The election noises are louder in the People’s Republic of Berkeley this year. One measure on the November ballot calls for the impeachment of the President and Vice President of the United States. “No surprise,” people say. “It’s Berkeley.”

It seems people all over America expect Berkeley to be at the head of political controversies. “If Berkeley didn’t take the first step on this issue, that would really be a surprise,” Guy Kilburn, a UC Berkeley graduate said.

This obligation has historically inspired policy makers in Berkeley to spend a significant amount of time dealing with symbolic issues, which will bring no “bread” to its residents, only reputation. “They just want to build their self-image and support their ideology in order to feel more enlightened,” said Bob Wolf, a freelance web-designer and a former Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia. Often called ridiculous, Berkeley’s symbolic policies are what have kept the spirit of Berkeley alive for nearly a century.

Just 16 years ago, prior to the collapse of socialism, all of us in socialist countries were watching two clocks: one for the debacle of imperialism, and one for the triumph of socialism. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, one of the fathers of the socialist ideology, wrote that imperialism was the final and fatal step of capitalism and that capitalism was bound to ruin. “Well, he just misplaced the words capitalism and socialism,” said Oyungerel Tsedevdamba, a Mongolian who is a Stanford graduate, a former advisor to the Mongolian prime minister, and currently a participant in the the Yale World Fellow program “It was socialism that was bound to die.”

Mongolia and Berkeley were both forerunners in the socialist ideology, it seems. But why did one break down while the other thrived? Unlike Mongolia and other post- socialist countries, Berkeley’s economy stayed firmly part of the American capitalist system, while Berkeley’s ideas about national and international politics stayed on the left. As I lived in a socialist country and went through the horrible experience of having to keep my mouth closed because I had different political views, I found Americans lucky to have political freedom. Using this privilege, Berkeleyans have frequently been trying to practice socialist ideology without actually implementing the system officially, as Mongolians did in the early twentieth century.

There was a story told among democratic activists in Mongolia, right after socialism collapsed, that described how people envisioned what was coming next: “In socialist countries, if neighbor A has three dresses and I have one, I have to fight to confiscate one of her three dresses and get it for myself; then we all will have an equal number of dresses. In capitalist countries, I have to fight for the opportunity to make two more dresses; then we all will have an equal number of dresses.”

Unfortunately, these are both very extreme ways to have voices. Observing Berkeley’s symbolic policies and actions showed me that there is another way to be in this world. Neighbor A can fight for her right to have three dresses, and I can fight for my right to be a person who has one dress. But it should not make me politically voiceless and lower than neighbor A.

My country, Mongolia, is now standing on the brink of adopting capitalism after the painful failure of the socialist experiment. Capital is now believed to be what brings freedom. But socialist or capitalist, Mongolian voters have never experienced the kind of political freedom the voters in Berkeley enjoy.

“People in a small town vote for an advisory measure to tell the federal legislators what to do about the fate of the nation’s President! How funny is that? What a silly use of public resources for nothing!” I could easily make this statement if this measure had been initiated in a Mongolian election. After a lifetime of experience in socialist Mongolia, my mind quickly tells me that unimportant people—people who have one dress—are voiceless. But being in the People’s Republic of Berkeley, in the leading capitalist country of America, has made me understand that all voices, no matter how they sound, have a right to be heard. This is what Berkeleyans are doing in the November election. They will give a vote of “no confidence” in Bush and Cheney, based on their belief that though their effort may bring no actual result, at least their voices will be heard.