Denver offers residents a peaceful ballot option

Oakland Tribune, Nov 2, 2003 by T.R. Reid, Washington Post

DENVER -- Although it was specifically designed to reduce stress and tension, Denver's Initiative 101 is creating major quantities of both as the political establishment comes to realize that this thoroughly anti-establishment ballot issue might actually become law Tuesday.

When a group of transcendental meditationists scratched up an $1,800 campaign budget last summer and garnered 2,642 signatures -- precisely four more than the required minimum -- to put their "public peacefulness" plan on the fall ballot, political professionals paid little attention. But now that the initiative -- requiring the city to adopt "systematic stress-reducing techniques or programs" -- has become daily fodder for talk shows and columnists around the nation, it can no longer be ignored in its hometown.

"I'm getting really stressed out about this anti-stress bill," said City Council member Rosemary Rodriguez.

"We're trying to attract business from around the country," chimes in another council member, who bears the same name as perennially uptight cartoon character Charlie Brown. "Giving out free massages and burning incense isn't exactly going to help our image. Can you imagine coming to the city of Denver to apply for a sewer permit and hearing all this chanting?"

Indeed, the City Council, businesses, both Denver daily newspapers and the new mayor have come out in chorus against Initiative 101.

But all those negative vibes have had little impact on Jeff Peckman, who is leading the low-key campaign for the peacefulness plan.

"I don't get too excited when people make fun of us," Peckman, 49, said softly during a campaign foray this week. "Sarcasm is what always greets innovation. You know, they laughed at Einstein."

Peckman, thin as a bean and calm as a cucumber, regularly cites such scientific giants as Thomas Edison, Guglielmo Marconi and Albert Einstein in his campaign. He argued that there is a basis in science for meditation and other stress-reducing techniques.

"The fact is, stress builds up in a community the same way it does in a person," Peckman said. "We know that there are remedies on the personal level; that's why millions of Americans are studying yoga, and why the mainstream churches are giving classes in meditation. The reason for our initiative is that there are also proven, peer- reviewed scientific techniques that can reduce stress and tension on a community-wide level."

Peckman has books and studies setting forth citywide anti-stress methods, but he is reluctant to discuss them in these final days of the campaign. "Basically, I've learned that the hard way," he said with a smile.

A few months ago, when voters or reporters would press him, Peckman readily volunteered suggestions. He used to advocate a technique called yogic flying. "Outwardly, it looks like a bunch of people hopping around on a foam mat," Peckman said. "But inwardly, they are building up a surge of brain wave coherence, and that can have dramatic effects on an entire community."

Early in the campaign, Peckman also cited studies showing that playing sitar music or "soothing primordial sounds" in a public building can decrease stress "even if there is nobody there to hear it."

But when political opponents began to make fun of these prescriptions, the peacefulness campaign stopped making suggestions.

"What the initiative says is the city government should implement systematic stress-reducing techniques," Peckman now says. "If it passes, they will be inundated with ideas. So they don't need any specifics from me."

The ballot issue is also free of specifics. It mandates the city to "ensure public safety by increasing peacefulness -- that is, by defusing political, religious, and ethnic tensions." But it does not say how government should do it.

This vagueness is cited by opponents as one of the chief problems with Initiative 101. "How are we supposed to implement such a plan?" wrote Brown, the councilman, in an anti-101 broadside. Noting that the city faces a $70 million budget shortfall, Brown argued that "I don't know where in the budget we can find money for 'soothing primordial sounds.'" Critics of the plan also warn that Denver, a city of 560,000 that sits exactly one mile above sea level at the foot of the Rockies, will become a national laughingstock if the peacefulness plan becomes law. In perhaps the harshest attack of all, opponents say the initiative would be better suited to a university town about 25 miles to the west -- a town known to no-nonsense Denver residents as "the People's Republic of Boulder."

"You know, we thought about Boulder for this," Peckman said. "But Denver is so much more middle-of-the-road, mainstream. The idea is, if we can pass it in Denver, we should be able to take it to a lot of other cities."

Although there seems to be no polling on Initiative 101, political pundits here say the ballot issue has a chance. "You see these interviews on the TV news," said Terry Snyder, a Democratic consultant. "First there's (Councilman) Charlie Brown, getting all riled up and angry, and then here comes Peckman, calm and unruffled. And the message that comes through is, maybe it's better to be peaceful like this Peckman always seems to be."