Rob's Note: Thanks to Brattleboro's Larry Bloch for submitting this piece.

ON COMMUNITY, DEMOCRACY, AND THE LAW

For many of us July 4th has always been a time of ritual. We celebrate, we pay our respects to those who have served and to those who have fallen. We reflect, we protest. Communities and families gather. America is energized. In Brattleboro last week this energy was evident as I danced, smiled and waved to the thousands of folks along the parade route from my vantage aboard the radio free brattleboro float. Those fortunate enough to be there seemed to connect with all of the parade's diverse participants. Joy was in the air.

For me July 4th has always been both a celebrative and a reflective time. Call me a patriot with an independent mind. As I gather with friends, family, and community I am often reminded of the potential humans have to discover joy in any moment, to conjure love out of thin air, and how all of us have much more in common than in difference.

More and more these days citizens working together to effect change on many different campaigns have discovered another common thread, one that frustrates their efforts to be heard.

Our representatives are often not responsive to us even when a great majority speaks with one voice. Most of us by now understand how Congress functions; Special Interests dominate the agenda and monied, corporate lobbyists hold sway. But Vermonters are discovering that same lack of responsiveness on both a statewide level and in our own communities.

Citizen groups lobbying in Montpelier are relatively impotent when up against slick, corporate influence peddlers and compromised legislators. Locally, non-binding resolutions are often ignored by our Selectboard and even Town Commission recommendations are sometimes met with resistance and stalling.

Vermont is one of the few states without Home Rule: The power that enables local municipalities to decide for themselves what is it that they want and what is it that they do not want. Many states allow their cities and towns to create Town Charters which set forth the mechanisms for passing binding ordinances. Under Home Rule, local ordinances are not subject to state oversight as long as the town does not violate state or federal law.

Brattleboro is one of the few towns in Vermont where citizens have the power to pass binding ordinances, though without Home Rule they may be struck down by the State Legislature. Perhaps the time to energize a Home Rule movement, already afoot in Montpelier, has arrived.

Encroachments into local communities abound: Predatory corporations, Big Box Stores, Incinerator plants, Toxic sludge operations, Factory farms, the list goes on...Communities all too often find themselves battling these encroachments in the regulatory arena. Years of never ending hearings and red tape too often resulting in, at best, a cost for doing the very business that a community does not want in the first place. Shall communities have the authority to promote a locally owned business economy? To own and protect their water supply? To decide how to manage their toxic waste? To determine the nature of their local food supply? To choose their sources of energy? To preserve the public commons for the public interest?

There has been much talk lately about the law. But where does the law come from? Many of us have grown up believing that the law comes from our representatives, our "lawmakers". Too often the law is a reflection of power, of who is in charge. Too often the law has been used to repress people rather than protect them. But are not "we the people" the source of human law in this land? Is it not the responsibility of our representatives to listen to our collective will? Their job is to administer, shape and regulate the law, but the law derives from the citizenry.

What is a community to do when its representatives do not uphold the law?

In the mid 1970's the FCC withdrew its program to license low powered community broadcasts. For 30 years the FCC's regulatory solution has been to facilitate the consolidation of the airwaves into the hands of a few large corporations. In 1998, when this community sought to broadcast to itself the voices, opinions and art of its citizens, it found the FCC had abandoned its regulatory responsibility to provide ready and affordable access to the airwaves to all the citizens of the United States who collectively own them. Did we go home to wait? No, we filled the vacuum created by the FCC's failure to follow the mandate of the Telecommunications Acts of 1934 and 1996. In March of 2003 the citizens of Brattleboro documented its authorization of rfb's broadcasts in a town-wide vote. We were not acting outside the law as some have suggested, indeed we were upholding the law.

People's new consciousness and their willingness to adopt laws confronting federal agencies, corporate lawyers, elected officials, industry associations, and judges, has generated great organizing energy. Fueled by that energy, an expanding coalition of civic groups, local, independent business associations, community media, labor unions, farmers' organizations, municipal governments, and environmental groups have rebuffed attempts by corporations and state legislators to influence local lawmaking.

As communities seek to have authority to decide what it is that they want, they are discovering that we truly have more in common than in difference. We are rediscovering the history and nature of our democracy. As citizen pioneers we are digging up the seeds of our democracy and through shared conversations, replanting them in the fertile soil of our changing times. The nurturing of those seeds and the future harvest we may reap will depend on the focus of our intent, the effective use of our energy, and the consensus of the actions we choose.

Larry Bloch
writes from Brattleboro and
welcomes comment/questions at
larrysvt@hotmail.com