Town Meeting

Talk story about attending a town meeting in Cornwall a rural village (pop. 993) in Addison County, Vermont, to hear the reading of an Article which requested the President of the U.S. to propose to the Soviet Union a freeze on nuclear weapons. For more than a hundred years the citizens of Vermont have assembled in town meetings on the first Tuesday in March to approve their town budgets for the coming year and to vote on local and state issues. Last week at 161 out of a total of 192 such town meetings the list of matters to be discussed included an item of national--indeed of world--importance, a resolution petitioning the Pres of the U.S. to propose to the Soviet Union "a mutual freeze on the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons and of missiles and new aircraft designed primarily to deliver nuclear weapons". Writer telephoned her friend Pebble Brooks, who lives in Vt. with her husband Turner Brooks, and she said this was the product of a year-long campaign for a nuclear freeze. Committees have sprung up all over the state because people are convinced that something has to be done at the grass-roots level to stop the nuclear-arms race. Tells about the Cornwall town meeting. The grand total (counting last year's votes) of towns in the state who voted in favor of the resolution is 175 out of 192. Ultimately the resolution will be passed on to congressmen and senators who will take it up at the national level.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com