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Democracy in practice |
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Why did Royal Oakers reject
the School Millage In effect, the voters decided not to leave those issues in the hands of the contending special interests, as the majority is most often willing to do. About many matters, the majority is willing to let advocates and opponents argue and lobby, and doesn't much care which side wins. A local example of such an issue would be the resistance by some residents over the City's plan to install sidewalks in a neighborhood where there are no sidewalks. A national example is the disagreement in the accounting fraternity about whether executive stock options should be itemized as expenses in a corporation's chart of accounts. In both instances, the public's passive will says, in effect, "May the best man win." NIMBY (the Not-In-My-Back-Yard syndrome) is usually thought to apply only to physical issues like chopping down trees or erecting a shopping center, but the non-physical dimension of NIMBY comes into play when citizens force contending parties to pay attention to more than each other about concepts, principles, such as abortion, where the national 50-50 split prevents any one-sided victory. To return to Royal Oak: Turn to the School Millage: Impatient with the often uninformed nit-picking of so many of the residents who appeared before them, the Trustees stopped listening. Somehow (many would suggest because of an "arrogance of power") the Board did not sense the groundswell of opposition to their proposed combination of school closings and erections. Or, if they sensed it, they were so out-of-touch that they thought, felt, hoped their campaign of excellent public presentations of the party line would overcome "uninformed" opposition. In both cases, the active will of the majority made itself felt. The lesson in all this? During the campaign for Royal Oak's Human Rights Ordinance, there was a lot of name-calling and questioning of motives. During the public dialogue about the school millage, proponents used disparaging words to describe opponents; from memory, a couple of the Trustees actually did their name-calling in a letter to the editor. In both cases, the side which did most of the negative campaigning lost. So, if you are working for an unpopular cause, restrict public awareness as much as you can, so that mostly your supporters will bother to vote. On the other hand, if you want to defeat what is being proposed, write letters to the editor, mail letters, send e-mails, drop literature all over town, hold town meetings and coffee discussions in homes. If you are working for an unpopular cause, resist the temptation to question your adversary's motivation or to call her names. Focus on the facts and on legitimate differences in how those facts can be interpreted. On the other hand, if you want to defeat what is being proposed -- follow the same advice! ? 2002 The
Single-issue Voter However, it is unreasonable to demand that a candidate violate her principles on that single issue merely in the hope of getting votes. Speaking of principle, let's say one of your principles is "Blood is thicker than water," that family comes first, no matter what. Let's say also that you operate on the principle that you will never tell a lie. A family member gets into legal trouble. You can protect him from that trouble by offering false testimony. Which "principle" wins -- blood or truth? So it is in real life, of which politics is a part. I think it is unwise to think of compromise as "selling out" one's principles. Day-to-day family decisions, volunteer-group conclusions, business options, governmental resolutions are mostly judgment calls, not choices between moral right or wrong. If an individual is indeed a single-issue voter, a candidate who disagrees on that issue has no choice but to forfeit that vote and move on. July 2001 Peace Resolution . Human Rights Ordinance In both cases, the activists included moderates who attempt to persuade and extremists who try to coerce. In both cases, they lost. The Human Rights Ordinance was defeated 2-to-1 by voters. The Peace Resolution was rejected 6-to-1 by the Commissioners. The lesson? Organized protest, peaceful or not and no matter what the cause, cannot be automatically assumed to represent the community-at-large, the "will of the people," whether by "community" we mean city, county, state, country . . . or neighborhood. March 2003 "Off with his
head!" Now, several news stories later, it is still unclear what specific complaints are being leveled against Semchena. Following a telephone alert from political and nonpolitical activists, the next Commission meeting heard public comment from former Commissioners, residents, even a police officer who made it clear Semchena's track record is pretty impressive. There are rumors that his underlings have misbehaved (about what?), that he isn't managing his department well. Well, there's a Performance Review Committee of some sort whose charge it is to address such matters, and those evaluations are typically done confidentially, without public threats about special meetings or expedited termination. A plus of all the furor, though, is that the public became involved. Wouldn't it be great -- imagine how exciting it would be -- if the public could comment on the performance of certain individuals in the Code Enforcement, Engineering, Building departments! |
Also on this page Organized
Protest "Off
with his head!"
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