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Foreign policy goes local.

Article Excerpt
The scene is the floor of the Chicago city council chambers. The meeting is unusually passionate. The floor speeches are particularly charged, even by the Chicago city council's turbulent standards.

"Had this resolution not been introduced, we would have been accused of being morons, amoral. If we don't speak out for the people--who will?" demands one of the council's more conservative members, Alderman Bernard Stone.

The date is January 16, 2003, and the Chicago city council is in the midst of passing a resolution denouncing the drive toward war with Iraq. The author and principal sponsor of this resolution is Alderman Joe Moore from Chicago's 49th Ward. Unsure that such a resolution will fly in a council controlled by Chicago's powerful Mayor Richard M. Daley, Moore drafts it anyway, hoping that Chicago will join the close to 100 cities in a growing movement voicing local opposition to Bush's impending war with Iraq. The resolution passes 46-to-1 and sent a loud message reverberating through the mainstream media and Congress that folks in the heart of America's Midwest aren't happy with the direction Bush's administration is taking in the Middle East.

The passion of the council debate didn't arise out of a pro-con debate. Liberals and conservatives agreed: U.S. foreign policy was heading in a reckless direction. Over the last five years, citizens and local leaders have increasingly added their voices to the national debate over the Iraq War through municipal institutions like city councils. Even before the costs of war began to hit home, these local voices warned of the risks of war and occupation.

The idea of municipal foreign policy draws on such experiences as the Cities for Peace movement, the anti-Apartheid municipal movement of the 1980s, and the nuclear-free zone movement of the 1970s. It asserts that politicians who are most accessible and accountable to their citizens are in the best position to represent positions that challenge the political status quo and the large corporate powers to which national lawmakers and policymakers usually answer. Locally elected officials are certainly susceptible to moneyed interests, particularly in many large cities. But the more local the office, the greater the accountability to the public and public sentiment.

The War

In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. citizens filled hundreds...