Here is a fun project if you’d like to displace some useful ideas with distracting and counterproductive vacuities. Propose and execute a public initiative that: divides people; encourages rancor; dissembles balance; will be impotent and irrelevant. There is extra credit for pretentiousness.
That’s a tall order. Where would such a destructive and pointless undertaking enjoy the ecstasy of deliberation? Brookline Town Meeting has risen to the occasion. Warrant Article 19 apotheosizes the enterprise, checking every box and body-slamming the extra credit: “NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED That the Town of Brookline calls for an immediate … ceasefire…”
Town Meeting has no business sputtering about foreign policy or military strategy. And no standing in light of its want of warrant articles about outrages on innocents in Myanmar, Ukraine, Xinjiang, Darfur…the list goes on.
The subject of Warrant Article 19 may or may not be personal and meaningful to its authors. But its exhalations are not a matter for Town Meeting – they perform better when they aim their exertions at projects to improve quality-of-life for the people of Brookline – and should be rejected.
Chris Tsu Zabora
Read the original article, Town Meeting will vote on resolution calling for Gaza ceasefire