Vermont is cool.

Population-wise, it's about Seattle's size--600,000 people. What's neat, though, is that those people are spread out all over the state, generally in small towns where everyone knows everyone. It's feasible in Vermont for the people of a town to get together, discuss issues collectively, sometimes heatedly, and, when the dust has settled, vote on them. I wonder what the Founding Fathers would think of that. It's probably buried somewhere in the Federalist Papers that they preferred the high-tech, impersonal, vote-by-mail-and-you've-done-your-duty paradigm. I hope those oft-invoked dead folks don't mind too much that, in Vermont, we do it in this backwards, face-to-face way.

Tuesday, March 6: Meeting day for all Vermont towns. I don't know what it was like everywhere, but this is what happened in Craftsbury: People piled into the gymnasium of the less-than-well-endowed local school. There was a folding table near the entrance with two women seated behind it. When you entered, one of them carefully crossed you off a list and stamped your hand. Shades of the Purple Revolution, right here in the USA: who would've thought?

The Town Warning included 16 articles, dealing with election of town officers, budgetary matters (one involving bridge-building!), impeaching Bush and Cheney, tax collection, appointment of a conservation commission ... the usual fare. Most articles were determined by simple voice vote after an open discussion. For contentious issues, however, we went with a high-tech paper ballot: everyone tore off a piece of the page in the town's annual report that said in bold at the top, "Please use this page for voting," wrote down his or her vote, folded it multiple times (privacy being taken seriously here) and slowly filed up the aisle to deposit it in the ballot box. Votes were counted in front of us, which didn't take long since 177 is not that high a number to count up to. Then results were announced. On we went.

Now, Craftsbury isn't exactly a liberal Mecca, though I wouldn't call it conservative either. Most people here don't have much money and sometimes can't afford the good consciences that some forms of liberalism aspire to or hide behind. It's enough, isn't it, to scrape the few inches of topsoil trying to coax another year's harvest up, without having to worry about some of that high-falutin' stuff? I'm telling you this because I don't want you to think Craftsbury's the sort of place that votes to impeach the President and Vice-President in between sips of double tall lattes made with soy milk. That sort of proposal--Article XV of the Town Warning--riles people up and causes some to choke on their latte as soon as they drink it--if they were drinking lattes, which they weren't.

So what happened with Article XV? One of the people who got it on the Warning, Anne Hanson, took to the podium. She laid out her case for impeaching leaders who lied to the American people to justify a war of choice; she told the audience about presidentially-authorized torture, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, international treaty, American law and human decency; she discussed the 750-plus signing statements, each one announcing the President's contempt for the law; she reminded people about the illegal use of warrantless domestic wiretaps and the recent presidential authorization (by signing statement) to read people's mail.

Note that Article XV did not condemn Bush or Cheney. It simply said that the two should be investigated and, if warranted by evidence, impeached. Irony of ironies, holding Bush and Cheney before the law and putting them on trial is already more even-handed than the "justice" they have dispensed in Abu Ghraib, to Guantnamo detainees, to victims of CIA rendition, to rounded-up aliens, and to American citizens like Yaser Hamdi and Jos Padilla.

A man rose to respond heatedly to Anne's speech: This is not an issue for a town meeting!--even though most state and national representatives have so far punted on it. Because of Bush and Cheney, the fight has been brought to our enemy, and our homeland is safe!--even though acts of global terrorism have dramatically increased since 2001, and the victims of our aggression against Iraq, the 650,000 Iraqi dead, had nothing to do with 9/11. Support our troops!--even though, when they get home, they're left to rot in Walter Reed. Resolutions like this aid the enemy!--even though, according to Seymour Hersh's March 5 New Yorker article, it's the US, by way of Saudi Arabia, that's actually supporting groups linked to Al Qaeda, all in an effort to weaken or provoke Iran.

The speaker finished by moving that debate end, a proposal that was promptly seconded.

We thus found ourselves in a situation that should seem surreal in a functioning democracy: before us was a demand that we stop talking as a community about an issue that divided us, an issue addressing whether to hold our leadership accountable to us. The terms of the debate now changed: rather than discuss whether to impeach Bush and Cheney, we had to discuss whether to discuss impeaching Bush and Cheney! Welcome to the land of the free.

But Vermont is a cool place. People didn't take this sitting down. Person after person stood up to defend the right to talk about this issue, and the importance and the necessity of talking about it. As much as she tried, the moderator couldn't keep people on topic--every speaker strayed to the question, "Should we impeach?" instead of the question, "Should we discuss this?" Through this back door, diverse opinions were expressed, pro and con. In the small town of Craftsbury, members of a polarized nation were at last forced to listen to each other.

The vote to end debate failed.

And almost an hour after being first introduced, Article XV was accepted by a vote of 99 to 78. That same day, thirty-five other Vermont towns voted in favor of similar measures.

There's no reason why this sort of old fashioned, low-tech democracy can't happen throughout the country, neighborhood by neighborhood, district by district. There's no reason why we shouldn't be talking to people who disagree with us, and every reason why we should be. There's no reason why we shouldn't hold Bush and Cheney accountable for what they've done to our country and to the world.

Start organizing.

Follow Vermont's example.