To the editor:
Here are a few lessons to be learned from Town Meeting’s May 7 convening.
(1) The moderator has the right, power and duty to regulate or control the meeting so that the public’s business can be conducted in an orderly and respectful manner. Persons who are disorderly should be given one warning and if their disruptive behavior persists, the moderator has the legal right and power to order a constable to remove and confine the offender until town meeting is over. For “confine,” read the word “jail.” As Tuesday night’s meeting devolved into chaos, the moderator could and should have taken forceful action to control it. His failure to do so only threw fuel on the fire.
(2) Disorderly behavior includes continuing to speak or shout after the moderator has asked the speaker to conclude remarks; shouting from the audience when another speaker or the moderator is speaking; disobeying the moderator’s instructions to be silent or to conclude remarks at the microphone so that the meeting may continue and so that others may speak; and, most especially, assaulting the people on the stage and damaging and destroying public property.
(3) One person, in particular, could and should have been arrested. That person interrupted the procedure, grabbed and removed a microphone from its stand (so that other speakers could not use it), paraded to the front of the room, harangued the moderator, and then when retreating turned and, facing the people on the stage and threw the microphone at them. That offense consists of, among other things, assault and destruction of public property. Question for the moderator and the town’s Select Board: What are you going to do about this? Will you, or have you filed a complaint against this offender? If not, why not? If you permit this to go unpunished, you will be writing a blank check for more in the future.
(4) Our democratic bodies operate under rules we call parliamentary procedure. Town Meeting members are charged with knowing the rules that govern their meeting. There is a rule that permits a member to move for reconsideration after an article has been voted. Anyone who leaves Town Meeting before it is adjourned does so at his or her own peril. There is no excuse for resorting to near-mob violence because a particular faction of the meeting might be unaware of the rule. Here again, the moderator had the right, the power and the duty to intervene and restore order to his meeting.
And finally, last night, Gen. John Glover’s name was repeatedly invoked for all the wrong reasons. The main complaint of Glover and the other founders whose names were similarly invoked (including Thomas Jefferson) against British rule was that laws were being imposed upon colonists by a king and his ministers without the vote of a popularly elected legislature where the colonists were allowed to elect their own representatives. Regardless of whether Chapter 40A is good or bad, right or wrong, it came from a popularly elected legislature where we have a right to elect our representatives. That is what Glover and Jefferson were FOR, not against. The suggestion that Thomas Jefferson, John Glover and other sundry founders were “rolling over in their graves” in response to the proposal for a local zoning bylaw in Marblehead was, in addition to being slightly ridiculous, a monumental miscarriage of history.
Our town can do better than last night. Our moderator can do better than last night. We can all do better than last night. It is upon all of us and our leaders to ensure that we do so, and that the conduct that despoiled last night’s meeting and disgraced our town’s proud history will never again be tolerated.
William Hewig
Rockaway Avenue
