Every once in awhile, Evanston City Council pulls a fast one and comes out ahead of the pack on one issue or another. Case in point: Monday night’s passage of a resolution condemning a pre-emptive strike against Iraq.
With only Ald. Edmund Moran (6th) dissenting, the council took a stand on a tantalizingly controversial national debate — and emerged an unlikely leader in the Chicago area of city-based resistance to the war. The effort has led 41 other communities — including major cities like San Francisco, Seattle and Detroit — to sign similar resolutions, according to Washington, D.C.-based Cities for Peace. In the metro area, only Chicago has passed a similar — and some say, more scathing — resolution. (Oak Park is considering the measure.) Evanston’s neighbors, including Skokie, Winnetka and Glenview, so far haven’t broached the subject.
More importantly, the council passed this resolution with little discussion of the matter.
According to Ald. Stephen Engleman (7th), the move was unprecedented in City Council history. But it raises the question: What’s the use? On top of that, why now — after the possibility of war has been floating on the horizon for months? So what if the language blusters that “this resolution shall be in full force and effect from and after its passage”? Ald. Steven Bernstein (4th) said that this passage was an exercise in futility — and it may be easy to agree.
But Karen Dolan of Cities for Peace makes a good point: Taking a stand draws public attention. Dolan says the goal of resolutions like Evanston’s is not to get the Bush administration to back down, a goal possibly too large for a coalition like Cities for Peace to accomplish even if it were to reach its goal of 100 community resolutions in time for the State of the Union address. The council has turned heads, fueling the quickly spreading fire of a broader grassroots resistance.
Aldermen noted that they were responding directly to citizen calls for action, and in joining this movement intentionally or otherwise, Evanston’s council gave a local voice to an international problem that too often can seem distant and abstract. By voting “yes” to this resolution, aldermen acknowledged that “Evanston’s 18- to 25-year-old population is likely to be a source of recruitment” and that the war’s costs likely will harm the local economy and result in the neglect of education, health care, housing and infrastructure.
Moreover, taking a stand specifically draws media attention — and possibly broader dissemination of the issues of this debate. To this end, local media, not just the outlets in big cities, have a responsibility to report the possible effects of war on the communities they serve. It is as much the responsibility of the Evanston Review as the Chicago Tribune to educate readers on developments at the national level and to cover the local reaction, acting as the sounding board for people on both sides.
Evanston’s voice may be small, but Ald. Ann Rainey (8th) had it right when she said Monday night, “It’s our absolute obligation to send word to Washington to say how we feel.”
Maybe by acting as an example, some new voices will enter the debate.
Assistant City Editor Liz Raap is a Medill senior. She can be reached at [email protected].
