Columbus Dispatch does story on Peace Resolution before
Columbus City Council
Now, Columbus City Council members are being asked by a group of anti-war activists to take a vote on the war in Iraq.
Local government and international affairs aren't so far removed, say war opponents who contend the five-year conflict has diverted more than $1 billion in federal aid from Columbus.
A group that calls itself the Citizens Grassroots Congress is pushing council members to declare Columbus a "City for Peace" and go on record in favor of "an immediate and orderly withdrawal from Iraq."
"This is the great moral issue of our day," said Robert Fitrakis, a lawyer and Columbus State Community College professor who ran as the Green Party's gubernatorial candidate in 2006.
"At a certain point, silence becomes betrayal," he said, paraphrasing a 1967 speech by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. against the war in Vietnam.
More than 280 other U.S. cities -- mostly liberal enclaves such as Berkeley, Calif., but also a few red-state towns such as Butte, Mont. -- already have adopted symbolic resolutions against the Iraq war. Cleveland and Cincinnati are among them.
But in Columbus, council members haven't addressed the war since 2003, when public pressure killed a resolution urging more diplomatic efforts three weeks before hostilities began.
Councilwoman Charleta B. Tavares, who described the reaction back then as "rude, uncivil and even threatening," said yesterday that she's willing to try again with a public statement if the anti-war group gets support from other council members as well.
"We should weigh in," Tavares said. "Do I believe we're impacted? Absolutely."
It's uncomfortable ground, though, for a politically cautious City Council that has wrestled with the idea of an anti-war resolution for months.
All seven members are Democrats, whose presidential candidates and congressional leaders regularly call for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
But Councilman Andrew J. Ginther said he's unsure whether the war is an appropriate issue for city officials to address.
Columbus continues full pay and benefits of employees called to active duty, he said, and it supports programs that provide health care and other services for veterans. But no one asked him about the war's foreign-policy issues when he ran for office last fall, he said, and no one has asked him his opinion since.
"They ask me about police, safety, snow removal, trash pickup," Ginther said. "That's our real responsibility."
Critics of Cleveland's resolution had the same concerns, said Jay Westbrook, a council member who sponsored that city's anti-war resolution in 2006.
"It's not being a wild-eyed liberal to say we have pressing needs here at home that we need the national government's attention for," he said.