Foreign Policy Goes Local

By Karen Dolan, Foreign Policy in Focus. Posted February 4, 2008.

The scene is the floor of the Chicago city council chambers. The meeting is unusually passionate. The floor speeches are particularly charged, even by the Chicago city council's turbulent standards.

"Had this resolution not been introduced, we would have been accused of being morons, amoral. If we don't speak out for the people -- who will?" demands one of the council's more conservative members, Alderman Bernard Stone.

The date is January 16, 2003, and the Chicago city council is in the midst of passing a resolution denouncing the drive toward war with Iraq. The author and principal sponsor of this resolution is Alderman Joe Moore from Chicago's 49th Ward. Unsure that such a resolution will fly in a council controlled by Chicago's powerful Mayor Richard M. Daley, Moore drafts it anyway, hoping that Chicago will join the close to 100 cities in a growing movement voicing local opposition to Bush's impending war with Iraq. The resolution passes 46-to-1 and sent a loud message reverberating through the mainstream media and Congress that folks in the heart of America's Midwest aren't happy with the direction Bush's administration is taking in the Middle East.

The passion of the council debate didn't arise out of a pro-con debate. Liberals and conservatives agreed: U.S. foreign policy was heading in a reckless direction. Over the last five years, citizens and local leaders have increasingly added their voices to the national debate over the Iraq War through municipal institutions like city councils. Even before the costs of war began to hit home, these local voices warned of the risks of war and occupation.

The idea of municipal foreign policy draws on such experiences as the Cities for Peace movement, the anti-Apartheid municipal movement of the 1980s, and the nuclear-free zone movement of the 1970s. It asserts that politicians who are most accessible and accountable to their citizens are in the best position to represent positions that challenge the political status quo and the large corporate powers to which national lawmakers and policymakers usually answer. Locally elected officials are certainly susceptible to moneyed interests, particularly in many large cities. But the more local the office, the greater the accountability to the public and public sentiment.

The War

In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. citizens filled hundreds town hall meetings with reasoned, rational, responsible discussion and said "No" to preemptive war. By the time of the March invasion, 170 municipalities and two state houses had approved anti-war resolutions, which foretold the disaster, destruction and cost such a policy, would bring to Iraq and the United States. This local resolution movement has been dubbed the Cities for Peace movement nation-wide. Since the invasion, the Cities for Peace movement has grown to include over 270 municipalities, 12 mayors, and 17 states, representing fully half of the U.S. population.

At the time of the 2006 elections, polls found that disapproval of Bush's Iraq policy stood at about 65%. These high figures reflect the sentiment that made the Iraq War the number one issue in the last election, catapulting the Democrats to power on Capitol Hill. No one can predict the tipping point, but it seems safe to assume that as these numbers increase, pressure for lawmakers of both parties to end the war also increases.

The expressions of the local governments on this issue have proven the more judicious and wise. The resolutions prior to the invasion cited a disbelief that Iraq posed any immediate threat to the United States; they cited the violation of international law such a preemptive attack on Iraq would perpetrate; they cited the enormous long-term cost in lives and money; they cited environmental and moral concerns such a strike posed.

The post-invasion resolutions reiterated many of these concerns and wisely called for a prudent and swift end to the disaster.

Wal-Mart

In addition to his anti-war position, Chicago Alderman Joe Moore was also one of the most outspoken opponents of Wal-Mart's entry into Chicago. He led the battle to deny Wal-Mart their requests for zoning changes. In April 2005, spurred by the Wal-Mart battle, Moore introduced a Living Wage Ordinance that would effectively increase the wages and health benefits of employees of Big Box retailers within Chicago's city limits. The Wal-Mart and living wage campaigns were designed to improve the standards for American workers that had been steadily eroded by free trade agreements and corporate outsourcing.

Predictably, Chicago's business interests, led by the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, waged a multi-million-dollar campaign to defeat the ordinance. Mayor Daley sided with the business interests and strongly opposed the ordinance. Despite the Mayor's opposition, the City Council voted overwhelmingly in support of the Living Wage Ordinance and forced the mayor to exercise his first-ever veto.

The City Council's living wage supporters ultimately failed to override the Mayor's veto, but the political battle lines were drawn in the upcoming city elections. The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce launched a $1.5 million campaign to defeat the city council supporters of the ordinance, and named Moore their number one target.

Although this corporate effort forced Moore into a run-off election, he ultimately won re-election in 2007. Because aldermen hold a local office and his constituency is relatively small (slightly fewer than 8,000 voters cast ballots in his race), Moore was able to meet most voters one-on-one at transit stops and door-to-door. Moore's accessibility to the voters and their personal knowledge of him combined to overcome his big business and big money opponents.

See more stories tagged with: cities for progress, wal-mart, iraq, localism, foreign policy

Karen Dolan is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. She directs the Institute's Cities for Progress project.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »