GREENFIELD — In his early 20s, Stewart “Buz” Eisenberg moved to Ashfield and experienced his first Town Meeting. Coming from Philadelphia after having grown up in Atlanta, he had never seen democracy in work like this New England tradition.
Speaking to about 115 high school students from across the county for the local national Law Day observance, Eisenberg, a local and lauded attorney who focuses on civil and human rights law, asked how many of them are 18 and then asked how many are registered to vote — and further, who will go to their Town Meeting.
“I hope you think critically about what you want your country to look like, what you want your village to look like,” Eisenberg said.
For the high school students, who came from Greenfield High School, Frontier Regional School, Four Rivers Charter Public School, Franklin County Technical School and the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School, Eisenberg hoped to instill a sense of political efficacy.
Instead of going into depth about how the national government is set up — “Everytime I talk about this with students, eyes glaze over. Why? Because Congress is far and out of reach, because the presidency is far and out of reach,” — he took to explaining how local government is set up.
The annual Town Meeting functions as a legislative body deciding how to appropriate and raise taxes while the Selectboard is the executive body, and governing plays out that way.
To the 18-year-olds, he said, “You are our legislators, you are our lawmakers,” and down the road, “hopefully, a part of our executive branch.”
Eisenberg went on to explain how he views the separation of powers, between the legislative and executive sides, functioning much more how it’s intended at the local level than at the federal level.
“It’s always a challenge to marry the theory of governance to the reality of how it’s operating,” Eisenberg said. “This time it’s especially difficult because Congress tends to acquiesce to the executive branch’s desires” at the federal level.
One student pointed to this in a question he asked Eisenberg, noting how that plays into how this can result in people his age feeling distant to their elected officials and politics as a whole.
Eisenberg was glad the student was insightful to ask that question, and understand the faults in the present system. He hopes the student and his peers see their voices as of value.
Recently, hundreds of students across the country walked out for a protest of gun violence in schools, which Eisenberg said reminds him a bit of when people of his generation protested issues that directly affected them.
“It was personal for us, because they wanted me to go to Vietnam,” Eisenberg said about the draft and the national protests against that war of the ’60s and ’70s. “I do see a similarity, certainly, with the gun issues, with students who are saying we are getting killed.”
By the time Eisenberg was wrapping up his talk with the high school students, pizza was brought into the room at the Franklin County Justice Center and the overwhelming majority believed it was time to move on to food. The democratic process for this brief moment received full participation.
You can reach Joshua Solomon at:
jsolomon@recorder.com
413-772-0261, ext. 264