THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 26, 1995 TAG: 9511260179
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 168 lines
They did a dangerous thing at the library this fall.
In Hampton Roads, the heart of the military-industrial complex of the world's last superpower, a group of ordinary citizens assembled - not generals, admirals, politicians, diplomats or think-tank talking heads. Just regular folks - a high school history teacher, a geologist, a retired naval architect, a union organizer, a World War II veteran, a Vietnam veteran and a couple dozen others.
They were put in a room and given an unusual assignment:
Chart a new course for American foreign policy in the post-Cold War world.
It was dangerous because there were few rules. There were no experts pontificating, no special interests lobbying for the status quo, no requirement to bow to political realities.
In effect, there was only one rule: Look deep within yourself, figure out what your core values are and apply them on a national and global scale. The result should be a vision of an ideal new world and the United States' role in it.
The vision that this group of citizen dreamers conceived is radically different from today's world. It also carries some painful ramifications for Hampton Roads.
In it, the United States would place top priority on working through the international community to solve common problems - even if that means sacrificing some of the nation's sovereignty.
It might mean, for instance, giving up the right to use military force abroad without the approval of the United Nations.
It could mean substantially increasing U.S. economic assistance to the developing world and forgiving billions of dollars in loans.
And it would almost certainly mean drastic cuts in U.S. military spending - the mainstay of Hampton Roads' economy.
Those conclusions weren't unanimous. But the participants all seemed to agree on one thing: The group's specific recommendations are less important than the process that produced them. A group of people came together and discussed important issues in an open, nonthreatening atmosphere. They found that by really listening and respecting everyone's opinions, they all learned from each other.
Eventually, war, I think, will be phased out.''
That radical notion comes from Ellis Hinnant-Will, one of 40 local residents who answered a call for citizen participants in ``Choices for the 21st Century,'' a series of four two-hour discussion sessions held at the Virginia Beach Central Library in October and November.
By the second session, the group had dwindled to a core of about 25 committed participants.
Hinnant-Will was one of several who brought an international world view to the group. Born in Norfolk, she grew up in Virginia Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. A widow now, she has worked in Brazil, is a volunteer interpreter of Portuguese, and has served with the Peace Corps in Africa.
Why is it, someone asked, that we can find plenty of money to fight wars, but we can't find it for peace?
``Is it because war is simple and peace is complicated?'' Hinnant-Will responded. ``You have to take a lot of time for peace. With war, you can just go right at it.''
By the last session, a consensus seemed to have emerged that America's spending priorities are out of whack. The nation should slash its military budget, the group decided, to capture the ``peace dividend'' that never seemed to materialize after the collapse of communism.
That is likely to mean eliminating some big-ticket pieces of military hardware, they concluded - multibillion-dollar items like the B-2 bomber and the Seawolf submarine, which helps provide jobs at Newport News Shipbuilding.
Such decisions will bring some short-term, localized pain, they acknowledged, but the nation needs to take a long-term, big-picture view.
``If you spend money on military hardware, a dollar doesn't go nearly as far as it goes if you spend it on infrastructure, if you spend it on schools, if you spend it on medicine,'' said John Wallace, a union organizer from Chesapeake. ``If you spend it on almost anything else, you can put lots of people to work. . . . Military hardware is some of the most expensive stuff in the world.''
``President Eisenhower warned us a long, long time ago to beware of the military-industrial complex,'' Wallace said. ``And we see right now what's happening: They're not cutting defense, but they're cutting almost every other program in the United States.''
Instead of maintaining the huge military infrastructure that the nation amassed during the Cold War, the group decided, defense industries should retool themselves and retrain their workers for peacetime purposes.
``We've got to bite the bullet somewhere,'' said Judy Schooley, a history teacher at Salem High School in Virginia Beach. ``Our highways and bridges are crumbling, and we're buying guns! We've got to start doing something to help our country on the inside.''
At times, the group stopped to reflect on its emerging consensus and give itself a collective pinch. Were they just being pie-eyed idealists, living in never-never land? What about the political realities?
The job of asking the hard questions often fell to the discussion leader, Michael Thro. He is a humanities professor at Tidewater Community College in Virginia Beach.
``Is it even remotely possible to live a life of principle?'' Thro asked the group. ``It's difficult on the individual level. Is it inconceivable that a polity, a nation, can?
``We say we do. Certainly our speeches in the U.N. and our speeches on the floor of Congress say that we're acting on principle, that we're acting for democratic ideals and human concerns and this sort of thing. But we also know that there is a certain hypocrisy frequently in these kinds of statements.''
A big part of the challenge, the group agreed, is getting the facts - mastering the issues in order to grapple with them intelligently.
Beyond that, Thro added, there is this fundamental question:
``Is there the political will? Will people, short of seeing an asteroid headed their way, really give up their short-term interests and sacrifice for some kind of general good?''
Ultimately, the group decided, there is hope - if this experiment could be duplicated across the nation. If ordinary Americans could come together and discuss the issues with open minds and the willingness to learn and respect each other's opinions.
Time was, people discussed global issues with their neighbors, the group agreed. But in today's atomized society, those conversations just don't happen.
``Choices for the 21st Century'' is an attempt to change that. The Virginia Beach gathering was one of 12 such groups that met this fall at locations all over Virginia. There were similar efforts in six other states.
The results of the sessions are being compiled at Brown University, in Providence, R.I., where the program was designed. Summaries will be sent to the congressional delegations of the participating states.
The program's organizers hope to expand its reach in future years.
There's no reason that this should be such a forbidding topic, local participants agreed in interviews - no reason that foreign policy should be left to the ``experts.''
``It's no longer foreign policy; it's community policy,'' said Howard ``Mac'' McDonald, a retired Marine major and Vietnam veteran who lives in Virginia Beach. ``We're becoming a global community.
``In the past, women used to get together and maybe have a quilting session and discuss things. . . . The guys used to get together for Friday night poker or sitting on the stoop. We don't have that.
``We know what's going on in the world the day it happens. In order to get the input from U.S. citizens, the guy on the street, you need to have something like this.''
It was the way the group worked that mattered most, said Fred Adams, a retired naval architect from Virginia Beach.
``I was impressed that we could carry on these conversations in a nonadversarial way,'' Adams said.
``What we were there to discuss wasn't the primary thing that happened. The primary thing was that a group of strangers carried on a very, very interesting conversation that had some very positive side effects. What we recommend isn't really so valuable as the fact that we started something that's really very complicated.
``Something good happened, and I'm glad I went.''
Hinnant-Will, the Peace Corps volunteer, said she would like to see the project evolve into some sort of ongoing forum.
``This is what's happening all over the world,'' she said. ``Everybody's very pessimistic, I think, when they watch television, but I've seen it in Africa and and I've seen it in Brazil. You see it at the grass-roots level. People are really trying at local levels to resolve things.
``Everybody keeps telling me I'm an idealist, but I think I'm a pragmatic idealist. What else are we going to do? We're here. We've got to do something.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Ellis Hinnant-Will
Photos
Judy Schooley, Virginia Beach history teacher
Michael Thro, professor at TCC in Virginia Beach
Howard McDonald, retired Marine from Virginia Beach
by CNB