
How the New England town became the mythical landscape of American democracy - samclemens
https://placesjournal.org/article/the-town-was-us/
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Steltek
That's quite a long article without actually describing a modern New England
Town Meeting. They still exist and no, it's not even remotely like a national
"town hall".

Make no mistake, they're still as boring as dirt. (Nearly) direct democracy
doesn't make it suddenly more interesting to talk about road reconstruction or
sewer maintenance. Many towns put their meetings up on YouTube. Search for
"Annual Town Meeting", as opposed to "Special Town Meeting". Although STM's
being more focused, those might be slightly more lively with debate or
dissent.

~~~
vkou
I've been to a lot of village council meetings. Village of ~2,000 people, I've
attended biweekly meetings for ~6 years.

Most (By hours spent) of the debate and dissent came from two lunatics, who,
having nothing better to do, would show up to every single one of them. The
year after I stopped going, police had to be involved twice.

Occasionally, there would be an interesting conversation, for questions
dealing with a lot of money, and non-obvious trade-offs, that were discussed
by adults. Most of the time, though, the matters were routine and
uncontroversial - or, if they weren't, the councilmembers' minds were made up
long before the meeting started.

Nowadays, I hear that they've cut speaking time for members of the public, and
restricted their speaking privileges to asking questions. As anyone working at
Google or Facebook knows, though, statements disguised as a question are still
quite common.

~~~
Steltek
Is this in New England? Are you talking about Selectmen's meetings? At least
in Massachusetts, Town Meeting is a once-a-year thing unless something
critical comes up, then a Special Town Meeting is called. TM is expensive both
in money and time so STMs aren't called unless it really can't wait.

Selectmen meet more frequently but yes, we have some persistent contrarians
with perhaps too much free time on their hands too. It's good to have a
devil's advocate sometimes as it keeps everyone honest.

Speaking time is mostly at the whim of the moderator, elected at the start of
TM. If the Town doesn't like it, they should choose a different moderator.

~~~
cannonedhamster
Yes but you still have a town of council meetings on a regular basis, which is
where a lot of the activities happen nowadays.

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sandworm101
Long article, but no real mention of how new england towns shaped US
democracy. The land and climate had as much impact as the people.

NE is farmland. They grow things. That means you need stable government and
strong property laws to protect the farmers' investments in the land from year
to year. Farms need a stable labour supply. Conversely, resource extraction
communities (forestry, mining etc) care more about transportation links. They
will ship people in as needed. Skill is more important than labour. And as
everyone is only there temporarily, longstanding feuds tend to be put asside
in the rush to make money before the resources are all extracted. The gold-
rush and cattle communities of the west were politicaly very different than
new england towns.

Climate was also important. NE has (had) very cold and long winters. So people
needed shelter (property/rent etc) and labor was availible for non-farm stuff
(industrialization). Compare to the US south where the longer growing season
meant less industrialization and a greater focus on labor housed as cheaply as
possible.

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dsfyu404ed
As someone who's lived in four of the New England states I'd just like to
remind everyone that the style of government that the author is idolizing
tends to result in a very strong local government that gets up in everyone's
business. Three states and many towns across New England were settled by
people who decided that their ancestors didn't cross an ocean and risk
starving so a bunch of jerks they don't agree with could tell them what to
think, how to worship and generally micromanage their life.

There's two sides to every coin.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
Yeah but the scope of getting up in errybody's business is limited to business
that local people care about. As opposed to larger governments getting up in
business that people far away care about. Case in point: In my small NE town,
there has never been a discussion of "bathroom bills", but the town does care
about roosters and water rights. A larger, neighboring town does care about
"bathroom bills", spending tons of time and energy arguing over them, and has
no concept of what it's like to live next to roosters or rely on well water. I
would not like to have that group of people to have any say over the operation
of my town, either as republican constituents or as direct voters.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>Yeah but the scope of getting up in errybody's business is limited to
business that local people care about.

Which varies by town but in some towns it's a heck of a lot more than it needs
to be and generally speaking correlates with proximity to salt water and
inversely with driving time to Boston.

Nobody's arguing over bathrooms, they're too busy trying to prevent the local
Indian convenience store owners from building another store on a property they
just got because the alcohol to other stuff ratio in their existing store
offends the sensibilities of the people calling the shots. This is actually
what's going on in the town where one of my relatives lives. I could go on and
on about how farcical it is but I'll save you the reading.

>but the town does care about roosters and water rights. A larger, neighboring
town does care about "bathroom bills", spending tons of time and energy
arguing over them, and has no concept of what it's like to live next to
roosters or rely on well water. I would not like to have that group of people
to have any say over the operation of my town,

Funny you should mention that. If you ask most people from Boston they
probably don't know that the state goes beyond 495. Of course the rest of the
state has to follow the state level rules made in Boston for Boston (for the
most part). The states to the north aren't so bad but MA is right up there
with IL and NY when it comes to one bunch of people in one city calling the
shots for everyone else.

