The Nation: Berkeley Democracy

The three radicals who were elected to the Berkeley City Council last month began their new careers in the System by declining to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Last week, at their second meeting, the radicals, supported by newly elected Berkeley Mayor Warren Widener and one of the council’s more moderate members, went a step farther. To forestall additional argument about the phrase “liberty and justice for all,” the council abolished the pledge altogether from future sessions.

Next, the radicals proposed not only that the city of Berkeley sign a peace treaty with North and South Viet Nam but also that the city dispatch a delegation to the Paris peace talks. The other members, their imaginations dislocated by the thought of a Sovereign State of Berkeley embarked upon international diplomacy, declared that peace treaties were outside the city’s jurisdiction, and the proposal was defeated.

The form of the proposal may have been preposterous, but in fact a more democratic perspective might be restored if government at the lowest levels throughout the U.S.—city and county councils, for example—would entertain similar proposals, taking votes on exactly what they wanted done about the war. It is strange that the basic units of democracy, habitually thinking small, worry only about sewers and sidewalks instead of occasionally debating the fate of their sons.