CIVIL UNIONS, JIM JEFFORDS, HOWARD DEAN, ANTI-IRAQ RESOLUTIONS...:

In Vermont, a Town-Meeting revolt over Iraq war (Sara B. Miller, 1/28/05, Christian Science Monitor)

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

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

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

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

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towns will consider what role the Vermont National Guard should play in the war, and whether American troops should be withdrawn.

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

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

On Town Meeting Day in Vermont, a small-town referendum on Iraq: Preliminary results show 38 of 52 burgs are against the war (Jonathan Finer, , March 2, 2005, Washington Post)

The resolution calling for the return of U.S. troops from Iraq was the 31st item on the town meeting agenda here in the white-walled gymnasium they use for square dances and thrift sales. After a day of balloting, it passed.

In postcard-perfect Strafford, Vt., a few miles west along a dirt road, it passed with hardly a whisper of dissent, minutes after residents authorized $12,920 to buy a used backhoe loader.

And in Bethel, a mill town that is conservative by this blue state's standard, residents narrowly endorsed a version of the measure, against the urging of a soldier who returned last week from the war.

On Town Meeting Day, a venerable New England tradition that dates to the 17th century and has been hailed as a paradigm of representative democracy, voters in 52 Vermont towns, more than one-fifth of the state's 246 municipalities, became perhaps the first in the country to participate in a formal referendum on U.S. involvement in Iraq.

Vermont may lead the Democratic Party, but it doesn't lead the nation.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 2, 2005 10:46 AM