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?
I’m so sorry Becca White was there, because she had to witness… I’d call it a farce, which it is, but it may well be a harbinger of the post-democratic America that Donald Trump wants to create. A post-democratic America which would be no respecter of state borders, red, purple or blue.
The state senator from Windsor County was on hand when her friend and Vermont resident Mohsen Mahdawi was kidnapped by cowardly stormtrooper wannabes hiding their faces and driving unmarked vehicles. In fact, they needed four unmarked vehicles and who knows how many agents to corral a legal U.S. resident and known pacifist.
Brave, brave men. With little tiny penises.
What would we know about Mahdawi if not for White being present to document his kidnapping? We’d probably know the fact of his detention (his lawyer was present), but we wouldn’t have video proof of this unlawful action by a bunch of unAmerican secret police cosplayers.
God, it’s contemptible. And deeply scary. How’s that thing go? “First they came for the Palestinians, and I did not speak out because I am not Palestinian.” Something like that.
She’s a far-right Republican candidate for state Senate in solid blue Windsor County — a district that hasn’t elected a single Republican to any of its three seats since 1994.
Nineteen ninety-four. That’s 30 years ago. Fifteen elections ago. Forty-five Democratic winners ago. In recent years, Republicans have consistently lost by roughly two-to-one margins.
Murray is, naturally, presenting herself as a common-sense Republican who merely wants to bring “balance” to Montpelier. In fact, on her campaign website she offers three rationales for her candidacy, and the first is that she “will work across the aisle.” She’s also got prominent Republicans running interference for her. As noted previously, LG candidate John Rodgers has endorsed her as “a moderate woman.” She also claims the backing of former governor Jim Douglas, the cheapest date in #vtpoli.
Let me tell you about this “moderate.” Less than a year ago she was trying to get rid of longtime Windsor County Republican chair John MacGovern, whose sole offense was that he didn’t like Donald Trump. If Murray can’t get along with MacGovern, I’d like to see her definition of “work across the aisle.”
So why do I almost feel sorry for her? Well, she’s dumped a bunch of her own money into the campaign and spent much of it on an out-of-state consultancy that’s doing her absolutely no favors. And like I said, she’s going to walk into a buzzsaw on Election Night.
Seems like I’ve been waiting forever for the Vermont Senate to undergo a demographic shift. Every two years there’s been talk of a retirement wave, but it never materializes. Senators consider stepping aside, then realize they’re indispensable. (They’re not.) And the voters rarely eject an incumbent except in cases of overt criminality (Norm McAllister) or advanced senescence (Bill Doyle).
The shift has been painfully incremental until this year, when almost one-third of all senators decided to bow out. The nine incomers are younger, five of them are women, and one is a person of color: Nader Hashim joins Kesha Ram Hinsdale and Randy Brock as the three non-white members of the upper chamber.
(The tiny Republican caucus managed to get older and no less male. Its two youngest members, Corey Parent and Joshua Terenzini, will be replaced by a couple of old white men.)
Got more numbers to plow through, but here’s the bottom line. The Senate is on the verge of a historic shift, but it’s happening in slow motion. We might reach the tipping point in two years’ time. We’re not quite there yet.
There are still plenty of tenured members in positions of power. They account for most of the committee chairs. But only — “only” — eight of the 30 senators will be 70 or older. At least 13 will be under 65, which doesn’t sound like a lot but in the Senate it definitely is.
The incoming Senate President Pro Tem, Phil Baruth, straddles the age divide. He’s only — “only” — 60. But he’s entering his sixth two-year term, so he’s familiar with the Senate and the elders are comfortable enough with him to make him their leader. As a senator he’s been a strong policy advocate unafraid to ruffle feathers, but as Pro Tem he’ll know he can’t push his caucus too far too fast.
The Vermont Political Observer. 