . . to make these bodies functioning units of government
rather than merely advisory. Instead they were dismissed by the
media and co-opted by politicians and bureaucrats until only
the bravest and most self-reliant commissions dared act as the
law had envisioned.
From the start in 1974, city officials
began to set up bureaucratic and fiscal hurdles for the fledgling
commissions to jump over and they adopted the view that the ANCs
were just another part of the city bureacracy. At workshops and
in regulations, they treated the ANCs as subservient and ancillary.
Many commissioners, unschooled in either ANC history, law, or
politics accepted this more menial role without question. They
also accepted the gross and widespread falsehood that ANCs were
banned from meeting with one another. In fact, the law only prohibited
them from spending city money to do so.
Instead of seeing themselves as a sleeping
giant -- a grassroots political system that could actually be
run from the grassroots -- the ANCs tolerated a lesser role.
This subservience continues to today.
The situation has not been helped by gentrification.
There are unhappy reports of ethnic and cultural conflicts being
played out in commissions just as elsewhere.
We seem to have forgotten how to share
space with others. For example in one part of town we have churchgoers
mad at a gay bar and gentrifiers mad at churchgoers' double-parked
cars. As a heterosexual agnostic I have no money on this race,
but I know the answer is most likely to come when both sides
accept the notion of reciprocal liberty - that we can't be free
to do what we want unless we grant others a similar right. Out
of such an attitude can come, for example, valet parking on Sundays
and a hefty contribution to a local rec center by the gay bar.
ANCs can be important mediators at such
times or they can add to the conflict. It's one of the many choices
their members have to make.
ANCs are still a sleeping giant. Don't
believe what city hall tells you about what they can and can't
do. They can do almost anything if they do it the right way.
For example, the chairs in a ward could
get together each month at someone's house and share what their
commissions agree about. If they have differences, forget them
for the time being. Look for the unity and then let your councilmember,
school board member, mayor, and media know about it.
Practice this awhile and then try it citywide.
Three dozen commission chairs working together could become a
de facto lower house of the city government. . .
And it's not just a local matter. In increasingly
corrupt and anti-democratic America, local solidarity and action
are oases of freedom and decency from which a new future can
grow. As we find ourselves in a post-constitutional society where
our leaders in politics and business consider themselves immune
from either morality or legislation, we must constantly tend
these community gardens of hope.
Just as during Washington's century of
segregation with no home rule, neighborhood organizations in
DC were the voice and organizing strength of this city, so today
our communities are where we must begin to make things work again
with decency, democracy and fairness.
Our neighborhood commissions can be central
to this if they remember the words of Jane Jacobs: "Cities
have the capability of providing something for everybody, only
because, and only when, they are created by everybody."
URBAN
STATEHOOD
SAM SMITH, NY PRESS, 2000 - What does New
York City have more of than New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana,
South Dakota, Delaware, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming,
all put together?
People.
What do New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana,
South Dakota, Delaware, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming
have that New York City doesn't have?
Eighteen US Senators.
New York City gets to share two senators
with the residue of New York state, which is also larger than
all these other states put together. In fact, there are 16 states
with a combined population less than New York in its entirety.
This discrimination is, of course, not
unique to New York. The larger states of California and Texas
have it worse. And the capital colony of Washington DC lacks
even partial representation in the Senate.
The results of this constitutional but
crazy apportionment of America's upper house means, among other
things, that ethnic minorities are underrepresented in a manner
officially permitted hardly anywhere else in American culture.
If the Senate had been a school district it would have been under
court-ordered bussing for the past few decades. If it were a
private club, you'd want to resign from it before running for
public office.
In fact, the malapportionment of the Senate
is perhaps the most important, undiscussed issue in the country
today for there is hardly a matter of political importance that
would not be affected if that body were to reflect 21st century
rather than 19th century demographics.
http://prorev.com/sthdurban.htm
ITALY
WIKIPEDIA - The Regions of Italy were granted
a degree of regional autonomy in the 1948 constitution, which
states that the constitution's role is: to recognize, protect
and promote local autonomy, to ensure that services at the state
level are as decentralized as possible, and to adapt the principles
and laws establishing autonomy and decentralization.
However, five regions have been granted
a special status of autonomy to establish their own regional
legislation on some specific local matters; based on cultural
grounds, geographical location and on the presence of important
ethnic minorities. The other 15 ordinary regions were effectively
established only in the early 1970s. . .
The regions primarily served to decentralize
the state government machinery. A constitutional reform in 2001
remarkably widened the competences of the regions, in particular
concerning legislative powers and most of state controls were
abolished.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regions_of_Italy
WHEN NATIONS
GET TOO BIG
GAR ALPEROVITZ, NEW YORK TIMES - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to have grasped
the essential truth that no nation - not even the United States
- can be managed successfully from the center once it reaches
a certain scale. Moreover, the bold proposals that Mr. Schwarzenegger
is now making for everything from universal health care to global
warming point to the kind of decentralization of power which,
once started, could easily shake up America's fundamental political
structure.
Governor Schwarzenegger is quite clear
that California is not simply another state. "We are the
modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta,"
he recently declared. "We have the economic strength, we
have the population and the technological force of a nation-state."
In his inaugural address, Mr. Schwarzenegger proclaimed, "We
are a good and global commonwealth."
Political rhetoric? Maybe. But California's
governor has also put his finger on a little discussed flaw in
America's constitutional formula. The United States is almost
certainly too big to be a meaningful democracy. What does "participatory
democracy" mean in a continent? Sooner or later, a profound,
probably regional, decentralization of the federal system may
be all but inevitable.
A recent study by the economists Alberto
Alesina of Harvard and Enrico Spolaore of Tufts demonstrates
that the bigger the nation, the harder it becomes for the government
to meet the needs of its dispersed population. Regions that don't
feel well served by the government's distribution of goods and
services then have an incentive to take independent action, the
economists note. . .
Few Americans realize just how huge this
nation is. Germany could fit within the borders of Montana. France
is smaller than Texas. Leaving aside three nations with large,
unpopulated land masses (Russia, Canada and Australia), the United
States is geographically larger than all the other advanced industrial
countries taken together. . .
If the scale of a country renders it unmanageable,
there are two possible responses. One is a breakup of the nation;
the other is a radical decentralization of power. More than half
of the world's 200 nations formed as breakaways after 1946. These
days, many nations - including Brazil, Britain, Canada, China,
France, Italy and Spain, just to name a few - are devolving power
to regions in various ways. . .
CROSS-OVER
POLITICS AND THE IDEOLOGY OF SCALE
Sam Smith
In an age of conglomeration and domination,
the cross-political nature of devolution - or the ideology of
scale - attracts little attention. One can go through a whole
political campaign and never consider it. But that doesn't mean
the issue is not there.
Consider two current examples: the assault
on local control of public schools and the smart growth movement.
Both are driven by a curious alliance of liberal, conservative
and corporate interests. And both attempt to replace the decentralization
of decision-making with centralized, bureaucratic choices.
For example, only Vilsack among the Democratic
candidate for president has challenged the No Child law despite
it being based on absurdly inadequate justifications, proposed
by the least qualified president ever to hold office and pushed
by a bunch of child profiteers who will probably be the only
clear winners under the legislation.
Similarly, the smart growth movement is
being increasingly driven by a dubious alliance between "we
know what's good for you" liberal planners and developers
who initially resisted the idea until they realized how many
new high-rises might result.
Liberals and conservatives who favor America's
two centuries of local school control, or wish to resist the
transformation of successful communities into high-rise factory
farms for globalized serfs, find themselves ignored, ridiculed
as NIMBYs or considered behind the times.
One developer's Power Point even declared
that "fear and loathing of density is. . .ironic, dangerous,
counter-productive." In other words, preferring the lifestyle
predominant in 99.9% of human history is now dangerous and counter-productive.
Further, in the tradition of the new managerial mullahs, anyone
who doesn't like what they're up to is suffering from fear and
loathing of positive change.
No Child Left Unregimented
The assault on community controlled public
education is not only a result of Bush's No Child law. Bill Kauffman
once noted in Chronicles that it was liberal Harvard president
President James Conant who produced a series of postwar reports
calling for the "elimination of the small high school"
in order to compete with the Soviets and deal with the nuclear
era. Says Kauffman, "Conant the barbarian triumphed: the
number of school districts plummeted from 83,718 in 1950 to 17,995
in 1970."
Writing in Principal Magazine, Kathleen
Cushman pointed out that the small school movement was driven
by "the steady rise in school size that has seen the average
school population increase five-fold since the end of World War
II. A push to consolidate schools has reduced the number of districts
by 70 percent in the same period. Ironically, this trend toward
big schools coincides with research that repeatedly has found
small schools - commonly defined as no more than 400 students
for elementary schools - to be demonstrably better for students
of all ability levels, in all kinds of settings. Academic achievement
rises, as indicated by grades, test scores, honor roll membership,
subject-area achievement, and assessment of higher-order thinking
skills. For both elementary and secondary students, researchers
also find small schools equal or superior to large ones on most
student behavior measures. Rates of truancy, classroom disruption,
vandalism, theft, substance abuse, and gang participation all
are reduced in small schools, according to a synthesis of 103
studies."
Education is one of those human activities
clearly centered on two people (teacher and student). As the
system surrounding this experience becomes larger, more complex
and more bureaucratic, the key players become pawns in a new
and unrelated bureaucratic game. The role of the principal also
dramatically shifts - from being an educational administrator
to being a cross between a corporate executive and a warden.
It is such a transformation that helps to bring us things like
what happened at Columbine.
Consider, for a moment, that not a single
private school has merged with five or ten other academies in
the name of efficiency and improved learning. No one has suggested
a Andover-Exeter-Groton-Milton-Choate-Kent School Administrative
District.
If conglomeration of schools really helped,
why would such places not give it a try? I once asked the head
of one of the top private girl's schools in the country what
he considered the maximum size of a school he'd like to run.
His reply: 500 students. . ."Remember, that means 1,000
parents."
Yet not only do we find George Bush, with
lots of Democratic support, actively destroying local control
over public schools, mayors and governors rushing to join the
attack.
For example, inspired by New York City
Mayor Michael Bloomberg who has yet to produce convincing results
for his corporatization of public education, DC's 36-year old
new mayor Adrian Fenty is following suit. He wants to abolish
the elected school and put the system under his control despite
his impressive inexperience in education. But Fenty, like many
in politics and business, is absolutely convinced that certainty
is an adequate substitute for competence.
How little he really understands was well
described by Colbert King in the Washington Post:
"If governance and lack of accountability
are the main problems, why do students attending Lafayette and
Murch elementary schools, which are west of Rock Creek Park,
exceed proficiency targets in reading and math by wide margins
while students at Ketchum and Stanton elementary schools, east
of the Anacostia River, fall far short of the mark? The four
schools are in the same governance structure. Their principals
report to the same superintendent and are guided by the same
school board policies. True, Lafayette and Murch, located in
middle-income neighborhoods, have more white students. But before
going off on a racial tangent, consider this: Black students
attending Lafayette and Murch, in contrast to their counterparts
in Southeast, also excel in reading and math." King asked
Fenty why his takeover would help matters: "His bottom line:
he has the energy, determination, and sense of urgency that he
feels are missing among school leaders to make those things happen."
In other words, he thinks what the schools really need most is
himself.
Perhaps even more bizarre is what is happening
in Maine. The plan itself is familiar: the pursuit of the false
god of educational efficiency through the concentration of school
districts as ordered by the governor. 290 school districts would
be merged into 26 regional administrative units.
What makes it stranger is that Maine is
one of a handful of New England states where one can still find
the remnants of American democracy functioning at human scale
thanks to such institutions as town meetings and lots of small
villages that do what they want without excessive interference
from above. This tradition has produced in recent years more
independent governors (although not the present one) than just
about any state and a culture of honest independence in politics
and governance that would best be emulated rather than reorganized.
And who suggested the course that the governor
is following? None other than representatives of that citadel
of Washington anti-democratic elitism, that hospice of prematurely
aging MBAs and political science majors: the Brookings Institution.
This is like Arianna Huffington coaching the Chicago Bears.
To add to the oddity, it is all being done
in the name of "smart growth."
To give a sense of how alien this is to
traditional Maine culture, consider a town meeting I attended
a few years back in Freeport. I got there a little late and the
respectables had taken all the chairs, so I stood in the hall
outside with the baseball cap and pencil in the ear set, all
intensely interested and exchanging play by play among themselves.
It was a heated discussion that eventually produced the resignation
of a couple of council members but I tired of standing and so
returned to my quarters to watch it on TV. At 11 pm, when I thought
the citizen input was almost over, two people showed up to testify
explaining they had become so perturbed, they had gotten out
of bed, dressed and braved the ice and cold to join the fray
at town hall.
Now that's the way democracy is meant to
work, but it's damn seldom that you see it any more. And when
you do, the sensible reaction should be: don't mess with it.
Although the Maine media has seemed to
give implied blessing to the school reorganization scheme, there
is life in the state yet as public comment illustrates.
One Brunswick school board member called
Governor Balducci's plan "totalitarian." Said another,
"To lose our local control, I think it would be devastating."
Asked one citizen: "Tell me folks, right here in Brewer,
do you want somebody from Alton, Bradley or Bangor telling you
how we should run our school system?"
A school superintendent, according to the
Brunswick Times Record, "warned the plan could mean a higher
per-student cost for Brunswick, possible budget cuts that would
affect teaching staff, and a potential clash of educational philosophies
between Brunswick, Freeport and the towns of School Administrative
District 75 that would share one administrative office and one
school board under the proposed plan. [The superintendent] also
criticized the governor and Education Commissioner Susan Gendron
for producing a plan that glossed over the loss of more than
600 teachers, hundreds of jobs for administrative office staff
and the educational impact of superintendents.
Other comment, as reported by local press:
Roger Shaw, superintendent of the Mars
Hills schools: "All small schools are struggling for survival
and all small schools are in danger. Whether by chance or design,
we are in the crosshairs of state policy."
Harvey Shue, a junior at Hampden Academy
called it an "extreme act" to merge his 2,200-student
school district into a 16,000-student district based miles away.
Richard Farrell of Monhegan "said
it would be unworkable to relocate the management of its seven-pupil
elementary school to the mainland. He said parents would be hard-pressed
to attend meetings and that the island's overall cost would be
bound to increase."
Andrew Geranis of York "asked lawmakers
to reject any proposal that would change the way schools are
now governed. 'Local control is the heart of our life in Maine,'
he said.
Angela Iancelli of Monhegan Island "said
she feared that district consolidation would lead to the closing
of the island's small school, which she said manages to operate
efficiently while turning out students who perform well on state
achievement tests."
This is not a left-right struggle but one
that may far more important for our future: a struggle between
communities and bureaucracies and between humans and systems.
At present, the communities and humans are not winning.
Smart Growth
The tie-in with smart growth is quite revealing.
The smart growth movement started as a largely well-intentioned
movement led by planners and environmentalists. Many of their
proposals made sense but it had some serious problems, beginning
with the insulting manner it treated suburban communities in
which many Americans lived, had improved their lives and educated
their children. As is traditionally the case with planners, these
citizens were expected to adapt to a purportedly ideal physical
model - even at the cost of having to move or being evicted -
instead of having the emphasis placed on improving - for them
as well as the environment - the communities in which they currently
lived.
This is not a new problem with planners.
In 1910, G. K. Chesterton described two characters, Hudge and
Gudge, whose thinking evolved in such a disparate manner that
the one came to favor the building of large public tenements
for the poor while the other believed that these public projects
were so awful that the slums from whence they came were in fact
preferable. Wrote Chesterton:
"Such is the lamentable history of
Hudge and Gudge; which I merely introduced as a type of an endless
and exasperating misunderstanding which is always occurring in
modern England. To get men out of a rookery, men are put into
a tenement; and at the beginning the healthy human soul loathes
them both. A man's first desire is to get away as far as possible
from the rookery, even should his mad course lead him to a model
dwelling. His second desire is, naturally, to get away from the
model dwelling, even if it should lead a man back to the rookery.
"Neither Hudge nor Gudge had ever
thought for an instant what sort of house a man might probably
like for himself. In short, they did not begin with the ideal;
and, therefore, were not practical politicians."
Much of American politics and planning
follows the Hudge-¬Gudge model, producing failure
for both conservatives and liberals -- the former offering us
an army of the homeless and the latter presenting us finally
with drug-infested housing projects.
In the case of smart growth, the Hudge-Gudge
conflict could have been avoided by considering not just a community's
ecological liabilities but its assets, and then figuring out
how to lessen the former without harming the latter. This might
lead not to large scale redevelopment but towards ways of making
it less necessary for people to move around so much in order
to fulfill a day's tasks, permitting accessory apartments in
single-family neighborhoods and easing zoning restrictions on
community-serving small businesses. In many suburbs wastefully
designed shopping strips can provide more than enough room for
high-rise density without imposing them on communities that don't
want them.
It is helpful also to bear in mind that
next to economists, no profession has been so consistently wrong
and harmful to the human spirit as urban planning.
There was, for example, zoning that destroyed
the mixed use city in the name of cleanliness and health and
that laid the groundwork for the sprawl of which planners now
complain.
There were decades of racist federal housing
lending policies that created ghettoes in cities as the money
fed the expansion of the suburbs.
There was the destruction of magnificent
streetcar systems on behalf of the automobile.
There was urban renewal that destroyed
communities instead of rebuilding them.
There was anti-human public housing.
There were - and continues to be - grandiose
"economic development" programs that overwhelmingly
favored the upper class and a small coterie of developers but
which left less wealthy urban residents increasingly victims
of neglect and of gentrification.
Each of these schemes were based on physical
solutions to human, social and economic problems - conceived
by planners and politicians stunningly indifferent to their affect
on actual people.
The human, the community, the small were
repeatedly considered archaic, insignificant and regressive.
From the progressive movement of the early
20th century on, well-meaning but excessively self-assured members
of the elite have controlled the debate, the money and the plans,
with barely restrained contempt for the reservations, concerns
and resistance of the less powerful. And so it is with smart
growth.
Listen to Grow Smart Maine:
"Many of Maine's smaller cities and
towns are experiencing unplanned growth but lack the resources
and experience to manage that change in ways that protect the
character of their community. . . The Model Town Community Project
will work with a selected town during 2006 and 2007 to provide
tools and advice that will help the town shape its future. The
project will mobilize local, state and regional resources, enable
the town to explore new growth strategies and fully engage local
residents by combining the best elements of New England town
meetings with ground breaking new technologies."
In other words, we'll come in and show
you how to run a town meeting our way, just like we learned at
business school.
But if smart growth is meant to be about
environmentally sound planning, how come we have to consolidate
our school districts and our town offices?
Because once you put your faith in the
sort of expertise that a planning-managerial elite offers, once
you turn to MBAs like others turn to Jesus, then you don't really
need democracy, town meetings or small schools. What you need
is efficiency and managerial skill and you have been promised
that, so why worry?
Further, even over smart growth's short
life, a disturbing alliance has developed between some liberals
and developers thanks to the latter discovering that the environmentalists
didn't really want to stop them from building, they just want
them to build somewhere else and most likely in a place where
they could get more per square foot.
Washington, DC offers a good example and,
once again, the Brookings mafia is hard at work. In fact, it
even wants to eliminate something that make Washington one of
the most appealing cities in the world: its building height limit.
Reports the Washington Post: "Christopher
B. Leinberger, a land-use expert at the Brookings Institution,
last week brought up the prospect of raising the height limit
on buildings in the District. He didn't specify a height but
encouraged community leaders, planners and developers to at least
entertain the idea. 'Things have changed,' he told a standing-room-only
crowd . . . 'We have an office market that needs to go someplace,'
he said. 'Density is critical. We're running out of land. We
need to build up.'"
In some neighborhoods, citizens are even
being called NIMBYs because they don't want high-rises shoved
into their pleasant communities and the name-callers include
not just the developers but enabling liberals who think they're
saving the planet. Never mind that in their own city, in Greenwich
Village or in Europe there are plenty of examples of density
without high-rise factory farms.
Fortunately, not everyone is taken in.
One in attendance at the density meeting
wrote online afterwards: "The biggest hole in the program,
in my humble opinion, was the fact that none of the presenters
acknowledged that DC is not Bethesda or Atlanta or Portland.
It is our nation's capital, not a strip mall out in Fairfax waiting
to be retooled."
It is this remarkable notion of our nation's
capital and other cities - that they are just strip malls waiting
to be retooled - that is driving much of urban planning and politics
these days.
In both the school consolidation and the
smart growth debates the issue of human scale - and not some
liberal-conservative conflict - is at the core. But we have been
taught - by intellectuals, by the media, by politicians, - to
revere a promise of efficiency and technological advance over
the empirical advantages of living the way humans have traditionally
lived, including valuing the small places that host, nurture
and define their lives. We have been trained not to even notice
when our very humanity is being destroyed in the name of mere
physical change.
We should notice, though, because in the
end, if we lose the fight for staying human, whether we were
liberal or conservative won't have mattered a bit.
o
ALAN CARON, president of Maine's Grow
Smart, writes about our article on smart growth and school consolidation:
"Nice story on what's happening in
Maine. You obviously spent quite a lot of time on it. Too bad
you missed the single most important fact about the school administrative
consolidation discussion going on up here, while you were so
busy waxing poetic on Maine's town meeting tradition and local
control. Why do we need to get beyond having a superintendent
on every block? Simple. 55% of the cost of local schools is borne
by the taxpayers of the state, not the local community. Hardly
in the tradition to which you referred. And taxpayers have every
right to expect that their money isn't wasted. The town next
door to mine has a superintendent for one elementary school.
If that's what local control means we're all ready for a little
less local and a lot more efficient. Does doesn't that mean we
have to throw out local democracy, but it does mean we've got
to stop treating local control like it's some shrine of infallibility
and start asking some tough questions. Maybe in the future a
little less ideology and a few more facts would help better inform
your readers."
SAM SMITH - Of course, this is not a matter
of a couple of school districts consolidating but a massive centralization
of school districts being pushed by a governor with no known
expertise in either education or efficiency. And neither can
Grow Smart can offer guarantees of efficiency. For example, a
study done for the Pennsylvania state legislature last September
found that "Overall, the research did not find any evidence
to support the notion that bigger districts are better districts,
in terms of cost, administration or academic achievement, in
rural Pennsylvania." Another study, in November, found that
while Oklahoma law allows different administrative costs depending
on the size of the district, "most districts were operating
below that level regardless of their size."
There are other problems with consolidation.
The Institute of Local Self-Reliance has noted, "For many
small rural districts, state financing has been a lifesaver,
providing desperately needed resources. But state control of
the purse strings has also been problematic for small schools.
In many states, funding formulas have given priority to maximizing
efficiency (as measured by annual per pupil costs). These states
have devised policies that favor big suburban districts and pressure
rural schools to consolidate."
A case in point was Nebraska: "Beginning
in 1996, the state adopted a series of policies aimed at forcing
small schools to consolidate. The state increased its share of
school funding from about one-quarter to one-half. But unlike
the old funding formula, which had doled out funds based on each
school district's costs, the new formula provides a flat rate
per pupil. This rewards the state's largest school districts,
which have low per pupil, per year costs, and penalizes the state's
smallest school districts. Ninety small rural districts lost
more than 10 percent of their state aid. Meanwhile, the largest
school districts saw their funding increase by $78 million. .
. According to the Nebraska Alliance for Rural Education, the
state is losing some of its best schools. Those who attend high
schools with fewer than 100 students are significantly more likely
to graduate and go on to college."
Caron's argument that money should decide
who has the power - sort of like our political campaigns, no?
- suggests that the federal government is entitled to choose
who is on the board of Halliburton or the Bath Iron Works or
that the lives of all senior citizens should be directed by Washington
in return for their Social Security. Caron's view, however, reflect
corporate rather than democratic values.
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