Tag: John Lilburne

Categories
First Amendment rights initiative, referendum, and recall

Who Is John Lilburne?

Now that Citizens in Charge Foundation has given the John Lilburne Award to ten defenders of petition rights — most recently, to Oregon State Senator Vicki Walker — it seems time to talk to friends of Common Sense about the award and about Mr. Lilburne.

I founded Citizens in Charge Foundation to help put citizens in control of their own government. Voting for elected officials is one important means of doing that. But it’s not enough to prevent career politicians from ganging up on us and often ruthlessly stomping our liberties. We need ways to produce a better political result when politicians stonewall. That’s why Citizens in Charge Foundation promotes the right of initiative and referendum.

John Lilburne was a 17th-​century political activist who pioneered the use of petitioning and referendums to redress governmental abuse of power. He was a leader of a radical democratic movement called the Levelers during the time of the English Civil War. He advocated religious liberty, wider suffrage, and equality before the law.

Critics saw Lilburne and his allies as trying to bring everybody down to the same level. Hence the label Levelers, intended to be pejorative. I view Lilburne as trying to bring everybody up to the same level — of democratic rights. 

Each month, the Citizens in Charge Foundation gives the John Lilburne Award to a person who is particularly praiseworthy in pursuing the same goal. 

So here’s to John Lilburne — a champion of the rights of everyday citizens.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders

The John Lilburne Award

John Lilburne and Eric Ehst could never meet: They belong to different eras. But they have something in common.

Back in the 1600s, John Lilburne worked as a pamphleteer and champion of individual or “freeborn” rights. He pioneered the use of petitioning for redress against government power and abuse.

Lilburne was a term limits guy, too, arguing that members of parliament should not be able to serve for longer than a year at a time. Unfortunately, he spent far too much time in jail; his support for individual rights bugged both the Crown and then Cromwell. Lilburne’s trials sparked the fire that led to our own Fifth Amendment.

The Citizens in Charge Foundation, a group I work with, has just launched The John Lilburne Award. This monthly honor will go to a citizen working to protect and expand our petition rights.

Eric Ehst is the award’s first winner, for November 2008.

Ehst, executive director of the Clean Elections Institute, formed a coalition that helped defeat Arizona’s Proposition 105. This measure would have severely hampered Arizona’s initiative process by requiring a virtually impossible majority of all registered voters — not just those voting — to pass any initiative that would raise a tax or fee or that mandated any spending at all, even a postage stamp.

Long ago, John Lilburne struggled to establish the peoples’ right to petition their government. This year in Arizona, Eric Ehst defended that same right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.