by Tony Palmeri
August 29, 2001
For more than a month now, I have been trying to get members of the Oshkosh Common Council to comment publicly on Mayor Jon Dell'Antonia's use of the City Attorney to "go after" and "nail to the cross" a citizen whose web site he found troubling. At last night's meeting of the Common Council, I gave a brief synopsis of the situation during citizen statements. When it was all over, only Mayor Dell'Antonia, Councilor Paul Esslinger, and Councilor Melanie Bloechl had anything to say about the matter. Their responses were predictable: Dell'Antonia offered a weak and evasive defense of his actions, Esslinger defended the Mayor and gave him a vote of confidence, and Bloechl whined about people who don't seem to understand that elected officials are people too. Bottom line: this Council (especially Dell'Antonia, Hintz, Harris, Castle, and Mattox) just wants the issue to go away.
Let's try to put this situation in the "bigger picture." If you think about it, the Mayor's use of the Attorney and the Council's failure to even criticize him for it is really a quality of life issue. A major misconception about municipal government is that it contributes to a community's quality of life mainly by keeping stinky ethanol plants out (as is being attempted in the town of Algoma), by fixing potholes, by trying to attract good paying jobs, and by ensuring public safety. These are certainly all parts of what we mean by quality of life, but in an American representative democracy there is another, more vital part: the ability to trust that elected officials will defend our constitutional freedoms.
A city can reject a stinky plant, fill all its potholes, have a per capita income level above the national average, and have a police force dedicated to ensuring harmony in the community, yet if its government does not defend the right of the people to speak out, the quality of life is low indeed. (Just as an aside, I must point out in all sadness that Oshkosh does not do particularly well on most of the other quality of life indicators either). If citizens cannot trust that their government will defend the right of citizens to speak out without being harassed by a city attorney, then how can they trust that same government to defend any rights guaranteed by the constitution?
I wonder if the Common Council's stance toward Dell'Antonia would be different if the person that he tried to "nail to the cross" was not associated with the effort to stop the Jackson Street widening. Is the Council's anger at and frustration with the Jackson St. opposition so great that at some level they believe the Mayor should go after these "troublemakers?" If so, they should remember that one can always find a way to justify using the power of government to "go after" people who uphold their right to criticize. The moment we employ such justifications, however, we set ourselves on a slippery slope that leads ultimately to an oppressive society where no one can communicate without fear of the "powers that be" breathing down their neck.
For those members of the Common Council who have refused to speak up in defense of one of the most basic rights of all Americans--the right to offend "big brother," they should read and internalize the following quote from Protestant Pastor Martin Niemoller, who voted for the Nazi Party in 1933 and was imprisoned in a concentration camp from 1938 to 1945:
In Germany, the Nazis came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.
In failing to defend the right of citizens to communicate freely, the Common Council has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted to defend any of our basic rights. Not even a stinky ethanol plant could do that much harm to our quality of life.