"As cold as it was, as terrible as the food was — how many of those starchy canned peas can you take? — with all of that, I knew I had to be there," says the activist of spending a week in the clink rather than paying a $250 fine for blocking the entrance to the U.S. courthouse entrance

at Sixth and Market streets in protest over the Iraq war three years earlier [News, "Passive Resistance," Trey Popp, Oct. 28, 2004]. Since her release, Santoyo and fellow anti-warriors have only strengthened their resolve, adding to their rap sheets arrests for defiant trespass after a sit-in at a Broad Street military recruiting center. [Cover story, "Unusual Suspects," Brian Hickey, July 6, 2006].

It will continue today when City Council resumes after its summer break. While most will have their eyes on the smoking ban and restructuring the Fairmount Park Commission, the Granny Peace Brigade will be there to support Majority Leader Jannie Blackwell's resolution asking voters to back a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq by year's end.

Typically, this kind of nonbinding proposal wouldn't attract much attention. But if Blackwell succeeds in having it put on the ballot and approved — this, even though voters' stances on withdrawal have nothing to do with managing the city — it would be added to the city's Home Rule Charter, a set of rules and regulations that dictate how city officials must run the government. And not everyone thinks that's so smart.

"Something like this is wildly out of context in the charter," says Zack Stalberg, president and CEO of the watchdog group Committee of Seventy. "

She'd probably be better off raising funds to have a serious public opinion poll of what Philadelphians feel."

When lawmakers wrote the charter in the 1950s, they never set up a system for polling voters the way many western states do. So, a charter change "is the only currently recognized way to get a referendum on the ballot," says Richard Feder, chief deputy city solicitor, referring to a "yes" or "no" question voters answer when they go to the polls.

For a long time, changes to what tax-reform advocate Brett Mandel calls "the thin blue line between order and chaos" were rare, but about five years ago, Council members discovered the referendum as a novel way to solidify support for their ideas and quell opposition. For example, in 1999 voters empowered the mayor to appoint school board members, and this May, they ratified the creation of an independent ethics board. Both moves affect city governance.

However, Council members have increasingly put before voters questions that have so little to do with running the city that a new chapter titled "Referenda Approved by the Voters" was added to the charter. So far, it includes a provision ratified in May 2005 asking state lawmakers to let the city to make its own gun laws, and a section giving police freedom to use video surveillance cameras to fight crime.

"It gives you an opportunity to get the citizens' sentiment on various issues," says Councilman Darrell Clarke, who led the cameras charge.

With the troop-withdrawal referendum, Blackwell says city residents can sway President Bush.

"If a first-class city of 1.5 million people votes overwhelmingly," she says, "maybe this will make him reconsider and bring our people home."

Elected officials in dozens of cities nationwide, including Philadelphia in 2002, have passed resolutions denouncing the war, but it's unclear just how many have taken the rare move of polling voters.

Ed Schwartz of the Institute for the Study of Civic Values agrees with Blackwell that "the war is a matter of grave importance and having voters express themselves could be very helpful and also help with voter turnout." But, he says, the fact that the referendum "has to change the city charter is a problem we have to solve."

That's why Republican Councilmen Frank Rizzo and Jack Kelly say they're voting "no" today. "I'm sure people will think it's partisan, but it's not," says Rizzo, adding that referenda are overused. "There's a better way to send a message to the president."

Republican Councilman Brian O'Neill did not respond to requests for comment, but since members generally vote with their party on national issues and council has three vacancies, Blackwell seems to be one vote short of the 12 she needs to put troop withdrawal on the ballot.

In his January budget address, Mayor Street likened the charter to "a 1950 vehicle on the raceway of an increasingly competitive global economy." Although Zack Stalberg plans to make overhauling the charter an issue in next year's mayoral primary, perhaps no politicians have offered widespread changes lately because Mayor Ed Rendell failed in the early 1990s to pass more than 60 reforms put forth by the Independence Charter Commission. The panel was established to streamline the charter and led by then-Council president Street.

Until someone proposes a new process, citizens must rely on Council members to, in Mandel's words, "be more circumspect about using this tool."

Enter Council President Anna Verna. Before today's vote, spokesman Tony Radwanski says, she'll consult her colleagues about whether the referendum is the right move.

Even though voters may not have a say this time, Santoyo is resolute.

"More than politics," she says, "it really is a matter of life and death."

(jenna.portnoy@citypaper.net)