Bloated Sense of Importance?

A little background, before I jump into the main topic today. For more than four years, every night between 5 and 6 p.m., a group of residents stands in front of the Benton County courthouse with peace-promoting signs and flags of various types, waving to passing cars. This peace vigil has taken place every single day since October 7, 2001 -- the day the U.S. started dropping bombs on Afghanistan. The crowd swells and diminishes, but is never absent, no matter how cold or rainy or hot it is outside. Every now and again, a "support our troops" demonstration happens across the street, but it is far more inconsistent and, honestly, sort of pathetic. The people participating in the peace vigil, including several veterans of various wars, are simply standing up and protesting the latest invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. So what is the other group trying to accomplish, exactly? Don't they want their well-supported troops to come back home?

Anyway, I find the level of commitment inspiring. I have participated in the vigil myself, off and on, mostly off. I am not a total pacifist, and I personally supported the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. But when the war drums started sounding in earnest and George W. Bush's finger pointed at Iraq, I jumped up and joined my fellow citizens in fervent protest. I am a wimp. I have stood in front of that courthouse for maybe 60 days over the past four years.

My point: This town has a very strong pro-peace/anti-war contingent.

At the city council meeting last night, a handful of these people arrived, hell-bent on making a difference. Leah and Bart Bolger presented a petition to the council, signed by 800 like-minded folks, asking the council to pass a resolution in support of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. (As a matter of perspective, there are approximately 40,000 people of voting age living in Corvallis. The petitioners only managed to get a fairly unimpressive 2% of the eligible voting population to sign, despite an effort begun more than six months ago.) The mayor and city council decided to schedule a public hearing so that the pros and cons of this resolution could be debated further.

This move was not entirely unprecedented. In April 2003, the city council passed a resolution taking an official stand against the Patriot Act and reaffirming their commitment to protecting the civil rights of Corvallis citizens.

I love the idea that Corvallis feels important enough to pass resolutions addressing federal foreign policy. I can't quite figure out what this is really supposed to accomplish, however, other than allowing the creators of the petition to feel as though they have truly taken some sort of tangible action against the war. And I'm not so sure that the purpose of the city council is to provide such bragging rights to such a tiny percentage of townspeople.

Maybe the rest of us should consider this encouragement to start our own petitions. My goal for the upcoming year will be to gather signatures hoping to sway the city council to adopt the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as our official town religion. Somehow, that seems just as relevant.