Wisconsin “Lets The People Decide” On Iraq

George Bush recently defended Donald Rumsfeld on the basis that responsibility for matters of war and peace are his and his alone, saying, “I’m the decider and I decide what’s best.” On April 4, the people of Wisconsin begged to differ.

Voting in the tiny villages of the North Woods and the Door Peninsula, in the regional urban centers of Madison and La Crosse, and in the small cities that are the heart of this heartland state, three-fifths of voters cast ballots for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Wisconsin voted “no” to the occupation, and as importantly, “no” to Bush’s self-elevation from presider to decider. Small town America voted, and the world sat up and took notice.

The Roots of the Campaign

How did it happen?

A century ago, “Let the people decide!” was a motto of Wisconsin’s Progressive movement. Led by Wisconsin’s La Follettes, Progressives took up the democratic demand of their predecessors-the Populists, Republicans and ’76ers-that the people themselves should exercise power to decide vital matters of state. La Follette’s Progressives lived up to their name and made real progress in democratizing state government, in particular, creating a municipal citizens initiative process. As a result, since 1911, citizens of Wisconsin cities and villages have exercised the right to initiate legislation at the municipal level. This “direct legislation” initiative process lives on today in Wisconsin’s State Statutes and its political culture.

Nearly a century later, a similar process was used in Vermont on March 1, 2005, when over 40 municipalities passed resolutions calling on the US government to withdraw militarily from Iraq, and on the State of Vermont to bring its National Guard units home. News of the Vermont vote set discussions in motion among members of the Four Lakes Green Party in Dane County. Based in Wisconsin’s capital of Madison, they knew Madisonians had voted against the war in Vietnam in a citizen-initiated plebiscite in 1969. Given that history, the inspiration of Vermont and Wisconsin’s own Direct Legislation statute, they asked some basic questions:

o What would it take to initiate a citywide vote on withdrawal from Iraq?
o What obstacles were there to using the initiative process for a resolution of this kind?


Putting the war on the ballot



Most organizers also felt that a clear vote for immediate withdrawal of the troops would be preferable to a vote for a gradual withdrawal, or for wording simply calling for withdrawal. Others argued that in order to ensure passage, the resolution’s wording needed to be toned down still further. In the end, resolutions in most cities called for some form of “immediate withdrawal” of “all personnel” from Iraq.

The initiative campaign experienced some internal tensions as the coalition backing it grew. The Wisconsin Green Party initiated the campaign, but scores of other organizations and parties joined in the footwork. In the end, the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice became the statewide vehicle for coordinating the campaign, and the coalition’s diversity made it stronger. Along the way there were tensions, as some Democrats pushed for more visible support from Democratic elected officials, and for a rewording of the original resolution language to make it closer to that of Wisconsin U.S. Senator Russ Feingold’s “end of 2006″ withdrawal timetable (which was announced months after the campaign began).

The next major challenge was ballot access. Wisconsin’s direct legislation statute provides that:






The Portage city attorney opined that a troop withdrawal resolution was not a proper subject for direct legislation, as it was “not legislative in nature.” When confronted with numerous nonbinding local city council resolutions adopted each session, he argued that such resolutions were “extra-legislative” and therefore outside the scope of the direct legislation law. In response, Liberty Tree advised local organizers that the city attorney was in effect inventing a new branch of government, and recommended perseverance. Unfortunately, the frustration of dealing with city hall proved to be too much for them.



A victory for peace

Where there was debate, it was vigorous, taking place at town hall meetings, forums, on the airwaves and in the pages of state newspapers, and in doorstep conversations initiated by volunteer canvassers. This process was revealing as veterans, and military friends and family members served as the most visible constituencies pushing for withdrawal. The Wisconsin tour stop of the Bring Them Home Now! Tour packed Madison’s Barrymore Theater, launching the campaign. Vets for Peace played a key role in the organizing, and a local “Bring Joe Home!” campaign centering on a local Green stationed in Iraq, Joe Lindstrom, fed into it.

The campaign’s opposition used different means. At a rally at the State Capitol, dozens of “vote no” campaigners wasted uncounted gallons of gasoline circling at the Capitol Square in their automobiles to demonstrate how much they supported the troops. They also established a Political Action Committee, “Vote No to Cut and Run,” which portrayed the troop withdrawal campaign as the work of the “Radical Left.” At the same time, they also attempted to appeal to Democrats by quoting from pro-war statements by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Joseph Lieberman, and Wisconsin’s governor, Jim Doyle. To the extent the debate made a difference, troop withdrawal organizers appeared more effective in their arguments.

On April 4, voters in 24 Wisconsin municipalities put their communities on record in opposition to the war in Iraq. From tiny communities like Obijwa (61%) and Couderay (82%) in the north to the cities of Madison (67%) and Baraboo (59%) in the south, to the Mississippi River city of La Crosse in the west (55%) and the Lake Michigan cities of Sturgeon Bay (58%) and Shorewood (70%) in the east, over 60% of Wisconsin voters made clear their demand for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Even communities that went to Bush in 2004-Casco, Draper, Ephraim, Edgewater, Luxemburg and Ojibwa-voted “yes.” The next day, newspapers across the globe, from Italy’s Il Manifesto to the Los Angeles Times, shared a common headline: “Wisconsin votes for troop pullout.”

The troop withdrawal campaign had won an unvarnished victory. Organizers had succeeded in getting the question of the war to the people, and when it came time to vote, the people did not need a lot of additional convincing. End the end, therefore, the campaign was one half petitioning, litigating and organizing; one-quarter voter mobilization (including “get-out-the-vote” calls by Voters for Peace, and literature drops and mailings); and only one-quarter actual debate.

Before April 4, the opposition spent a lot of time, energy, and money portraying the anti-war resolutions as “advisory” and therefore “meaningless,” yet they campaigned against them all the same. After April 4, with 75% of communities and 60% of voters voting yes, the hawks played games with the numbers, arguing that had the largest progressive cities not voted, and the largest conservative cities been included, the vote would have been closer. In the end, the public and the media didn’t buy their arguments: In Wisconsin, the peace movement is today viewed as mainstream while the war advocates are seen as marginal. As Four Lakes Green Party co-chair Steve Burns told the Wisconsin State Journal, “opposition to the war is not really news any more, it’s become the majority sentiment.”

The vote also caused some people in high places to sit up and take notice, because it was one thing for a few city councils to pass anti-war resolutions several years back; it was entirely another for voters themselves to cast direct votes for immediate withdrawal. As the campaign built steam, Feingold responded with a call for a complete withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2006. Then, U.S. Congress member Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) took an uncharacteristically bold step in joining Representative Gwen Moore in support of Representative John Conyers’ (D-MI) impeachment drive. Next, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Congressional delegation, Representative Thomas Petri, changed course by voting against funding authorization for the continued occupation of Iraq. Finally after election day, with news of Wisconsin’s troop withdrawal mandate appearing in thousands of media outlets around the globe, Bush referred to the state of Washington as “Wisconsin” three times in one interview, while White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan made a stuttering acknowledgement of the Wisconsin vote, concluding that while “all Americans” wanted the troops home, they also understood the importance of the “mission” in Iraq.

A victory for local democracy



In Wisconsin’s US Senate race, the contest involves one of the state’s leading peace activists, Rae Vogeler, mounting a Green Party challenge to pro-war Democratic incumbent Herb Kohl. Kohl is also facing anti-war opposition within his own primary and from Robert Lorge, the Republican candidate.


Additional Information:

A version of this article appeared in the Summer, 2006 issue of Green Pages



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