Town Hall MN

“Town Hall Minnesota”

Rebuilding Minnesota from the Bottom Up

What:  a series of “Town Hall”-style meetings to be held throughout the state.  Each meeting will have a topic selected beforehand to focus discussion, for example “health care reform” or “state energy policy.”

Who:  all voting-age citizens residing in a community will be invited to attend and participate.  Emphasis will be placed on participation by the public, with as many speakers/questioners as possible, with enforced time limits for asking questions/making comments.  At each meeting, approximately four local or state (no federal) public officials (elected or appointed, with both major parties represented) will constitute a panel to respond to questions and comments.  A moderator will keep things moving.  Each citizen who wishes to speak will fill out a card with their name, the moderator will call speakers in the order the cards are received.  No speaker may speak twice, unless all others have had a first chance.

When:  meetings will take place weeknights (Monday through Thursday) and last for two hours, beginning at 6:30 or 7:00 p.m.  The meeting will officially end no later than 9:00 p.m., although the citizens and panel members may linger for additional discussion.

Where:  communities throughout Minnesota.  Attendance of at least 100 would be desirable at each meeting.  Should crowds exceed several hundred, meetings should be split into neighboring communities.  A unit as small as a township or a neighborhood could eventually host such a meeting.  At first, cities of between 10,000 and 20,000 will be selected, in the hopes of getting 1 percent turnout.  Community centers, school auditoriums would be likely venues.  Each session would be videotaped, for replay on local cable-access television and downloading from the Town Hall Minnesota Website.

Why:  to give voice to the people on important issues of the day.  Citizens will address their neighbors and the panel, because a free modern society requires cooperation.

How:  the moderator begins each session by briefly introducing the topic and the panel members, reviewing the ground rules, and then announcing the first five names of speakers.  Questions (regardless of construction) will be put to the panel or moderator for an answer.  Comments (regardless of construction) need no reply unless facts were misstated.  Before the fifth speaker of each flight, the next five names will be announced.  The last ten minutes will be devoted to two-minute summaries by the panel members and closing comments by the moderator.

Ground rules would include no profanity or threats and speakers will be asked to refrain from ad hominem attacks.  All speakers must identify themselves by name and occupation or hometown.  Speakers—and panel responses—limited to two minutes each. 

Although an exercise in direct democracy, no votes will take place at the meeting. 

Inspirations:  the New England town hall meeting, Question Time in Westminster-style parliaments, Thomas Jefferson’s “ward republics”

Jefferson on “ward republics”

"The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the function he is competent to.  Let the National Government be entrusted with the defense of the nation and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself.  It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best." 1816.

"But how collect [the people's] voice?  This is the real difficulty.  If invited by private authority, [to] county or district meetings, these divisions are so large that few will attend; and their voice will be imperfectly, or falsely, pronounced.  Here, then, would be one of the advantages of the ward divisions I have proposed.  The mayor of every ward, on a question like the present, would call his ward together, take the simple yea or nay of its members, convey these to the country court, who would hand on those of all its wards to the proper general authority; and the voice of the whole people would be thus fairly, fully, and peaceably expressed, discussed, and decided by the common reason of the society." 1816.

Thoreau on the town meeting,

“I am more and more convinced that, with reference to any public question, it is more important to know what the country thinks of it than what the city thinks.  The city does not think much.  On any moral question, I would rather have the opinion of Boxboro' than of Boston and New York put together.  When the former speaks, I feel as if somebody had spoken, as if humanity was yet, and a reasonable being had asserted its rights--as if some unprejudiced men among the country's hills had at length turned their attention to the subject, and by a few sensible words redeemed the reputation of the race.  When, in some obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special town-meeting, to express their opinion on some subject which is vexing the land, that, I think, is the true Congress, and the most respectable one that is ever assembled in the United States.”  1854.