Worldview in the suburbs? It's on the agenda

War-torn Darfur is more than 7,000 miles from St. Louis Park. But for the city's Human Rights Commission, it's not so far away that members can't take a stand opposing violence that has killed at least 300,000 people and left 2.7 million more homeless.

Last month, the commission adopted a resolution that says the city should divest itself of investments in nations or companies "whose operations are complicit in aiding the government of Sudan or of the government of any nation that is supporting genocide."

But does anyone really care what a small panel of citizens in a Minneapolis suburb thinks about what is going on halfway around the world?

Is it even appropriate for cities to take stands on international issues when most residents are more concerned with whether streets get plowed?

Elected officials in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Edina, Hopkins, Winona, Virginia and Red Wing have all adopted divestment resolutions in the past two years, according to Ellen Kennedy, a University of Minnesota professor who soon will devote all of her time to a Twin Cities nonprofit called World Without Genocide. Most of them did so after hearing her talk about the issue.

Kennedy, interim director of the U's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, argues that city resolutions send a grass-roots message that reverberates to Washington. She points to the slaughter in Rwanda, which began during Bill Clinton's presidency. One reason Clinton didn't act, she said, was because he was never pressured by Congress to do so. She said Congress didn't hear from constituents.

"Acts like this begin to make a difference," Kennedy said. "The people we send to Washington depend on us to let them know how they should vote. So the ordinary homeowner in St. Louis Park has as powerful a political voice as anyone."

"I guess I have an old-fashioned view," he said. "We ought to make sure police are taken care of, that we have good parks and that roads get clear. I think foreign policy and things like that are for the president and secretary of state."

In St. Louis Park, the divestment resolution followed months of debate by the Human Rights Commission, said Stuart Morgan, who until recently was the panel's chairman. At the urging of a city resident, the commission invited Kennedy to speak.

"It elicited weeks' worth of heated debate," Morgan said. "We were very impressed and very moved ... but our main question was, 'What does this have to do with St. Louis Park governance and affairs?' There was disagreement about that."

Commission members, who include people born in Africa and Russia, felt that limiting a statement to Darfur was too restrictive. It should be against genocide everywhere, they said. Members also questioned their own role as nonelected volunteers whose only official influence is to make recommendations to the City Council.

A resolution was drafted that opposed all governments involved in genocide. Talk of what good such a measure could do turned to the changing nature of the city itself. Commissioners agreed that while cities take care of residents first, the world had changed. Instant communication has shrunk the world, Morgan said.

The resolution, which passed with one "no" vote, goes to the City Council next Monday as part of a bigger report. The commission will discuss the measure with the council in March, after which it could be quashed or be voted on.

Edina was the nation's third city to pass a Darfur resolution, after San Francisco and Chicago. Edina Mayor Jim Hovland, who joined the board of World Without Genocide, said he understands the view that city councils should stick to local issues. He believes cities are stepping into big issues partly because Congress hasn't. "We keep saying 'never again' and it keeps happening over and over again," Hovland said. "Who is going to stand up? I felt it was important to make this statement."

Next-door Bloomington saw it differently. In 2008, the executive committee of the city's Human Rights Commission drafted a resolution saying that the city should not invest in anything that could be seen as supporting violence in Darfur. When the draft was submitted to the finance department and city manager, they decided action wasn't necessary.

Lori Economy-Scholler, the city's finance director, said that the city has no investments linked to Darfur and that managers decided it would be easy to avoid those by checking a website that tracks investments tied to Sudan. "It just didn't make sense for us to pass a resolution for something that small," she said.

No matter what happens in St. Louis Park, Morgan feels good. He says he is less idealistic than some commission colleagues and was wary of creating a headache for the City Council. But as someone whose family experienced genocide firsthand -- his father was a Holocaust survivor -- Morgan said it felt good to take a stand.