City councils’ profiles in courage

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By Dennis Rockstroh
Mercury News
Oct. 03, 2002

These troubling times call for great leaders and people of courage.
While we’re still waiting for great leaders to emerge, there are some signs of courage, that rarest of human virtues.
We all saw and admired the courage of selfless people like firefighters and airliner passengers headed for certain death on Sept. 11.
These were acts of spontaneous courage.
But the days that followed required another kind of virtue: thoughtful courage, doing what is right despite the odds.
I put the city councils of Santa Cruz and Berkeley in that category. The city council of Fremont was there for a moment. Then chickened out.
It’s easy to wave a flag. But it’s often hard to stand up for what’s right. That’s courage.
Last week, the members of the Santa Cruz City Council took a stand on the nation’s rush to war with Iraq.
They opposed it. Said so. And fired off letters to President Bush and other federal, state and local representatives saying so.
Their reasons: lack of international support, the potential to destabilize the Middle East, threat of wider war, potential for damage to the U.S. and world economy and the inevitable environmental destruction and likely harm to innocent civilians.
This is what a lot of us have been saying privately.
War. What is it good for?
Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call.
Give peace a chance.
Last year, the Berkeley City Council took a stand in the war in Afghanistan.
They passed a resolution urging that the bombing conclude as soon as possible.
Who can disagree with that?
Bad rap for Berkeley
A storm of criticism fell on Berkeley when it was widely reported that the city “condemned” the bombing.
It did no such thing.
The Berkeley City Council asked the federal government to conclude the bombing as soon as possible, which it did, and to work to end the cycle of violence, concentrate our resources on bringing to justice those who attacked the United States on Sept. 11, and work to overcome the conditions that lead to violence and lessen the nation’s dependence on oil from the Middle East.
What are they? Nuts?
Then there was the Fremont City Council, which flirted with courage.
After about 100 Muslims, residents of Fremont, implored the council to make a statement about civil liberties and how the national anger was turned on people from the Mideast, a cool head at City Hall drafted a resolution.
Fremont was close
It decried “the erosion of civil liberties and constitutional rights” that had been “exacerbated as a result of the hastily adopted federal and anti-terrorism laws.”
Local government shouldn’t get involved in international policy is the argument you hear.
We the people born in the U.S.A. don’t have a stake in this. Everybody wants to rule the world. Let the feds work for peace.
The council passed a watered-down version filled with platitudes.
Still, there are small signs of courage around. You will hear some voices of reason. Even in the Congress.
“Months into this debate, I think we still lack clarity on a number of issues,” said Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., at a hearing this week.
And former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright revealed a secret of the trade at the same hearing.
She noted that Dean Acheson, secretary of state during the early years of the Cold War, wrote of “the necessity to overdramatize a threat in order to arouse public support.”
So the president is trying to scare us.
Worked on me.
The debate goes on, but consider this: In addition to courage, Santa Cruz and Berkeley, as university towns, have something else in rich supply.
Brains.
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Contact Dennis Rockstroh at drockstroh (at) sjmercury.com or (510) 790-7304.