RULES

Lest you think that seeing divestment defeated is my only municipal passion, I also have another dream for the city of Somerville. More than anything in the world, I want American Pie, Don McLean's iconic 1972 hit, to become the city's official song.

Towards that end, I have begun a ballot petition to let the citizens have their say on the matter. My petition consists of the following:

Whereas, Don McLean's iconic 1972 hit American Pie is a really cool song;

Whereas the lyrics of American Pie are as follows;

All 21 verses of American Pie, translated into English, French, Portuguese and Khmer

Therefore, should the city of Somerville adopt American Pie as it's official Really Cool Song?

Since most of the signatures I've gathered come from people who have wandered into the Tir Na Nog bar in Union Square over the last year, I'm having a little trouble getting the 4200 names I need in time for the 2005 ballot. No problem, however, since if I don't make it this year, I'll just keep collecting signatures until the next ballot.

Now I did get some pushback on my plan from Somerville's Board of Elections who pointed out that, like all political initiatives requiring signature gathering (such as candidates trying to get onto the ballot), my signatures had to be collected within a specified window of time. They also pointed out that my petition, consisting as it does of 16 pages of single-spaced text (mostly American Pie lyrics) did not contain appropriate legal language for a ballot initiative.

Now they were very nice about this, and even gave me a properly worded, lyric-free petition to use and told me when I could legally start collecting names. The trouble is, if I were to use their document, I would have to throw out over 4000 signed and unsigned 16-page petitions I already had printed up. Not only does this represent the waste of a large percentage of my allowance money over the last ten years, but it would also require discarding (and, one imagines, eventually burning) thousands of copies of the lyrics to American Pie, something rivaling Koran defilement according to my personal beliefs.

And so I'll keep collecting on my own paper, thank you very much, and I'll do so as long as I want. For years if I have to. And if the city has a problem with my submitting over 60,000 pieces of petition paper to them sometime between now and 2007, they can talk to my lawyer.

If the above scenario sounds a bit ludicrous, the So-Called Somerville Divestment Project (SC-SDP) seems to be reading from a similar playbook. Knowing full well that state election law and Somerville precedent required them to begin collecting signatures at a specific point in the calendar, they decided to begin collecting signatures months before then, rules (and law) be damned. And when the city pointed out that a multi-clause indictment of the State of Israel was not the appropriate format for a ballot initiative, they merrily continued to use it, hoping to get lawyered up in the near future and (a la George Bush, Florida 2000) sue their way onto the ballot and into victory.

When the SC-SDP tried to sneak divestment into the city via the aldermen last year, people like me challenged them politically. Yet we never challenged them legally. The reason for this was simple. While their tactics might have been sneaky, underhanded and anti-democratic, they were perfectly legal. Indeed, when the rules worked in their favor, Israel's critics were more than happy to play by them. It's only now that the rules cannot be twisted to their benefit that they have decided to ignore the law and hope to win in the courtroom a battle they can't win by playing fair with the public in whose name they claim to speak.

Just as groups like SC-SDP define "democracy" as them getting what they want (see Democracy), they also seem to see the rule of law as a matter of convenience, useful when it works for them, discardable when it does not.

Even fair-minded people who think divestment a serious political issue (more serious than my American Pie example, at least) should consider the consequences of letting these particular ends (making a statement on the conflict in the Middle East) justify inappropriate means (bending or breaking the rules for ballot initiatives). For once this issue plays out, there are other ballot initiatives in the wings. Somerville has already repelled one anti-immigrant ballot drive driven by a group that played by the rules. And one can imagine ballot drives on other important issues (notably gay marriage) coming before the citizens in the very near future. Do we really want to set a precedent that says some political issues are so serious that behaving legally is considered just an option?

As the all-wise Don McLean would say, that would truly be "bad news on [our] doorstep."