Another simple one today. I signed up to Third Act’s email list. Third Act — well, literally they call themselves Th!rd Act — is an activist organization centered on climate change for people of a certain age. Given that I crossed the AARP Rubicon about two decades ago, it seems like my people.
I hate to further clutter my inbox, but the anti-Trump “movement” is still pretty dispersed. A whole lot of energy, and scrappy bits of organization trying to channel it effectively. So I’m trying to cast my net a bit wider to stay informed about what’s going on and how I might participate.
Back to putting one foot forward every day. Today I wrote a note of encouragement to state Sen. Becca White, who accompanied her constituent Mohsen Mahdawi to his “citizenship meeting,” which turned out (as she suspected) to be a trap. She then bore witness to his detention by masked federal agents in unmarked vehicles — nothing suspicious there — and has since been his leading advocate. She deserves credit for stepping into the breach. A lesser politician (*cough*PhilScott*cough*) would have taken a safer course.
It’s important to be in touch with elected officials on critical issues. It’s also important to encourage them when they do the right thing.
A crowd big enough to attract the ire of any passing fire marshal jammed into the Statehouse’s normally placid Cedar Creek Room for an event that was inspiring, worrying, and kind of all over the place. (More on the curious backstory of this event later. Stick around if you can.)
Technically it was a press conference led by state Senate leadership, but about 300 people packed into the room to cheer on the speakers as they called for due process under law, freedom for Mohsen Mahdawi, unlawfully detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and a fight by any nonviolent means necessary against Donald Trump’s assault on democracy and justice.
There were statements and there were questions from the press, like any normal press conference. But there was also an awful lot of enthusiastic response from the crowd. And for maybe the first time at such an event, the featured lawmakers acknowledged that working through the legislative process would be far from enough. “What it’s going to take is slowing ICE down and coming close to illegal interference,” said Senate Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale.
State Sen. Becca White, pictured above, led the crowd in “an oath of nonviolence and peaceful protest.” The voices filled the room as she led a brief call-and-response:
I attended this morning’s Statehouse press conference slash rally slash call to arms in a packed Cedar Creek Room, and I’ll be writing about it. But something else has come up, and I think it’s even more urgent.
While dozens and dozens of like-minded people backstopped a group of lawmakers and advocates at the Statehouse, something very different had happened 24 hours earlier on a Franklin County dairy farm. According to a press release from Migrant Justice, agents of the U.S. Border Patrol entered the farm on Monday and dragged away eight farmworkers. The advocacy group called it “one of the largest worksite enforcement actions in recent Vermont history.”
The eight were taken to Vermont’s Northwest State Correctional Facility, which is where Mohsen Mahdawi is being held, illegally, without any charges against him.
Your taxpayer dollars at work. Doesn’t it make you feel proud to be a Vermonter?
Over the weekend, VTDigger posted a story about the good people of Westford bemoaning the potential fate of their local school. The Essex-Westford district is discussing a plan to move the sixth through eighth grades from Westford to the Essex Middle School, and some Westfordians (Ed: Reference needed) fear it’s the first step toward their school being closed entirely, a move that a town official described as “disastrous” for the town’s future.
They are right to be concerned. But there’s one big thing they could do to try to save their local school: Go all in on housing.
Single-family homes, preferably at moderate prices? Yes! Condos? Yes! Apartments? Yes! Trailer parks? Well, sure. More of everything, please. YIMBY, YIMBY, YIMBY.
Look. Westford is a tiny place, population a tick north of 2,000. But it’s absolutely close enough to Burlington to capitalize on the region’s overheated housing market, especially housing for young families. It’s about five miles east of Milton, which is rapidly becoming a bedroom community for Burlington. It’s about 10 miles north of Essex Junction. It’s less convenient to Burlington than either of those communities, but that wouldn’t keep people from moving there if the, uhh, town’s median housing price wasn’t MORE THAN HALF A MILLION DOLLARS, good God in heaven.
This week’s edition of NYSV is a bit heavy on audio content and what we might call “human interest stories” — the inspiring features that are a staple of print journalism. Not the most earth-shattering content, but it’s an important aspect of a balanced news diet, especially when our plates are so often loaded down with heavy, indigestible fare.
There are quite a few podcasts in Vermont. The best are worth including in your regular rotation, and the others occasionally rise to that level. We’ve got some great examples this week, starting with (I think) the most gifted audio reporter in the state, Erica Heilman.
“Health Insurance is Hard.” That’s the title of Heilman’s latest “Rumble Strip” podcast. It’s more of an impressionist study in the frustrations of health care. And you can tell she’s an artist because she manages to get through an 18-minute story about bureaucratic hell without ever invoking the word “Kafkaesque.”
You could say this is about her friend Justin Lander’s effort to get health care without going bankrupt — or crazy. But it’s not a narrative. Heilman weaves together Justin’s words, exasperating voice mail, real live customer service staffers providing no actual customer service, and extensive use of the wallpaper “music” that serenades you while you’re on hold. It’s meant to be calming, but in Heilman’s piece it manages to be infuriating. Bernie was right: Medicare for all. (Bonus! The podcast opens with a rough-hewn but completely apropos “jingle” for her sponsor, East Hill Tree Farm.)
I did two related things today. I made a donation to the Vermont chapter of 50501 and signed on to their email list. 50501 is a brand-new national organization that’s been promoting days of protest against the Trump regime, starting with April 5 and continuing with April 19, with much more in the pipeline.
The Vermont chapter seems to consist of a handful of volunteers, and they’re having an impact far greater than their numbers. As of this writing, they’re more than halfway to their starter goal of $20,000. Chip in if you can, but definitely sign up for email updates.
The next national day of protest is May Day, Thursday, May 1. So far it looks like a lot of the gatherings will be in the late afternoon because weekday. Some protests are aiming for Sunday, May 4 because “Star Wars Day” seems like a great time to strike back at the Evil Empire. Many rallies are being announced close to the last minute, so keep informed and come on out.
Several hundred Vermonters, including Yours Truly, gathered at the corner of State and Main in downtown Montpelier for a Saturday morning protest against Orange Hitler and his gang. It was a lively event, and impressive considering that it was apparently organized at the last minute. (We’d been monitoring the 50501 website for events in the area, and we didn’t see a Montpelier rally on the schedule until late in the week.) Also considering that it started raining about halfway through the scheduled hour-long honk-and-wave. Most people stuck it out until noon, although some of their signs looked a bit worse for wear.
We got an encouraging response from passing vehicles, many of which honked their support and got enthusiastic cheers in return. It was a beautiful thing.
Do gatherings like this matter? Do they make a difference? I can’t prove that they do, but they’re better than the alternative of not doing something.
At his Wednesday press conference, Gov. Phil Scott was studiously noncommittal on the use of state prisons to house federal detainees. He unironically expressed the belief that it might be better for detainees like Mohsen Mahdavi to be kept in Vermont instead of being dragged off to Mississippi (where Vermont routinely sends its own inmates) or some other hellhole. But he left the door open to working with lawmakers on that issue and others, as the Legislature considers ways to manage state cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Behind the scenes, something very different is happening. The Scott administration appears to be stonewalling a legislative panel with jurisdiction over the prison contract.
This comes from Independent Rep. Troy Headrick, a member of the House Corrections & Institutions Committee, with additional input from fellow committee member, Democratic Rep. Conor Casey.
Headrick wrote a blogpost on April 16 detailing “executive obstruction” frustrating the committee’s work on the issue. “In committee, we have developed a tri-partisan consensus,” Headrick writes, “that Vermont has no business being complicit with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]’s repeated violations of due process, the First Amendment, and basic human rights.”
Unfortunately, he continues, this effort to end the feds’ use of state prisons to hold detainees has been “stalled… by direct interference from the Governor’s office.”
The Vermont Political Observer. 