A Sample Local Resolution to Resist and Overcome — and How to Pass It

Related posts.

Passing local resolutions in favor of moving funding from militarism to human and environmental needs is useful each and every year for the forseeable future. The template below has been used to pass variations on a resolution in numerous locations each year since 2017. It can be varied by country and locality.

Resolution passed by Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 2022.

Resolution before New York City Council in 2021 being promoted by Move the Money NYC.

Cities are also passing resolutions in support of the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. Here’s another.

Here’s how New Haven created a public referendum in 2020. The vote was 83% in favor!

Here’s one passed by Milwaukee in 2019.

Here’s one introduced in New York City on February 13, 2019.

In 2018, Nevada City passed this resolution.

In 2017, together with our allies, including U.S. Peace Council, Code Pink, and others,we passed resolutions in numerous localities. Then we got resolutions that had been passed by Ithaca and New Haven as well as a third focusing on nuclear weapons to also be passed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors on June 26, 2017. We also created a debate in the Illinois state legislature. Here’s a list of localities that passed resolutions in 2017 and links to the resolutions: New Haven, CT, Charlottesville, VA, Montgomery County, MD, Evanston, IL (see page 14 of linked document), New London, NH, Ithaca, NY, West Hollywood, CA, Wilmington, DE, and the California Democratic Party.

Your town or city or county can also go ahead and pass its own. For more tips and sample materials from Ithaca, NY, click here.

You can also watch/listen to this webinar done with Code Pink and U.S. Peace Council.

Here’s how to go a step further and get your local government to hold a hearing with the heads of its various agencies on what it could do with the funding that local taxpayers send to Washington for militarism.

Steps you can take:

1. Contact greta@worldbeyondwar.org to ask for help
2. Form a coalition of local groups concerned about the cuts, the military increase, or both
3. Find out how to speak publicly at local government meetings and how to submit a proposal or get one on the agenda for a vote; or ask council members/ aldermen / supervisors to sponsor it.
4. Collect organizations’ or prominent people’s or lots of people’s names on a petition
5. Hold rallies, press conferences
6. Write op-eds, letters, go on radio, tv
7. Use http://costofwar.com to calculate local trade-offs
8. Make use of this petition signed by many prominent people and over 20,000 people total
9. Revise the draft below:

Global Version:

Resolution Proposed for __________, ___

Whereas military spending deprives us of funds for human and environmental spending at home and abroad[i],

Whereas polling has found the public to favor reductions in military spending,

Whereas part of helping alleviate the refugee crisis should be ending, not escalating, wars that create refugees[ii],

Whereas 1.5 percent of global military spending could end starvation on earth[iii],

Whereas fractions of the global military budget could provide free, top-quality education from pre-school through college[iv], end hunger and starvation[v], convert the world to clean energy[vi], provide clean drinking water everywhere it’s needed on the planet[vii], build fast trains between all major cities[viii], and increase non-military foreign aid[ix],

Whereas environmental and human needs are desperate and urgent,

Whereas militarism is itself a major consumer of petroleum[x],

Whereas economists have documented that military spending is an economic drain rather than a jobs program[xi],

Be it therefore resolved that the ____________ of ___________, ________, urges the government of ______________ to move our tax dollars from militarism to human and environmental needs.

U.S. Version:

*****

10. Be prepared for the argument that a national issue is not your locality’s business:

Cities and towns routinely and properly send petitions to Congress for all kinds of requests. This is allowed under Clause 3, Rule XII, Section 819, of the Rules of the House of Representatives. This clause is routinely used to accept petitions from cities, and memorials from states, all across America. The same is established in the Jefferson Manual, the rule book for the House originally written by Thomas Jefferson for the Senate.

In 1798, the Virginia State Legislature passed a resolution using the words of Thomas Jefferson condemning federal policies penalizing France.

In 1967 a court in California ruled (Farley v. Healey , 67 Cal.2d 325) in favor of citizens’ right to place a referendum on the ballot opposing the Vietnam War, ruling: “As representatives of local communities, board of supervisors and city councils have traditionally made declarations of policy on matters of concern to the community whether or not they had power to effectuate such declarations by binding legislation. Indeed, one of the purposes of local government is to represent its citizens before the Congress, the Legislature, and administrative agencies in matters over which the local government has no power. Even in matters of foreign policy it is not uncommon for local legislative bodies to make their positions known.”

Abolitionists passed local resolutions against U.S. policies on slavery. The anti-apartheid movement did the same, as did the nuclear freeze movement, the movement against the PATRIOT Act, the movement in favor of the Kyoto Protocol (which includes at least 740 cities), etc. Our democratic republic has a rich tradition of municipal action on national and international issues.

Karen Dolan of Cities for Peace writes: “A prime example of how direct citizen participation through municipal governments has affected both U.S. and world policy is the example of the local divestment campaigns opposing both Apartheid in South Africa and, effectively, the Reagan foreign policy of “constructive engagement” with South Africa. As internal and global pressure was destabilizing the Apartheid government of South Africa, the municipal divestment campaigns in the United States ramped up pressure and helped to push to victory the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. This extraordinary accomplishment was achieved despite a Reagan veto and while the Senate was in Republican hands. The pressure felt by national lawmakers from the 14 U.S. states and close to 100 U.S. cities that had divested from South Africa made the critical difference. Within three weeks of the veto override, IBM and General Motors also announced they were withdrawing from South Africa.”

11. When people only oppose the “cuts,” as the cities of Pittsburgh and Ann Arbor have done, others will reflexively argue against “big government.” We have to oppose the military increase as well as the cuts to everything else. Moving money from better things to worse things, or the reverse, does not involve the question of the government’s size at all.

12. Use this action to form a new World Beyond War chapter.

What residents said to the City Council in Charlottesville, Va.: