PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

ANTI-WAR RESOLUTION (ALMOST) IN ERIE, PA (3/13/03)
by snowshoefilms Thursday, Mar. 13, 2003 at 11:27 AM
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Citing Pittsburgh and New York, anti-war protestors packed Erie's city council, asking they pass a resolution against pre-emptive attack. The council, though, stalled, citing rules.

The Erie City Council had the anti-war resolution for weeks -- say the nuns, students, vets, labor leaders, teachers and other outraged citizens in an impromptu meeting with the council before the 7:30 start. �Why isn�t it on the agenda? We were told it would be!� citizens demand.

�I agree with the resolution, but we have to go by the rules,� responds the council liberal. This is especially ironic, since the man who wrote the rules, who�s at least 80, who says he agrees with the resolution, is at this meeting. But rules are rules. The councilmen, and woman, five of them, ask the anti-war protestors to leave, so they can decide what to do.

When council session begins, the packed audience is of the opinion that what they say will matter to the council, which may temporarily suspend its rules and add this item to the agenda.

Testimony begins, before council gets down to business. Impassioned pleas go on for an hour, interspersed with other residents talking about issues ON THE AGENDA: fluoridation (the council�s against it, but the mayor went ahead anyway); the last big local industry (GE) moving off to Russia; the continual hiking of property taxes and fines for the middle class and poor, while giving decades-long tax breaks to industry and businesses -- which eventually relocate elsewhere in the downward spiral of globalism � the cancer stage of capitalism, as McMurtry calls it.

An old priest tells the council that invading Iraq constitutes a breakdown of international law. They seem to agree. Nuns, students, vets tell the officials: set aside the rules, this is an emergency, a disaster beyond recognition. The White House must know now, before it�s too late, how much the people of this country are against what they intend to do.

A female student (names are in the forthcoming documentary) brings the audience to its feet with her demand that the council express its views on the resolution, and pass it. The council agrees, all of them, it appears. "Then pass it!" They tell her she's out of order: Sit down. Stop this questioning of the council.

Public commentary ends. Old business begins. Tax breaks for industry. Hopeless, helpless, delay and defer. What to do?

Then, in the end, these unlikely heroes say just that. They explains: rules are rules. They will put it on the agenda and pass it next week. It�s only a resolution after all, and it won�t do any good, they say. There is silence. The nuns and others will be back. Who knows what will happen between now and March 18, 2003. http://www.snowshoefilms.com
filmmakers� notebook #40
March 13, 2003

www.snowshoefilms.com

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