The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman

Annelise Orleck did not expect that protecting her students would result in getting assaulted and arrested. Orleck is a professor of history and the former chair of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. On May 1, Dartmouth President Sian Beilock called police to break up a peaceful student protest on the Dartmouth Green. The students were protesting Israel’s war on Gaza and calling on Dartmouth to divest from companies that support Israel’s military occupation. This was one of many such protests sweeping college campuses.New Hampshire state troopers in full riot gear arrived with armored vehicles in response to the Dartmouth students. Orleck joined other faculty and community members to stand between the police and students. The 65-year-old professor was body slammed to the ground and was one of 89 people arrested. Two reporters for the campus newspaper were also arrested, provoking national outrage from press freedom groups.The police assault of Professor Orleck made national news and the videos went viral. Orleck was charged with criminal trespass and temporarily banned from portions of Dartmouth’s campus. The ACLU of New Hampshire issued a statement saying, “Use of police force against protestors should never be a first resort. Freedom of speech and the right to demonstrate are foundational principles of democracy and core constitutional rights.” Dartmouth President Beilock apologized in a letter to Dartmouth students on May 7, “No one, including me, wanted to see heavily armed police officers in the heart of our campus… I am sorry for the harm this impossible decision has caused.”Orleck has been a professor at Dartmouth for 34 years and is a renowned historian of labor, women’s issues, and Jewish history. She lives in Thetford Center.The crackdown on peaceful student protest is often being characterized as a response to antisemitism. On May 7, President Biden denounced a “ferocious surge of antisemitism in America and around the world.”“There is no place on any campus in America, any place in America, for antisemitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind,” said Biden.“I'm not seeing a wild rise of antisemitism on this campus,” countered Orleck. “My friends who teach at Columbia who are Jewish are not seeing it on the Columbia campus. I am seeing some Jewish professors and students saying that these words, ‘Free Palestine,’ make them uncomfortable. But I've been telling people this week since I was attacked, please can we keep separate uncomfortable from words, and uncomfortable from being slammed and harmed by men with guns who then drag you off to jail? That's uncomfortable. That's unsafe.”Orleck says, "What is real is the surge of antisemitism that's come out of Trumpist America and the January 6 protesters when they were storming the Capitol." “It's a really frightening moment. I'm speaking out not just because I and my students were unnecessarily brutalized …but because I want to break that narrative about the protesters that's appeared in very mainstream media outlets.”Orleck sees the current crackdown in historical terms. “This is part of a 40-year right-wing attack on higher education as an institution that seems to be controlled by people of more progressive political ideas,” Orleck told The Vermont Conversation.Orleck asserted that today’s student protesters are part of “a remarkable generation.”“They feel like [the war in Gaza] is the moral issue of their time because this is a genocide. And I agree with them.”

College campuses around the country have been rocked by protests against Israel’s war on Hamas, which has claimed the lives of some 35,000 Palestinians, according to health officials in Gaza. Students have established tent encampments and are calling on their universities to divest from companies that support the Israeli occupation. Some universities have cracked down on protesters. Since encampments began at Columbia University on April 17, over 1,000 students have been arrested around the country, and numerous students have been suspended.In Vermont, protesters have formed encampments at Middlebury College, University of Vermont and Sterling College. Both Middlebury and UVM students are demanding financial transparency and calling for their institutions to divest from Israel. Among their other demands, UVM students are calling for the cancellation of the commencement speaker, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Middlebury students are calling for their school to bring students and academics from Gaza, where many universities have been destroyed. In response to student demands, UVM leaders met with protesters and agreed to disclose its endowment investments and discuss the commencement speaker. Leaders of both institutions have so far permitted the protests, though students told me they worried about potential disciplinary consequences. Erica Caloiero, the vice provost for student affairs at UVM, told VTDigger that tents are a violation of university policy but that the school is working with students “to make sure that temporary structures exist in a way that is safe and allowable.”Middlebury College released a statement saying, “As an educational institution, Middlebury values and encourages free expression and the peaceful exchange of ideas—including peaceful protest.”On this Vermont Conversation, we hear voices from the student protest encampments at Middlebury and UVM. Middlebury senior Joshua Glucksman is due to graduate in a few weeks but said he can’t think about that. “Every single university [in Gaza] has been rendered dysfunctional by the ongoing Israel campaign of genocide,” he said. “There's no way that in my privilege as a student at Middlebury College, graduation is on my radar right now.” “It just is inconceivable considering the amount of damage and destruction being done right now in Gaza, especially in my name for the perceived idea of Jewish safety, that Israel is waging this genocidal campaign,” said Glucksman, who is Jewish.“This has been the most powerful three days of my career at Middlebury College,” said senior Oliver Patrick. “I feel like I have grown as a person, as an organizer, as a leader, more than I have in my last three years here. But that can't take away from the very serious fact of why we're here, which is that last night, missiles killed children in Gaza. And our university is complicit with that. And I'm willing to perform whatever action or whatever role to help stop that.”UVM senior Lillian Farah, who is from Massachusetts but is of Palestinian descent, was quietly writing with chalk in Arabic, “Free Palestine,” on the sidewalk in front of the UVM protest encampment. A large pole with surveillance cameras loomed overhead, which many students nervously pointed to. Farah said she was unafraid.“Watching people be able to come together for something that they actually believe in, despite threats of suspension, threats of arrest, threats of trespassing citations, it's not enough to scare people away. And I think that that's a very real, very lasting impact of all of this that maybe some people are starting to understand,” she said. “Maybe this is what people need to see that we're not going anywhere. And our voices aren't stopping, and they matter just as much as anybody else's.”

In August 2000, 23-year-old Tamara Mathieu and her husband left good jobs, gave up everything, and joined a cult. For 14 years, they were members of Twelve Tribes, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as “a Christian fundamentalist cult” that has been accused of child abuse, child labor, racism and misogyny. The Twelve Tribes made national news in 1984 when their Island Pond community, which was then known as the Northeast Kingdom Community Church, was raided by Vermont State Police and 112 children were detained in response to allegations of child abuse. A judge later dismissed the cases, ruling that the raid was unconstitutional.The Twelve Tribes “sees persecution as proof that they're God's people,” said Mathieu.Mathieu, her husband and four children left the Twelve Tribes in 2014. She now works for Northwestern Counseling and Support Services in St. Albans as a facilitator of day programs for adults with developmental disabilities. She has just written a book, “All Who Believed: A Memoir of Life in the Twelve Tribes.”The Twelve Tribes attracted “people who don't want to fit into the 9-to-5 rat race of society, and they want this life of love and caring for each other and community,” explained Mathieu. “Suddenly, you're surrounded by this group of people who are just enamored by you who are giving you all this praise and encouragement.”Leaving the cult “was terrifying,” said Mathieu. “We had lived in this bubble and raised our children in this bubble. And then to come out, it's like you are bombarded with stimuli that haven't been a part of your life. I felt like a new parent. All I had done all those years was just spank my children for everything they ever did wrong. And I knew that we didn't want to continue on that practice, but what do you do? Like, a timeout?”Mathieu hopes that people who read her book see it as a cautionary tale. “Your personal freedom and your ability to make decisions for you and your family is really a priceless thing. I wouldn't give that up for anything anymore.”She also noted that cults are everywhere. “People might not really even realize what's going on right next door.”

In 1990, when Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years in prison, hopes were high that apartheid was in its dying days. Father Michael Lapsley, an Anglican priest and a chaplain to the African National Congress, had been living in exile in Zimbabwe. He thought he might soon return to South Africa to begin building a new post-apartheid nation. But apartheid’s henchman would not go quietly. Three months after Mandela’s release Lapsley received a letter bomb that blew off his hands and an eye and nearly killed him.Lapsley has gone on to transform his tragedy into a global message for healing and social justice. He founded the Institute for Healing of Memories in South Africa and worked alongside the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to help victims of apartheid. He is now the president of the Healing of Memories Global Network and has run workshops for genocide survivors in Rwanda, indigenous people in Australia, and combat veterans in the U.S. He has received numerous international awards and wrote a memoir, “Redeeming the Past: My Journey from Freedom Fighter to Healer.”I met Father Michael, as he is known, in 1984 in Zimbabwe, where I was a young reporter covering the South African liberation struggle. He was the hip activist priest who everyone sought out to get information and contacts. He taught me about South African history and politics from the perspective of someone who was shaping it.I spoke with Lapsley this week while he was in Iowa where he was speaking, teaching and leading a church service.“I'd quite like to meet the person who sent me the bomb and say, ‘Thank you very much, you sent me a letter bomb,’” Lapsley reflected. “Of course it was an act of evil. But thanks to you, I now have a worldwide ministry, I've been able to set up an organization that has a small footprint across the world, for which I am very grateful. I've been able to create spaces where healing happens, where people are able to have their pain heard and acknowledged. So thank you, sir. What about you?”Lapsley said of his own journey, “I realized that if I was filled with hatred and bitterness, they would have failed to kill the body (but) they would have killed the soul, and I would remain their permanent prisoner. And I wasn't interested in being anybody's prisoner.”Lapsley said that soldiers are “all damaged by war.” The workshops that he runs encourage them to share their stories with one another. “That helps them to recover their own humanity. Because one of the terrible things about war is the way you see two totally dehumanize the other.” Trauma and recovery are part of the human condition. “Healing is difficult, but it's possible,” said Lapsley. “We don't have to be prisoners of the past.”

Even if you don't know Jules Rabin, there’s a good chance that you have seen him protesting or read one of his many letters to the editor or commentaries in local publications. Rabin is Vermont’s most tenacious and dedicated peace activist. He celebrated his 100th birthday on April 6 by asking friends to join him in downtown Montpelier to protest Israel's war on Gaza.Rabin grew up in Boston, the youngest of five children. His father worked in a junkyard sorting metal and the family struggled to get by. His experience living in poverty in a working class community during the Depression made him a lifelong crusader for social justice. Rabin attended the Boston Latin School, then went on to get a bachelor’s degree at Harvard and studied anthropology in graduate school at Columbia University. He lived in Greenwich Village where he met his wife Helen. In 1968, he moved to Vermont to teach anthropology at Goddard College, where he taught for nine years. After Goddard downsized and he lost his teaching job, Jules and Helen started Upland Bakers, baking sourdough bread for 35 years in a wood-fired oven that they built. Their bread earned such a loyal following that a local store posted a sign to customers: “To prevent RIOTS and acts of TERRORISM, we ask you to please limit your purchase of Upland French Bread to no more than three loaves.”Jules Rabin attended his first protest at the age of 8, and has protested wars in every generation. From 1960 to 1961, he participated in a 7,000-mile march from San Francisco to Moscow to promote nonviolence and nuclear disarmament. He spent years protesting against the Vietnam War, and in the early 2000s, just as the Iraq War was starting, he could be found in a weekly peace vigil in front of the Montpelier Federal Building in a protest that continued uninterrupted for nine years. Rabin, who is Jewish, has long protested Israel's mistreatment of Palestinians.“How could the Nazi genocide of Jews 1933-45 be followed by the Israeli genocide of Palestinians today?” asked Rabin. He held a sign with a similar message at a recent protest. “I feel so strongly that what Israel is doing today to Palestinians so much resembles what Germans did to Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and everywhere else in Europe and World War II. It's kind of a pitiless wrecking of human flesh.”Jules and Helen Rabin have lived in Marshfield in the same house for 56 years, where they raised their two daughters, Hannah and Nessa. They have three grandchildren. I asked Rabin what keeps him protesting. “It's not that I'm a morbid person always looking for the darkest corner of the room to squat in and be miserable in,” he replied. But he added, “One can't look the other way when something dreadful is going on.”

Jan Reynolds just wanted to be “one of the guys.” Growing up as one of seven children on a dairy farm in Middlebury, Reynolds thought nothing of a tough physical challenge. This propelled her to record setting high-altitude adventures in the company of some of the world’s top mountaineers, often as the only woman on expeditions on the highest summits.Reynolds attended the University of Vermont, where she was a top cross-country ski racer and was part of a team that won an NCAA championship. In 1980, Reynolds set the world high altitude skiing record for women when she skied off the summit of 24,757-foot Mustagata Peak in western China. She soared in a hot air balloon at 29,000 feet over Everest (and then crashed) and led the first U.S. women’s biathlon team. Esquire named her its Athlete of the Decade in the 1980s, Ultrasport dubbed her “Indiana Jan,” and she appeared everywhere from the cover of Outside Magazine to the “Today” show to National Geographic.Reynolds chronicled her adventures in her book “The Glass Summit: One Woman's Epic Journey Breaking Through.” She writes about her exploits as well as the power and importance of women throughout the world. She has also written and photographed over 20 books mainly documenting vanishing cultures.“All the women in the Amazon territory survive and do everything men do, right? So why do we think a woman cannot live in a triple canopy jungle or at high altitude — the Sherpas and Tibetan women are there — or the Inuit, they have babies in igloos. Think about that: they do everything men do in a frozen environment and they have babies.”Women “can do everything men do. We just have different skills and different approaches.”Reynolds was inducted into the U.S. Ski Hall of Fame in 2021 and was inducted into the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2008. These days she travels the world photographing and writing about indigenous people for her award-winning children's book series, "Vanishing Cultures." Earlier this winter I skied with Reynolds at Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, where she still teaches cross-country ski lessons. She showed me a trailside bench with a plaque that honors her and her two sons and led me on a high speed adventure on and off groomed trails through her favorite mountains. “Adventure is where you wish you weren't when you are, and you wish you were when you aren't,” said Reynolds.

Some people make films to entertain or inform. Bess O’Brien makes films to change the world."I'm very committed as a documentary filmmaker to not only make the movie but to try to use the film to create change," the award-winning Vermont filmmaker said. O’Brien's work has raised awareness about vulnerable people and social justice. Her 2013 documentary, “The Hungry Heart,” about the prescription drug crisis in Vermont, sparked a soul-searching conversation about opioids. The following year, Gov. Peter Shumlin dedicated his entire State of the State address to the topic, which received national attention.“Every state in the Union should be so lucky to have Bess O’Brien working for them in support of children and families,” Shumlin said. O’Brein’s 2016 documentary, “All of Me,” focused on the lives of women, girls and boys who have eating disorders. Like many of her films, they were shown in schools and communities throughout the state. Her other films include “Coming Home,” about five people returning to their Vermont communities from prison. And she produced “The Listen Up Project,” an original musical based on the lives of Vermont teens. O’Brien’s is now touring with her latest film, “Just Getting By,” which is about Vermonters struggling with food and housing insecurity. O’Brien has once again put a human face on an issue that is now at the top of the political agenda in Vermont and the country.Bess O’Brien is the founder of Kingdom County Productions with her husband, filmmaker Jay Craven.O’Brien said that she learned from spending time with people in poverty that “it's not only about the scarcity of money and not having enough money or availability of food or housing. It's also just the constant uncertainty of living your life. Am I going to have enough food to feed my family? Can I get to the food shelf? … Am I going to get that apartment that I applied for? This is the fifth apartment I've applied for and all the other ones fell through. Constantly living in that space is really intense and it takes a toll.”O’Brien shines a light on issues that are hiding in plain sight. “Food insecurity is not just about people who are desperately hungry and starving,” she said. Often it’s invisible, including “the parents don't eat breakfast or dinner because they don't have enough food and they give it to their kids instead,” she said. “That is food insecurity. And poverty is not necessarily living in a tent. It can be living in a hotel and not having a place to live because … even if you look for a place there is nowhere to go.”O’Brien’s latest film “is about the scrappiness, the courage, the ingenuity, the incredible forthrightness to get up every day and get through your day and make it work for your family when you have very little.”

This Vermont Conversation originally broadcast in April 2015.Tom Hayden was a leader of the student, civil rights, peace and environmental movements of the 1960s. He went on to serve 18 years in the California legislature. He was a founder of Students for a Democratic Society and was described by the NY Times as “the single greatest figure of the 1960s student movement.” Hayden died in October 2016 at the age of 76.During the Vietnam War, Hayden made controversial trips to Hanoi with his former wife, actress Jane Fonda, to promote peace talks and facilitate the release of American POWs. He helped lead street demonstrations against the war at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, where he was beaten, gassed and arrested twice. Hayden was indicted in 1969 with seven others on conspiracy and incitement charges in what eventually became the Chicago Seven trial, considered one of the leading political trials of the last century (the trial began as the Chicago Eight but became the Chicago Seven when the case against codefendent Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, was severed from the others). The trial was the subject of the 2020 Hollywood movie, “The Trial of the Chicago Seven,” in which Hayden was played by actor Eddie Redmayne.Hayden was Director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center in Culver City, California, and advised former California Gov. Jerry Brown on renewable energy. He was the author and editor of 20 books.I spoke with Hayden in March 2015 at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, where Hayden spoke at the 50th anniversary of the first Vietnam War teach in held on a US college campus.I asked Hayden what he was proudest of in his long career of activism. "Living this long and being able to have children and grandchildren, and to observe the spread of participatory democracy and to see — despite all the failures of the left and the lack of organization, the infighting, the sectarianism, the feuds — that wave after wave of young people keep coming," he replied."I'm proudest of the fact that there's some instinct in being human that aspires to greater things than your parents had, a better world than the one that you were born into."

Laura Waterman has been described as “mountain royalty.” With her late husband, Guy Waterman, she has written numerous articles and books on the outdoors, including the definitive 900-page classic, “Forest and Crag: A History of Hiking, Trail Blazing, and Adventure in the Northeast Mountains.” The Watermans were pioneering philosophers of wilderness ethics and are often credited as the inspiration for the modern Leave No Trace movement of low-impact camping and hiking.Laura Waterman may seem like an improbable crusader and chronicler of wilderness. She grew up on the campus of the Lawrenceville School, an elite prep school in New Jersey where her father taught English and was a renowned scholar of Emily Dickinson. In the early 1960s, Laura got a job in publishing in New York City, where she met her future husband, Guy, who had been a speechwriter for Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford and for General Electric. In 1973, the young couple left the big city and became homesteaders on a 27-acre plot of land in East Corinth. Together, they wrote books and were stewards of the Franconia Ridge, home to a spectacular and popular skyline trail in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.In 2000, Laura’s life changed forever when Guy died by suicide. He was 67. Five years later, Laura wrote a memoir, “Losing the Garden: A Story of a Marriage,” in which she tried to make sense of it. But it has taken more than one book for her to understand what happened to Guy, and to her. Now at the age of 84, Laura Waterman has a new book, “Calling Wild Places Home: A Memoir in Essays.”I recently visited Laura Waterman in her log house in East Corinth to talk about her books and her life. Her home is full of pictures of her and Guy in the mountains and living their off-grid Vermont homestead, which they called Barra. It is obvious as we walk around the house that Guy continues to have a strong presence in her life. "I needed to write the second memoir to understand better my role in Guy's suicide," Waterman explains. "I needed that 20 years to live with that and basically grow into the person that I needed to become."Midway through her ninth decade, Laura Waterman is still summiting mountains. "I just feel so fortunate. I'm fortunate to be able to climb mountains, smaller ones. I'm very fortunate to be writing what I'm writing."A note for our listeners and readers: This Vermont Conversation discusses suicide. If you are in crisis or need help for someone else, dial 988 for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) or text 741741 for the Crisis Text Line.

On Tuesday, Burlington voters elected Emma Mulvaney-Stanak to be the Queen City’s next mayor. The 43-year-old Progressive/Democrat who grew up in Barre City succeeds Democrat Miro Weinberger, who has been mayor since 2012 and did not run for reelection.Mulvaney-Stanak will be the first woman and the first openly queer person to serve as Burlington’s mayor when she is sworn in on April 1. She is also a state representative from Burlington and has served on the Burlington City Council. She has directed the Vermont Livable Wage Campaign, been an organizer with Vermont-NEA and was chair of the Vermont Progressive Party. She runs a social change strategy consulting business whose clients include labor unions, nonprofits, municipalities and school districts. She lives with her wife and two children in Burlington’s Old North End.Growing up in Vermont, Mulvaney-Stanak said, “I did not see leaders who held identities that I hold. And that really matters because there was a subconscious level where you don't think that's possibly something you can do.”“The historic nature of this race — the fact that after 159 years, we finally have a woman mayor, after 159 years, we finally have an out LGBTQ+ mayor — that really matters,” she said. “And I'm pretty darn sure that I am the first queer mayor in the entire state of Vermont.”"The fact that I am a mom of two small kids, the fact that I am a woman, the fact that I am a queer person, it brings a very different perspective to the decision making table and also the leadership role in the city,” Mulvaney-Stanak said.

Twenty years ago, Gov. Howard Dean ended his run for president. His campaign concluded with a scream – the fabled Dean Scream – but not before it changed the face of modern campaigning. The Deaniacs, as his legions of young followers came to be known, proved that small dollar internet fundraising and organizing could help vault the governor of a small state who was little known outside of New England into a powerful insurgent candidate. When Dean split from his fellow Democratic candidates and denounced the Iraq War in the fall of 2003, he became a populist hero and frontrunner in many polls for the Democratic nomination. He poured everything into winning the Iowa caucus, only to come in third behind John Kerry and John Edwards, who would end up as the Democrat’s 2004 presidential ticket that would lose to incumbent President George W. Bush.The Dean Scream was a viral clip of Dean shouting hoarsely to thousands of followers to rally them to keep fighting as they left Iowa and traveled to New Hampshire. The clip was used by his opponents to portray him as hot headed and angry. It has been described as the first viral political meme.Dean, a physician and Vermont’s longest serving governor, would go on to be elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2005 where he championed the 50 State Strategy. Rather than focusing only on swing states, Dean insisted that Democrats contest every single district in the country. The strategy proved itself in 2006 when Democrats won control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Dean also launched Democracy for America, a progressive political action committee, which folded in 2022.Dean has been a consultant focusing on health care and grassroots organizing and teaches foreign policy and public affairs at Yale, his alma mater. He is a frequent political commentator on MSNBC and other networks. On The Vermont Conversation, Gov. Dean had plenty to say about every issue (edited for length):On lessons learned from his 2004 presidential run: I wish I had put together a campaign operation that was better organized (and) that I wasn't so outspoken. But actually, that's what made the campaign. I'm incredibly glad I did it. It was an unbelievable experience.On the Israel-Hamas War: Israel has a right to exist. There needs to be a Jewish state. But the leadership in Israel has been a disaster. I've met Netanyahu. And I can assure you that he is just Trump with brains. All he cares about is Netanyahu, and he doesn't give a damn about anything else or anybody else. I think that includes the State of Israel.How President Biden should deal with Israel and Hamas: What Hamas did was a horror show. They had no right to do that. I mean, they tortured people. But what's going on in Gaza now is also a horror show. And nobody has the right to do that and murder 30,000 individuals or civilians, mostly women and children. So there's no right on either side. Both sides need to be pushed. We need to be even handed: we need to be tough on Hamas, but we need to be tough on Netanyahu as well. …And I'd cut off arms sales to Israel if we have to.On conservatives: The conservatives have lost their mind. They're really not conservatives at all anymore. They're just lunatics.Why Republicans win: Clausewitz said that politics is war by another means. Republicans understand that. They're ruthless. They govern from the top down, they're incredibly well organized. They can't govern as a result, because this is a democracy, which is no doubt why they want to get rid of democracy. Democrats are intellectuals. We think that the argument is going to win the day. We don't pack the Supreme Court, we don't have corrupt justices in the Supreme Court. We play nice because we believe in democracy, which the Republicans basically don't, unless they can get votes from it. We are lousy at winning elections because we want to play nice. So we don't want to do anything that's going to offend anybody. I don't want to be as offensive as the Republicans are, but I think we’ve got to be a lot tougher and a lot better organized.On reproductive rights: The right wing basically hates the idea that women are equal to men. (Aborition) is one right you can take away from women and have them less equal. That's what this is about. All these men, these Secretaries of State and these Supreme Court (justices) in Alabama, they would like to go back to the old days where women are in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. Not anymore, it's too late. You let them out. And we ain't going back in.On the future of the Republican Party in Vermont: I do think there's a future of the Republican Party. It'll be the Phil Scott Republican Party. It certainly isn't going to be the Donald Trump (party). Donald Trump is just mean. And there are not a lot of mean people in this state.What concerns you most right now: I think what Trump's legacy will be is the same as Orban's legacy in Hungary, or the PIS (Law and Justice Party) legacy in

Hisham Awartani didn’t expect to become the focus of international news when he went for a walk before dinner at his grandmother’s house in Burlington on Nov. 25. Awartani was with his friends Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Aliahmad, who are all of Palestinian descent and attend colleges in the U.S. They were speaking a mix of English and Arabic and two were wearing kufiyahs, the traditional Palestinian scarf, as they often did.Without provocation, Jason Eaton, a man they did not know, allegedly stepped off his porch and shot the three 20-year old men at point blank range. Eaton was charged with three counts of second degree attempted murder, and the state is still deciding whether to add a hate crime charge. The trial will likely be in 2025.Awartani, a student at Brown University, was the most gravely wounded of the three friends, who were classmates at the Ramallah Friends School, a Quaker high school in the Israeli Occupied West Bank. A bullet lodged in Hisham’s spine and he is now paralyzed below the abdomen. He has spent the last two months at a rehab hospital in Boston. He recently fulfilled his goal of returning to study at Brown, where he is an archaeology and mathematics double major.Elizabeth Price, the mother of Hisham Awartani, confessed that she “didn't think that would be possible” that her son would return to college for the second semester.“He's resolute and he's steadfast,” Price told The Vermont Conversation. An international development consultant, Price said that Hisham exemplifies the Palestinian philosophy of samud, “just getting on with it, just continuing to do what you can do, despite what the world throws at you.”A gofundme established to raise money to support Hisham's recovery has so far raised $1.7 million.Price said that her son’s assailant is less important than his motivation. “He chose to shoot because of a larger cultural political mindset that is still endangering Palestinians in America.”“He was motivated by hateful, dehumanizing speech by elected representatives and media. And since he shot them, it's become much worse. The actions of the U.S. government, both the Biden administration and elected officials in Congress, have shown over and over again, that Palestinian life is not valued.”The toll of Israel’s war on Gaza has been staggering. Some 30,000 Palestinians have been killed according to the Gaza Health Ministry. “I think Israel is committing genocide. It's committing a domicide, which is a total destruction of a city. It's committing culturicide — they have destroyed the intelligentsia and the professional classes. They have bombed all universities, they devastated schools, all the National Archives, archaeological sites, museums — it's all gone.“The extermination in Gaza is being done with American weapons with our taxpayers money.”Hisham returned to Brown as 17 students were participating in a hunger strike to pressure the university to divest from companies “associated with human rights abuses in Palestine.” Price said that such protests are “an incredible boost, an incredible gift to the Palestinians. Seeing the Jewish groups who are against the war occupying Grand Central Station, that was incredibly moving. And I think so many Palestinians were touched by that. …[It] means that Palestinians feel like they are not being forgotten.” Hisham "is going to be an amazing person in this world," said his mother. "I'm just really glad that he still is in this world because ultimately that's the gift that we never stop being thankful for, that he didn't die that night."

When Mia Schultz became president of the Rutland branch of the NAACP in December 2020, she became one of Vermont’s most visible and important racial justice advocates. The NAACP was founded in 1909 and is the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the U.S. with more than 2,200 branches.Schultz hails from Arizona and moved to Bennington in 2016. She is the first Black woman to chair the Bennington Democratic Party and serves as one of three commissioners on Vermont’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.Among the issues that Schultz and the NAACP are tackling is overpolicing.“Vermont is not exempt from this culture,” she wrote in an op-ed for the Bennington Banner. “Black adults enter Vermont correctional facilities at more than seven times the rate of white adults. Compared to white drivers, Black and Latinx drivers are four times more likely to be pulled over, and nearly three times more likely to be searched. By contrast, they are half as likely to be found with contraband, which means the over-stopping and over-searching is simply because of their skin color.”"What is happening to really ensure that black lives matter?" Schultz asked. "Are you changing laws and policies that will actually affect black lives when it comes to policing? What are you doing to really affect the lives of marginalized people in our laws and systems and legal avenues to ensure that they're protected?"Schultz told The Vermont Conversation that she is given hope by the “people who are now out there starting community conversations and their own initiatives in their towns, gathering people, having those difficult conversations.”“Having an interpersonal relationship with people and being able to move them into action, that means other people are moved. That is the most profound thing,” she said.

VTDigger is re-releasing some of our favorite interviews of the past decade to mark the 10th anniversary of The Vermont Conversation. This episode with Matthew Desmond was originally published in April 2023.Why does the U.S. — the richest country in the world — have the most poverty of any advanced democracy? Why are homeless encampments popping up from Seattle to Burlington?The answer is that, knowingly or unknowingly, many of us benefit from keeping poor people poor.That is the argument made by Matthew Desmond in his bestselling new book, “Poverty, by America.” Desmond won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2016 book, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City," which was named by Book Riot as one of the 50 best nonfiction books of the last century. He is a professor of sociology at Princeton University, a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” fellowship, and was named by Politico in 2016 as one of “fifty people across the country who are most influencing the national political debate.”He argues that regulations ranging from zoning to environmental laws are being used to block affordable housing, a key factor that is driving the homeless crisis. He says that this problem is often especially acute in communities known for their otherwise progressive politics. Low wages are kept low for the benefit of the more affluent.“In most residential land in America, it's illegal to build anything except a single detached family home,” Desmond told The Vermont Conversation. “That little regulation buried inside of our zoning codes really means that the only place poor families can live are neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage, concentrated poverty, and that creates a level of disadvantage of a whole other order. I think that we need to think about our role and our complicity in maintaining those walls around our communities.”Desmond intends his work to be “a call to action. It means that we need to get our tails down to that zoning board meeting on a Thursday night at eight o'clock and stand up and say, Look, I refuse to be a segregationist. I refuse to deny other kids opportunities my kids receive living here. Let's build [affordable housing].”Matthew Desmond’s work is grounded in his own experience growing up in poverty. He started studying housing, poverty, and eviction in 2008, when he lived among poor tenants and their landlords in Milwaukee. He now directs the Eviction Lab at Princeton, and is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, where “Poverty, By America” was recently excerpted.Desmond wants to inspire a new abolitionist movement. “Poverty abolitionists view poverty not as a minor social issue or an inevitability, but as an abomination,” he said. “It shares with other abolitionist movements — the movement to abolish slavery [and] prisons, for example — the recognition, the conviction, that if my gain comes at someone else's loss, that's corrupting in a way." "A poverty abolitionist divests from exploitation even if it benefits us. We try to shop and invest in solidarity with poor workers," he said. "We want a government that has a balanced and sensible welfare state, a government that does much more to fight poverty than to alleviate the tax burdens of the affluent. And we are for integrated communities and open, inclusive neighborhoods.”Poverty abolitionism “is a political mission,” said Desmond, “but it's also a per

On a cold winter day in 1984, three skiers pushed off from the Massachusetts border with an audacious plan to ski the length of Vermont. They named the 300-mile route the Catamount Trail. It is now the longest ski trail in North America.On Feb. 8, those same three skiers, Ben Rose, Paul Jarris, and Steve Bushey, who are each now in their 60s, will set off to once again ski the length of Vermont to mark the 40th anniversary of the Catamount Trail. They plan to ski all 31 sections of the trail in five weeks.The Catamount Trail was originally conceived by Steve Bushey, a geography major at the University of Vermont, and his high school friend Ben Rose, who had just graduated from Yale. They had recently biked across the country together and were searching for their next big adventure. Jarris, who had been Bushey’s UVM classmate and regular outdoor partner, was a fourth-year medical student at the University of Pennsylvania. Bushey mapped out the ski trail as his masters geography thesis at Carleton University in Ottawa. Skiing it would provide proof of concept and be a grand adventure. But the trail was also about connecting people and building communities.After skiing the Catamount Trail in 1984, the three friends have gone on to have rewarding careers. Rose served as the first executive director of the nonprofit Catamount Trail Association, later went on to lead the Green Mountain Club, and is now the recovery and mitigation chief at the Vermont Department of Emergency Management. Jarris was a family doctor for 20 years and also served as Vermont’s Commissioner of Health under Gov. Jim Douglas, then played a national role in public health. Bushey and his wife founded and run Map Adventures, which makes popular recreational maps and guides.Today, thousands of skiers use the Catamount Trail each winter, including Vermont school children who are introduced to skiing through the association’s youth programs. “It’s a trail for everybody,” said Matt Williams, executive director of the Catamount Trail Association.“This is a 40-year movement … to build backcountry trails and access throughout the length of Vermont to bring people into the state to enjoy that resource,” reflected Jarris. Climate change poses a threat to the future of the Catamount Trail. A study sponsored by the climate action group Protect Our Winters projects that the average number of days with snow cover in New England will decline by 50 to 75 percent in the coming decades, depending on greenhouse gas emissions. Rose said that the Catamount Trail and its association have “an important role to play as a canary in the coal mine, and as a group of people who refuse to give up on the value of winter, the possibility of winter, the future of winter.”Skiing the length of Vermont and seeing how the Catamount Trail has grown "made me an optimist for life," said Rose.

Driving around rural areas of the Northeast, it’s not uncommon to see an occasional home or vehicle displaying a Confederate battle flag. Look closer, and you might find symbols of far right groups like the Proud Boys or the Three Percenters, both classified as hate groups.Reporters Emily Russell and Zach Hirsch decided to dig further. They spent months investigating the reach of the far right movement in rural upstate New York. They found law enforcement officers who are members of the extremist “constitutional sheriffs” movement who vow that they will not enforce state laws with which they disagree. These include laws relating to gun rights and public health. And they found a man who went to prison for participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and anticipates a military takeover during the 2024 election and a third world war.Russell and Hirsch also crisscrossed the district represented by Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY. Stefanik has amplified far right views, such as the white supremacist Great Replacement Theory and the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Stefanik is frequently mentioned as a potential vice presidential running mate for Donald Trump in the 2024 election.This investigation into the far right extremist movement in upstate New York is the subject of a remarkable five-part podcast from North Country Public Radio called “If All Else Fails,” which is hosted by Russell and Hirsch.This Vermont Conversation includes the first episode of If All Else Fails, broadcast by permission of North Country Public Radio, followed by a conversation with reporters Emily Russell and Zach Hirsch.“As we saw on Jan. 6, it only took a couple thousand people to suspend our democratic process for hours and force an evacuation from the Capitol,” Russell told the Vermont Conversation.“Even if folks who have gone down these rabbit holes may be a minority in this country, if you get enough of them riled up, they can do a tremendous amount of damage to our democracy in the U.S.,” Russell said.

Katherine Paterson is one of America’s most celebrated writers for children. The author of more than 40 books, she is one of just six writers who have twice won the prestigious Newbery Medal, for “Bridge to Terabithia” in 1978 and “Jacob Have I Loved” in 1981. She has also won the National Book Award twice. In 2000, Paterson was named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress.Paterson frequently writes about children confronting difficult issues. At 89 years old, the Vermont author shows little sign of slowing down. She recently published a new book, “Birdie’s Bargain,” about a child with a parent heading off to fight in Iraq.Paterson’s books are among the most beloved in children’s literature. They are also among the most banned. Book banning has lately been enjoying a revival, as books are being pulled from library shelves in “unprecedented” numbers, according to the American Library Association. Among the latest crop of books to be yanked from library shelves are “Maus,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust by Art Spiegelman; “Beloved,” by Toni Morrison; and “The 1619 Project,” a bestselling history of slavery in the U.S. that grew out of a special issue of The New York Times Magazine.“Bridge to Terabithia” rose to No. 8 on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most frequently challenged books for the 1990s. Her book “The Great Gilly Hopkins” was No. 20 on that list. Only a handful of authors had their books banned more often in the 1990s, including Maya Angelou, Mark Twain and John Steinbeck.“If you write a book that has any power in it, it has the power to offend,” Paterson said. “I don’t want to write a book that has no power in it, so I have to run the risk of offending.”

This January marks the 51st anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade that established a constitutional right to abortion. But 18 months ago, the Supreme Court took away that right in its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.In the aftermath of Dobbs, the landscape of reproductive rights around the country has sharply fractured. Fourteen states have enacted total bans on abortion, and seven more severely restrict access, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which describes the status of abortion rights in many states as “dismal.” One in five abortion patients now travel out of state for care.Vermont is one of seven states that have protected the right to abortion since Dobbs.Felicia Kornbluh has chronicled the rise and fall of reproductive rights in essays for the Washington Post, Time and other publications. Kornbluh is professor of history with appointments in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies and Jewish Studies at the University of Vermont. She is also vice president of the board of the Planned Parenthood of Vermont Action Fund and was a signatory to a “friend of the court” brief in the Dobbs case on behalf of the American Society for Legal History. Her latest book is “A Woman’s Life is a Human Life: My Mother, Our Neighbor and the Journey from Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Justice,” which was released in paperback this month.Kornbluh is critical of the state-by-state approach to protecting abortion rights. In Ohio, where voters approved an abortion rights amendment in November, advocates for and against abortion spent a combined $70 million.“That's crazy,” said Kornbluh. “Thinking about political strategy, I just can't imagine how we can keep going. …We need a national solution.”Kornbluh said that the Women's Health Protection Act, which would expand abortion rights, could be that solution. It was originally proposed in Congress in 2013 and was reintroduced following the Dobbs decision. It passed the House in 2021 and narrowly lost in the Senate in 2022.“If we were able to have robust Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate, then we would be able to pass that and we would be able to protect people's rights on the national level and do something different with that millions and millions of dollars…. to get us back to some kind of humane baseline in terms of abortion rights.”Medication abortions now account for more than half of abortions, and many states, including Vermont, are making plans to stockpile the medication in the event of a national ban. Kornbluh asserted that "what will continue to happen on the ground is far outpacing the effort of anti-abortion people and crotchety conservative judges who were trying to control it." She conceded, however, "They can still do damage."

On a drizzly day in late October, a strange looking truck pulled over on a dirt road in Hinesburg. The truck had electronic billboards attached to three sides that displayed the smiling face of a young woman. The neighbors knew the face well — it was Eva Frazier, whose family lived on the road. Eva was a top student at nearby Champlain Valley Union High School, from which she graduated in 2022. Eva has long been passionate about social justice issues and was involved in CVU’s chapter of Amnesty International. She is also a competitive swimmer. Eva is now a sophomore at Harvard.The truck with the illuminated billboards had a different description of Eva, who is 19. It showed her face under the banner, “Harvard’s Leading Antisemite.” The truck, which was paid for by the right-wing group Accuracy in Media, had traveled from Cambridge, Ma., where it had spent several weeks circling Harvard Yard displaying the faces of numerous Harvard students beneath the same banner. This was an effort to dox students and faculty who were allegedly sympathetic to Palestinians or who had expressed any opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza. "Doxxing" is publicizing personal information about someone without their permission. This doxxing effort is part of a national campaign to suppress pro-Palestinian speech that is led by Canary Mission, a shadowy group linked to Israel. Canary Mission now lists Frazier on a website of people that it claims “promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews.” This campaign against students and faculty has received national media attention but its work in Vermont has not been documented until now.The pressure campaign against universities may have claimed its biggest prize with the resignation on Jan. 2 of Harvard President Claudine Gay. She stepped down after a monthlong backlash following her testimony in Congress about antisemitism on campus, and allegations advanced by right-wing activists that some of her scholarly work had been plagiarized, which Harvard’s governing body refuted.Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik celebrated Gay’s resignation, calling the former Harvard president “morally bankrupt” and vowing “this is just the beginning.”Gay’s defenders included Boston University professor and bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi, who wrote on X that Gay was a target of “racist mobs.” Harvard Professor Albert Guzetti said of the campaign against Gay, “This recalls the worst days of McCarthyism.”Eva Frazier refuses to be silenced. On this Vermont Conversation, Eva talked about her experience getting doxxed and speaking out for Palestinian rights.Frazier said that the doxxing campaign’s “larger goal is to silence all students, and especially people who are thinking about being vocal or visible about support for Palestine.” The attacks on her and her friends have had the opposite effect. “It is even more important to continue to advocate for justice in Palestine especially as genocide in Gaza continues,” she told The Vermont Conversation.James Bamford, an award winning investigative journalist, recently wrote an expose for The Nation, “Who is Funding Canary Mission? Inside the Doxxing Operation Targeting Anti-Zionist Students and Professors.” He explained that Canary Mission “is a very well organized, well financed operation run by a foreign country to intimidate Americans.”Frazier believes that Gay was forced to resign by “far-right activists and leaders… [who want] to suppress free speech, hurt higher ed and really wage a war against DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and affirmative action.”Frazier said that the attacks on free speech serve a larger purpose. They are “a distraction from the tens of thousands of civilian lives that have been lost in Gaza.”

VTDigger is re-releasing some of our favorite interviews of the past decade to mark the 10th anniversary of The Vermont Conversation.John Irving, widely hailed as one of America’s greatest novelists, is back, and he has a lot to say.Irving, 81, is the author of 15 novels, including the international bestsellers “The World According to Garp,” “The Cider House Rules” and “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” which is his top-selling book. Irving’s latest novel, “The Last Chairlift,” was released Oct. 17. It has been seven years in the making and at 900 pages, it is his longest work. He says that “The Last Chairlift” will be his last long novel.John Irving wrote his first novel at age 26. He competed as a wrestler for 20 years and coached wrestling until he was 47. He was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. Irving has won a National Book Award, an Oscar and a Lambda Literary Award, among numerous other recognitions. His books have been translated into more than 35 languages.John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire. He lived for many years in Vermont, first in Putney and later in Dorset. He sold his Vermont home in 2014 and now lives in Toronto. He is a dual citizen of Canada and the U.S.Irving has long tackled controversial issues in his novels. “The World According to Garp” (1978) has a transgender character, “The Cider House Rules” (1985) deals with abortion and “A Prayer for Owen Meany” (1989) confronts the fallout from the Vietnam War. His books have periodically been banned.“What are they banning? They’re banning books about abortion and they’re banning books on LGBTQ subjects,” he told The Vermont Conversation. “What they're saying to young, gay, lesbian, trans kids, they want them to feel even more alone and isolated than they already feel. They don't want those kids to have access to material that will let them know they're not alone. They already feel alone. There's a cruelty to that that is unspeakable.”Irving is a sharp critic of American politics today. Speaking about the recent Supreme Court decision striking down abortion rights, he said, “What they did is more in step with the Vatican than it is with the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”Irving’s advice to young writers: “You can't let outside factors get under your skin. You have to stick to your purpose and be a kind of horse with blinders on. … You also can't get down on yourself after somebody's just kicked your tail. You've got to do it again and get better.”

Naomi Klein realized that she had an alter ego, or doppelganger, during the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011. She was in a public bathroom and overheard people talking about her. The author of numerous international bestsellers including “No Logo,” “The Shock Doctrine,” and “This Changes Everything,” Klein realized that she was being confused with Naomi Wolf, the liberal feminist author of the 1991 bestseller, “The Beauty Myth.” A decade ago, both authors were writing about the danger of unchecked corporate power and rising authoritarianism.But in recent years, Wolf has become an anti-vax conspiracy theorist, a leading purveyor of Covid-19 misinformation, and a regular guest of right-wing provocateurs Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. Klein was horrified and intrigued about why “Other Naomi” had disappeared down a conspiratorial rabbit hole. She decided to follow her down the rabbit hole and report back.In her latest book, “Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World,” Klein dives deep into the alternate reality of conspiracy theorists and the far right to understand why and how societies have become polarized and democracy has been pushed to the brink. “Doppelganger” has been named one of the year’s best books by the New York Times, Time, Slate and The Guardian. New York Magazine’s Vulture has named it the No. 1 book of the year.Klein is Professor of Climate Justice and co-director of the Center for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia and is Honorary Professor of Media and Climate at Rutgers. She is a columnist for The Guardian.“Doppelgangers in art and literature stand in for the way societies can kind of flip into evil twin versions of themselves,” Klein told The Vermont Conversation. “This is what happens when fascism rises: a previously open society suddenly tips into something much uglier. And that that can happen. We're not immune to it.”Klein explained that “right-wing conspiracy culture often gets the facts wrong, but the feelings right. They're often tapping into a feeling that the game is rigged, that these elites are getting away with murder, there's a whole different set of rules that applies to them.""All of that is true — it is a rigged game,” she said. “That game is called capitalism.”Klein said that the notion of doppelgangers helps explain what is happening in Israel’s war on Gaza. “If you have Israeli politicians openly saying that they want as many people in Gaza as possible to become refugees, then that is a genocidal logic. Some people say that's antisemitic, because how could a Jewish state commit genocide when Israel is itself conceived of as reparations for genocide? Well, victims can become perpetrators. This is where it comes back to doppelgangers.”Klein said that there is a way out of the mirror world. “If you want to be able to break out of those partitioned narratives, you have to be able to see each other. You don't have to agree, but you actually have to believe that each other are real, that your stories exist. If all you do is just retell and retraumatize and cling to your parallel stories and don't even acknowledge that the other stories exist, we will never ever, ever get out.”“Maybe,” said Klein, “we'll get to a wiser place out of this extreme trauma.”

VTDigger is re-releasing some of our favorite interviews of the past decade to mark the 10th anniversary of The Vermont Conversation.This Vermont Conversation with Alison Bechdel was originally published in May 2021.Alison Bechdel is obsessed. Her passion is exercise — karate, cycling, running, skiing in all its forms, to name a few of her pursuits. This obsession is the focus of Bechdel’s new graphic memoir, The Secret to Superhuman Strength. A New York Times book review declares, “This is a true delight of graphic literature, and nobody does it better. You feel as if you’re peering through a plexiglass panel right into Bechdel’s marvelous brain. … [It is] a nearly perfect book.”Bechdel has been cartoonist laureate of Vermont and a recipient of a MacArthur genius award. She garnered a cult following with her early comic strip, “Dykes to Watch Out For.” Her best-selling graphic memoir, Fun Home, was adapted into a Tony Award-winning musical. Fun Home tells the story of growing up in a family that ran a funeral home, and how after Bechdel came out as a lesbian, her closeted gay father died in a presumed suicide. The cartoonist is also known for the Bechdel Test, which rates movies on whether they include at least one scene in which two women talk to each other about something other than men.Bechdel runs, skis and bikes from her home in West Bolton, which she shares with her partner Holly Rae Taylor, who is the colorist for her new book.

Are we alone?The question of whether human beings on Earth are the only intelligent life forms has long inspired scientists and philosophers. It has also animated generations of conspiracy theorists who believe that the U.S. government has been engaged in a decadeslong coverup about extraterrestrial intelligence and unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.Bestselling Vermont author and historian Garrett Graff has a new book that attempts to settle long swirling questions and conspiracies. "UFO: TheInside Story of the U.S. Government's Search for Alien Life Here — and Out There," traces the origins of UFO conspiracy theories and takes a serious look at what scientists and the government does — and does not — know.Graff, a Burlington resident, has spent nearly two decades covering politics, technology and national security. He’s the former editor of Politico and a contributor to Wired and CNN. Graff’s previous books include “Watergate: A New History,” which was a 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist, “The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11,” and “Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself — While the Rest of Us Die.”“The story of the hunt for ‘them’ is mostly actually a story about us,” Graff writes about the search for extraterrestrial life in "UFO."Graff conceded that some UFO conspiracies have a basis in fact. “The landscape of UFO history is littered with actual government cover-ups,” he told The Vermont Conversation. “Some cloak of this secrecy is just the government's own projects” such as drones and new aircraft.“I don't really see any meaningful evidence that the government is knowingly covering up that type of conspiracy” about aliens and other life. “The government is actually covering up its own ignorance, that it doesn't know what these UFOs and UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomenon) actually are.”Graff connected the vibrant UFO conspiracy movement with current politics. “UFO conspiracies in the ‘80s and ‘90s ended up inspiring the first arrival of the deep state in our political discourse. And from there, there is a much more direct line to our modern politics than I think most people realize. I don't think you get January 6 without the foundation of these dark UFO conspiracies in the 1990s.”Graff said that “the rise of the corrupting influence of myths and disinformation” spread by figures such as Alex Jones and Donald Trump is an ominous portent.“My concern about Donald Trump is that he is really bad for the longevity of human civilization … His reelection is not just a grave threat to American democracy and system of a functioning constitution and three branches of government as we know it." Graff is concerned about "what he would do to the larger civilizational challenges that we have to confront right now, from climate change, to misinformation, to disinformation, to the rise of AI.”“We have a lot of questions that we as a species and as a country need to get right right now,” Graff concluded. “And Donald Trump is the wrong answer to all of them.”

In an attack that shocked the world, three Palestinian American college students were shot and wounded while walking in Burlington on Nov. 25. The men were in Vermont visiting family for Thanksgiving.Police allege that 48-year old Jason Eaton stepped off his porch and shot the three men. The attack appears to have been unprovoked and the assailant said nothing before opening fire, the victims told police. Eaton has been charged with three counts of attempted second degree murder, and authorities are investigating whether to add a hate crime charge. He has pleaded not guilty and is being held as he awaits a bail hearing. The three victims, all age 20, are Hisham Awartani, a student at Brown University in Rhode Island; Kinnan Abdalhamid, a student at Haverford College in Pennsylvania; and Tahseen Aliahmad, a student at Trinity College in Connecticut. They were classmates at the Ramallah Friends School, a Quaker high school in the West Bank. Two of the students are U.S. citizens and one is a legal resident of the U.S. They have been treated at the University of Vermont Medical Center. Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger called the attack “one of the most shocking and disturbing events in this city’s history.”U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., cited the attack when he reversed himself on Tuesday and called for an indefinite cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas War. “The impact of the conflict in the Middle East has reverberated across the world, and we’ve seen the effects here at home in the form of Islamophobia and antisemitism,” said Vermont’s junior senator. “This cycle of fear, intimidation, and violence must end.”U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the attack in Burlington was part of “a sharp increase in the volume and frequency of threats against Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities across our country since Oct. 7.” That was when Hamas launched a surprise attack that killed 1,200 Israelis, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry. Hamas’ attack sparked a bombardment and ground invasion by Israel that has so far killed some 15,000 Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The United Nations reports that two thirds of the victims are women and children. The Council on Islamic Relations reported an “unprecedented” 216% increase in complaints of Islamophobic or anti-Arab bias from October 7 to November 4 compared to the previous year. The Anti-Defamation League reported that antisemitic incidents surged 316% in that same period. On this Vermont Conversation we speak about the attack on the three Palestinian American young men with Burlington resident Rich Price, the uncle of Hisham Awartani, who was shot in the spine. Doctors have told the family that Hisham may never be able to walk again. We are also joined by Wafic Faour, a Palestinian who is a member of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine, and Fuad Al-Amoody, vice president of the Islamic Society of Vermont. “This hideous crime did not happen in a vacuum,” Hisham Awartani texted from the ICU.“I am but one casualty in this much wider conflict,” he wrote to a professor who read the statement at a vigil at Brown University this week, according to the Boston Globe. “Any attack like this is horrific, be it here or in Palestine. This is why when you send your wishes and light your candles for me today, your mind should not just be focused on me as an individual, but rather as a proud member of a people being oppressed.”Rich Price told The Vermont Conversation that his nephew and his friends who were attacked “represent the best and brightest of Palestine and what it means to be Palestinian.” Price said, "It's important that we stop dehumanizing Palestinians, that we create a place where you can both advocate for the rights of Palestinians, stand in solidarity with Palestinians, and not be viewed as antisemitic or anti-Israeli.” He said that is essential to achieve lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.Fuad Al-Amoody added that while he was moved by the outpouring of support for the three Palestinian Americans in Vermont, it underscored a painful reality. “If this tragedy happened in Palestine (to) the same three people, I don't think we'll see the same compassion that we're seeing right now here.”“If you remove that ‘American’ and just the ‘Palestinian’ remains, I wish, I hope (that) the compassion, the solidarity is shown to the same people in Palestine,” Al-Amoody said. Wafic Faour said that after this tragedy, “I hope people will learn that Palestinians are no different. They are human.”“We should go after hate crimes if it is against Palestinians, or Muslims, or because of Islamophobia, or antisemitism or anti-black and anti-Brown. We have to teach our kids that racism shouldn't be part of our daily life here.”Price observed, "To be Palestinian in this world is difficult. You learn how to deal with trauma, you learn how to deal with tragedy, and I'm seeing in these boys resilience and strength that would really just be awe

This Vermont Conversation originally aired on January 8, 2020.A beloved voice of Vermont fell silent with the passing of Kenley Dean Squier on Nov. 15, 2023. He was 88 years old. Squier is best known as a NASCAR Hall of Fame broadcaster and the owner of radio station WDEV, part of the Radio Vermont Group, which has been owned by the Squier family for over nine decades.Ken Squier was my friend. A highlight of coming to the WDEV studio to broadcast The Vermont Conversation every week since 2013 was spending time afterward in Ken’s office discussing the news of the day or the latest book of history that he was reading. Ken would also regale me with stories of auto racing, though I never could keep straight the numerous racers who he would name drop. Ken was fiercely committed to featuring a rich diversity of voices on the airwaves. He believed it was an essential part of a healthy society and a functioning democracy.Ken decried the rise of partisan media such as Fox News. He told me on The Vermont Conversation, “There's got to be places on the radio where you can tune in on one station where there are ideas and philosophies that aren't all the same."He said he took the same approach to running a radio station as a Vermont farmer. “You don't put down just one crop. That'll put you right over the side of the barrel in no time at all.”“If we could get in here and talk to each other and listen to each other, that's what we need to do. And Vermonters know it better than anyone else. That's why we have town meetings. And people get up there and by God, they say what they want to say. Isn't that good?”Squier provided then-Rep. Bernie Sanders his own weekly radio program on WDEV in 2003 and 2004. The program later evolved into “Brunch With Bernie,” a nationally syndicated weekly program with radio host Thom Hartmann.How was Sanders on the radio at first? “Awful,” replied Squier. “Because he did the same mantra ... Jesus, we knew his message by heart. We had it memorized if you listened for two days in a row."Squier insisted that Sanders take listener calls, which the congressman initially resisted. "He said that would take him off his message."Squier prevailed and "come to find out, he rather enjoyed it." That transformed the program, and Sanders, into a national hit.I asked Squier why he gave Sanders a platform.“Because (he) was one of the ones that wasn't being paid attention to. Everybody laughed and giggled. They're not laughing now. He's changing the way America is thinking, and America needs to change some of their thinking. … And I'm very pleased that we had something to do with Bernie." Sanders paid tribute to Squier following his death. “Vermont has lost a true legend,” he posted last week on X, formerly Twitter. “Ken was an undeniable voice for generations of Vermonters and car racing fans across the country. More than that though, Ken was an irreplaceable part of his community in Vermont.”Squier implored, “There has to be room in this country to carry on a conversation that does have other ideas and other opinions. Doesn't happen too much. Needs to.”

The war raging between Israel and Hamas continues to take a staggering toll. About 1,200 Israelis were killed and 230 were taken hostage on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants attacked Israel, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry. In response, Israel has mounted a relentless bombardment and ground invasion that has claimed the lives of 1 of every 200 Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and displaced two-thirds of the population.U.N. Secretary General António Guterres has called for a cease-fire and said that Gaza was becoming a “graveyard for children.” Gazan health officials report that 4,600 children have already been killed in the war. This conflict has reverberated around the world and throughout the Green Mountains of Vermont. Rallies, marches and vigils have taken place around the state, some that are pro-Israel, others that are pro-Palestinian or that simply call for a cease-fire. Protesters recently disrupted a Burlington fundraiser for Rep. Becca Balint, demanding that she back a cease-fire.On this Vermont Conversation, we hear the voices of Vermonters speaking out about the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Host David Goodman spoke with Rabbi David Edleson of Temple Sinai in South Burlington who just returned from Washington, D.C., where he joined a national rally supporting Israel; Wafic Faour, a Palestinian who is a member of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine; Grace Oedel, a rabbinical student who works with the American Jewish organization IfNotNow that is calling for a ceasefire; and Faud Al-Amoody, vice president of the Islamic Society of Vermont, about the impact of the conflict on Vermont’s Muslim community and rising Islamophobia.Faour said of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, “I wasn't surprised that something (was) going to happen at one point or another. Gaza (has) been living under a complete siege and (been) an open air prison for the last 17 years.” Faour said he had a “conflicting feeling” about current events. “I had the sadness (about) what's happening over there and my opposing any kind of violence in general, but in another hand, a hope that something better will come out of it.”Edleson said that Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has so far claimed the lives of more than 11,000 Palestinians according to Gazan health officials, “at least in the near run, it makes Israeli civilians safer. I'm very concerned in the long run that you're just creating more extremism and that that does not make Israel safer.”More than two-thirds of Americans support calls for a cease-fire, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll this week. Edleson dismissed talk of a cease-fire. “I think it's ridiculous,” he said. “I think a cease-fire right now is like calling for a cease-fire on D-Day in World War II. You know, war is tragic. But sometimes you have to take the momentum while you have it. It's a terrorist organization. It moves around very quickly. I don't think a cease-fire would do anything.” Oedel disagreed. “I am calling for a cease-fire unequivocally right now. I believe that we have a moral and ethical obligation to try to do whatever we can to protect human life.”“I cannot and will not abide immoral violence being done, which is overwhelmingly affecting children and innocent civilians in the name of keeping Jewish people safe,” she said.Al-Amoody said many Vermont Muslims are refugees from war-torn countries and are afraid to speak out about the war. He said there is a double standard, where expressing sympathy for Palestinians means "you are supporting the terrorists.""I cannot even talk about humanity, our moral compass," he said. "I can't even come out and say: this is wrong. People getting killed is wrong on both sides."Oedel said that people caught up in the conflict are desperately searching for safety. “I believe that safety can look like solidarity,” she said of why she stands with those calling for a cease-fire. “We are all safe when we are all safe.”

Newly married couples swear that they will love each other “till death do us part.” But for many couples, love ends far sooner than life. Half of first marriages and two-thirds of second marriages end in divorce. Is a happy ending still possible after a divorce? Collaborative divorce is a process of ending a marriage through cooperation and negotiation. Couples agree to work together with their respective attorneys to resolve differences and not go to court. Collaborative divorce usually includes the help of neutral third parties including a financial advisor and a mental health coach. Some of the advantages of collaborative divorce are that it is typically faster, cheaper and more amicable than traditional divorce. Burlington attorney Nanci Smith was a typical adversarial divorce lawyer for 30 years — a “shark.” But her combative style made her feel that she was deepening the misery of her already unhappy clients. She decided to change her approach and now specializes in collaborative divorce. Smith is the author of the book, “Untangling Your Marriage: A Guide to Collaborative Divorce.” “You have to come together to separate well,” insisted Smith. “You have an important primary relationship that was very, very valuable to you for many years and now it's not working anymore. So the question is, how do we untangle that? How do we move forward in a way that offers mutual respect and dignity?” “A collaborative model is both a mindset and a process. The mindset is that you want to come to it with at least the hope that you could do this well and not screw up your children,” said Smith. “You can set a new narrative, which is that we are going to be better friends and co-parents than we were a married couple.”Collaborative divorce is not for everyone. Relationships where there is abuse or child endangerment, or cases in which a spouse is hiding assets may not lend themselves to collaboration. Martine Antell of Waterbury Center is a mother of two children who recently went through a collaborative divorce with her husband. “You just get to the point where you see the other person as this human being and you just want the best for them, just like you want the best for your kids and you want the best for yourself,” she said. Asked how she would characterize her relationship with her ex-husband following their collaborative divorce, Antell stopped to consider it. After a long pause, she replied, “I would call him a friend.”

The war between Israel and Hamas reaches new levels of brutality each day. Some 1,400 Israelis were killed and 5,400 injured in Hamas’ surprise attack on Oct. 7, according to Israeli officials. In retaliation, Israel launched a bombardment and blockade of the Gaza Strip, killing over 8,500 Palestinians and injuring more than 22,000 as of Nov. 1, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.UN Secretary General António Guterres denounced Hamas’ bloody attack on Israel as “appalling” but insisted it did not happen in a vacuum. “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation,” he said. “They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”Israel accused the UN chief of providing “a justification for terrorism and murder” and called for him to resign.This clash is now the deadliest and most destructive of the five wars fought between Israel and Hamas since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.That’s right, five wars in 16 years.What is the deeper story behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? How and when was Israel founded and why do Palestinians call this the Nakba, or catastrophe? What are the Occupied Territories and when did they become occupied? What is Hamas and the Palestinian Authority? What is Zionism? Who are the Jewish settlers? How did the violence begin, and how does it end?For answers to these and other questions, the Vermont Conversation turned to two experts at Dartmouth College, one Egyptian, the other American-Israeli. They each teach and write widely on these issues and have deep personal experience in the Middle East.Ezzedine Fishere is a senior lecturer at Dartmouth College, where he has taught courses on Middle East politics and culture since 2016. Fishere previously served as an advisor to Egyptian pro-democracy movements and worked in the Egyptian Foreign Service and the United Nations missions in the Middle East. He directed the Arab-Israeli project at the International Crisis Group, and worked as a counselor to the Egyptian foreign minister. He is a columnist for the Washington Post and a novelist.Bernard Avishai is a Visiting Professor of Government at Dartmouth and an Adjunct Professor of Business at the Hebrew University, and formerly taught at MIT and Duke. He is the author of “The Tragedy of Zionism,” “A New Israel,” and other books. He writes regularly on Israeli affairs for the New Yorker, The Nation, and other publications.“I'm deeply concerned that Israel's actions may create a larger conflagration,” said Avishai. “The radical zealot minorities in each people are like tails wagging the dog… People committing atrocities have kept the moderate center of each people away from each other.”Fishere said that he wavers between being a realist who sees no end to the conflict and a dreamer who believes that a peaceful solution is within reach. “Bring the parties together around a political solution that number one, gives Israel security so that this doesn't happen again. Number two, gives Palestinians hope so that they have something positive to look to … a Palestinian state that garners support, that becomes a beacon of hope for those people, that allows them equality and dignity.” “There is nothing unpredictable about this conflict,” said Fishere. “If people are really tired, if people really want to invest in changing it, I think that's the way.”

When Becca Balint ran for Congress last year, she spoke about how her family’s history as Jews who lived through the Holocaust motivated her to “heal divisions.”Now as a progressive Jewish member of Congress, Balint has been thrust into the center of a raging debate about how to respond to the horrific attack on Israel by Hamas and Israel’s intense retaliatory bombardment of the Gaza Strip, home to over 2 million Palestinians.On October 7, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing more than 1,400 Israelis, abducting over 200 hostages, and injuring more than 5,400 people, most of them civilians. In response, Israel has mounted a brutal assault on the Gaza Strip. As of Tuesday, nearly 6,000 Palestinians had been killed and over 16,000 injured, according to the Gaza health ministry.Balint recently joined 132 House Democrats, including every Democratic Jewish member of congress, in a statement that endorsed Israel’s right to defend itself and also called for protections for civilians.“Israel has to protect innocent lives — that has to be a part of the response,” Balint told The Vermont Conversation. “And also, Hamas could end this immediately by releasing all of the hostages and denouncing their position, which is that Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth and all Israelis should be slaughtered.”“Any civilian loss of life is absolutely tragic,” she continued, noting that she is “working very hard with the Biden administration to push Israel to follow all humanitarian and international laws related to this conflict.”The ripple effects of the Hamas attack and the Israeli assault on Gaza are being felt around the world and throughout Vermont. Rallies have been held in Burlington in solidarity with Israelis, and another calling for Palestinian solidarity. Jewish Vermonters held a prayer service on the rainswept steps of the Vermont State House last Friday and read the Mourner’s Kaddish, the traditional prayer in memory of the dead, “to honor the loss of both Israeli and Palestinian life,” according to local organizers with If Not Now, an American Jewish group that is calling for a ceasefire and an end to Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.Eighteen Democratic members of Congress have signed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Balint has not endorsed the ceasefire resolution.“If I thought that calling for (a ceasefire) right now would help this situation, would help the hostages, would help the intricacies on the ground, I would do it,” asserted Balint. “I'm doing my level best in this moment to make the right political decision to ensure ongoing peace and security in the region, which is what I want and have always wanted.”Balint acknowledges that “people are really struggling in Vermont with this issue right now.” She counts herself among them."Of course, my family's Holocaust history weighs on me. Of course, the antisemitism and Islamophobia weighs on me. But it doesn't impact the decision making that I do. Because Vermonters want me to be doing my homework. And that's what I'm doing." “It's not easy to be on the receiving end of people saying that I'm responsible for genocide, or I'm responsible for this humanitarian catastrophe,” she said. “I am making the steps I think need to be made right now to make this situation better.”

Rick Hubbard left his home in South Burlington in October 2022 driving a large RV en route to Los Angeles, where he began walking across the country. The 81-year-old retired attorney says he is walking to fix our democracy.One year later, Hubbard is still walking.The Vermont Conversation caught up with Hubbard in Colorado, where he is currently walking. The purpose of the walk, he said, is “to involve other people to help get Americans thinking about how important it is for us to have our system of a republic with representative democracy.” He says that elected leaders should “serve not a few but serve the bulk of all 330 million of us.”Hubbard was co-founder and director of the Vermont chapter of Common Cause, which advocates for voting rights and government accountability. He was inspired to walk for democracy by Doris Haddock, aka Granny D, an 88-year-old New Hampshire activist who walked across the country in 1999 and 2000 in support of campaign finance reform. Hubbard joined Granny D for a week as she walked across Kentucky, stopping at Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office to demand that he support campaign finance reform.Hubbard has had to make unexpected detours along his journey. Last December, he had to rush home to Vermont when his life partner of three decades, Sally Howe, was diagnosed with aggressive cancer. Howe died in April.Hubbard wrote that he had to turn his attention from fixing democracy to “fix my broken heart.”In August, Hubbard resumed his cross-country walking journey. He conceded in a blog post, “some days may be more putting one foot in front of the other, rather than a crusade to save our Democracy.”Hubbard walks about 10 miles per day, five days per week. He carries an American flag on his back that flaps behind his head. He engages volunteers and community members along his route. He is pressing for passage of voting rights legislation and celebrating state and local activists along the route."All Americans both understand that we've got a problem and (that) the system is not serving us," said Hubbard. "If you can cut out the labels, the left or the right, and you can focus on the job that our electors are supposed to be doing on our behalf, you get widespread agreement from both sides." You can follow Rick Hubbard’s walk across America at fixourdemocracy.us.

Several decades before Adolf Hitler and the Nazis took the notion of "purifying" society to genocidal extremes in the Holocaust, the ideas behind it were enthusiastically embraced in Vermont.Eugenics is the pseudoscience that humans can be improved through selective breeding. Many American states, including Vermont, used eugenics as the basis for public policies including family separation, institutionalization and sterilization. By 1936, over half of states practiced eugenical sterilization. In the 1920s and ’30s, vulnerable Vermonters were targeted, institutionalized and otherwise separated from their families, and many were sterilized.Eugenics policies were “designed to break apart entire families and to basically get rid of them over several generations, whether that be segregating them in an institution, whether that be sterilizing them, whether that be inflicting so much trauma that the family no longer comes together,” said Mercedes de Guardiola, author of a new book published by the Vermont Historical Society, “Vermont for the Vermonters: The History of Eugenics in the Green Mountain State.” De Guardiola originally wrote the book as an undergraduate thesis at Dartmouth College, where she graduated in 2017 with a degree in history and art history.In 2021, the state of Vermont became one of the few states to formally apologize for the practice. De Guardiola testified about the eugenics movement before the Vermont Legislature in 2021.The University of Vermont apologized in 2019 for its role in the eugenics movement and removed the name of former UVM President Guy Bailey from its library for his role in promoting eugenics.Vermont’s eugenics program became national news earlier this year when former Gov. Jim Douglas sued Middlebury College, his alma mater, for changing the name of Mead Memorial Chapel, which was named for John Abner Mead, Vermont’s governor from 1910 to 1912. The college removed Mead’s name in 2021, citing his “central role in advancing eugenics policies that resulted in harm to hundreds of Vermonters.”“In the cases of these unfortunates there is little or no hope of permanent recovery,” Mead said in his farewell speech in 1912. “And the great question that is now being considered by the lawmakers in many of our states is how best to restrain this defective class and how best to restrict the propagation of defective children.”Douglas insisted that Mead was a victim of “cancel culture.”De Guardiola said that Mead’s role is emblematic of “participation at the highest level of government across several decades and a number of state officials, as well as private citizens (who) also (threw) their support in for eugenics.”De Guardiola declined to weigh in on whether Mead’s name should be removed from the Middlebury chapel, saying simply, “His words speak for themselves.”“It's important to consider what their words were and what they resulted in,” de Guardiola said, adding that eugenics laws led to family separation and sterilization.

VTDigger is re-releasing some of our favorite interviews of the past decade to mark the 10th anniversary of The Vermont Conversation.This Vermont Conversation with Jane Mayer was originally published in April 2022.Jane Mayer has earned a reputation as one of the country’s top investigative reporters. As chief Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, Mayer has been relentless in exposing the hidden forces shaping American politics. Her bestselling book, “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” documents the vast influence of the Koch brothers and was named one of the 10 best books of 2016 by the New York Times. In the past year, Mayer has exposed the right-wing funders behind former President Donald Trump’s Big Lie of a stolen election. She reported how Ginni Thomas secretly supported the Jan. 6 insurrection as her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, considered cases that involved her. And this month she exposed the shadowy conservative organization that smeared Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in a failed attempt to derail her Supreme Court confirmation. Mayer often provokes the ire of those she exposes. The Koch Brothers hired investigators to smear her, and the subject of her most recent exposé tweeted her personal contact information in an attempt to intimidate her. Mayer worked at the Wall Street Journal before joining the New Yorker in 1995. She has won numerous awards for her reporting. Esquire called Mayer “quite simply one of the very few, utterly invaluable journalists this country has.” Disclosure: Jane Mayer serves on the board of the Vermont Journalism Trust, the parent organization of VTDigger.

Sixty years ago, a troupe of performers toting giant papier-mâché puppets and art painted on bed sheets made its first appearance in a protest march in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This was the Bread and Puppet Theater, founded by Peter and Elka Schumann. In 1970, the Schumanns moved to Vermont, eventually purchasing a farm in Glover, which has been the home of Bread and Puppet ever since.Peter Schumann told The Vermont Conversation that the large puppets are “so much more persuasive. It's so much easier to make it big, make it humongous. People flocked to us. They wanted not to carry somebody else's slogan, but to be in the puppet (performance).”Over the course of its six decades, the oversized puppets and art of Bread and Puppet Theater have become the iconic image of protest around the world. It is one of the longest-running nonprofit, self-supporting theater companies in the United States. These days, Bread and Puppet performs in Glover on summer weekends, and tours the country during other times.In August, I spent an afternoon with Peter Schumann talking about his life and work, and 60 years of Bread and Puppet. Schumann is now 89 years old, his long white hair tumbling out from beneath his trademark hat. We sat in his house, a small wooden structure crammed with books and art. At the center of the house is a cast iron oven where he bakes bread.Peter has recently experienced some major life challenges. In 2021, Elka, his beloved wife of 63 years and the mother of his five children, died at the age of 85. This spring, Peter suffered two strokes. He desperately wanted to leave the hospital and return home so he persuaded his doctors “by teaching myself to speak as clearly as possible and by repeating myself to have answers” to their questions.Schumann said that life after Elka has been difficult. “I’m trying to find a way out of the despair,” he said.One consolation for Schumann is to resume his life of art, protest and performance. He continues to perform with Bread and Puppet each weekend.Peter Schumann was born in 1934 in Silesia, a region that was then occupied by Nazi Germany but is now mostly in Poland. Having seen fascism as a boy, he fears for the future of the U.S. He decried “this primitive herd of strong men methodologies of how to solve problems.”What is the future of Bread and Puppet?“This I don’t know,” said Schumann. “There have to be so many people who want to do it (but) it doesn't mean it's the same. It can't be, it won't be. The only thing that can be transported in a reasonable way is the methodology. What do you do? How do you make art? What do you make it for?”Schumann has made one concession to his advanced age: he has given up walking on stilts. But he added with a mischievous chuckle, “Come this weekend. I will do something like that. But don’t tell anybody.”Two days later, I returned to see one of the last summer performances of Bread and Puppet. Near the end of the show, Schumann, dressed in the troupe’s trademark white outfit, climbed 15 feet up a ladder that was held vertical by four puppeteers pulling ropes. He stood atop the ladder, seemingly defying gravity, blowing his horn and directing the performers below as they moved dreamily around a meadow.One of the people who held the ladder told me afterward that the puppeteers pleaded with Schumann to remain on the ground. He dismissed their concerns.As he approaches his 90th year, Schumann isn’t going to change his artistic vision to make people comfortable.

“The truth isn’t dying. It’s being killed.”Lee McIntyre argues this in his latest book, “On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth andProtect Democracy.” McIntyre is a research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. His previous books include “Post-Truth,” and “How To Talk To A Science Denier.”The war on truth is threatening to topple democracies around the world, according to McIntyre, and undermining truth is a key strategy of authoritarian leaders.When it comes to denying that President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, “a belief fervently held like that is a matter of identity. It's not just what they believe, it's who they are,” McIntyre told the Vermont Conversation. “No evidence can convince them.”McIntyre said there is a key distinction between misinformation and disinformation. “Misinformation is a mistake … Disinformation is a lie. Disinformation is a falsehood that is intentionally shared by someone who knows that it's false and is sharing it anyway because it serves their interests to have an army of people believe that falsehood,” he said.“Authoritarians thrive on the idea of falsehood or the idea of lying,” McIntrye said. “They understand that if you can control the information source, you can control the population.”

Philadelphia is synonymous with liberty and possibility. It is the city where the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were signed.But there is a lesser-known side to Philadelphia. It is the poorest large city in America. Kensington is its poorest neighborhood, a place where “18th-birthday celebrations are not rites of passage but miracles,” writes sociologist Nikhil Goyal. Goyal was a senior policy advisor on education and children to Senator Bernie Sanders.Goyal has a new book, “Live to See The Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty,” in which he follows three Puerto Rican children growing up in Kensington. This coming of age story is marked by violence, drugs, homelessness and the fallout from wrenching poverty. Environmental activist Bill McKibben has called the book “an instant classic.”As an aide to Bernie Sanders, Goyal helped develop education, child care and child tax credit legislation as well as a tuition-free college program for incarcerated people and correctional workers in Vermont. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications. Goyal is a graduate of Goddard College in Plainfield and received his PhD from the University of Cambridge. Goyal will be a lecturer in sociology at the University of Vermont starting this fall.Goyal attributes the urban decay that he saw in Kensington partly to disinvestment and also to neoliberalism, the notion that social problems can be solved by privatization and deregulation. Neoliberalism “has produced a great level of inequality and suffering. And I think Kensington is one of the greatest physical manifestations of that in America today,” he said. Goyal also reflected on his time with Sen. Bernie Sanders. He said that Sanders’ ideas such as canceling student debt and tuition-free community college have become part of the mainstream due to “the power of social movements. I don't think you would have seen Build Back Better … if it weren't for Occupy Wall Street, if it weren't for Fight for 15, the Black Lives Matter movement. I think social movements gave us the language to talk about exploitation and poverty and inequality in ways that hadn't been discussed in America for many decades.”

For the fortieth summer, hundreds of Vermont high school students had a different kind of learning experience. They attended one of eight programs of the Governor’s Institutes of Vermont. In 1983, the very first Governor’s Institutes of Vermont program was launched. It was focused on the arts, addressing what advisers to Gov. Richard Snelling felt was a dearth of opportunity in arts education in Vermont. In the four decades since that first program, more than 10,000 students have attended one of the Governor’s Institutes of Vermont, which are now offered at nine locations around the state. Each year, some 500 students attend a governor’s institute. It also runs winter weekend programs, though these were not offered in 2023. The Governor’s Institutes of Vermont has one of the longest running governor’s schools in the country. On this Vermont Conversation, past and recent alums and their parents talk about this unique enrichment program for Vermonters: Dave Amidon (Arts 1992), his son Nicholas Jamisco Amidon (Arts 2023), River Woods (Arts 2022, Health & Medicine 2023), Jim Michael (whose five children attended the institute) and Elizabeth Frascoia, the executive director of the Governor’s Institutes of Vermont. We also hear from musician Grace Potter, who attended an arts institute while in high school. "Never underestimate the power of being completely and utterly embarrassed by the things that you try,” Potter said.

When Champlain College President Alejandro "Alex" Hernandez is asked about the value of an education, he responds by telling the story of his family.He is the child of immigrant parents who both became school teachers in California. After Hernandez received a masters degree from Stanford, he went into finance, but eventually left to become a high school math teacher in South Central Los Angeles. He went on to become a dean and provost at the University of Virginia, and in 2022, was named president of Champlain College in Burlington.Hernandez assumes the helm of Champlain after a period of leadership turnover at the 145-year-old not-for-profit private college. He is the fourth president in four years. He has already made his mark as the college has had a record-breaking year in fundraising.Education has become central to the culture wars. In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ended race-based affirmative action this June, Hernandez must now craft a way for Champlain to champion diversity without running afoul of the law.“You're either being intentionally diverse or unintentionally exclusive,” said Hernandez. “Why is it that certain groups are not showing up to college campuses? And what is it about the colleges that we’re creating that make that true?”“I've spent my entire career thinking about how do you increase access. How do you increase accessibility, and that work is never done. It's an ideal that you need to continue to pursue as a country. And it goes on for generations.”

Stephen Kiernan spent much of his life as an award-winning journalist for the Burlington Free Press and the Boston Globe. In 2013, he made the jump from reporter to novelist with the publication of his debut book of fiction, “The Curiosity.” He has never looked back.Kiernan has now published five critically acclaimed novels, including “The Baker’s Secret” and “Universe of Two.” His latest novel is “The Glass Chateau,” which was published in June. It’s a haunting tale set just after World War II in France. The story centers around an assassin for the Resistance who struggles to reckon with the killings he has committed. Around him, a traumatized nation attempts to rebuild after war. The challenge is captured in an attempt to repair the shattered stained glass windows of a grand cathedral.Kiernan is a graduate of Middlebury College, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.“The Glass Chateau,” Kiernan said, is intended to be “a healing book.”“Covid was underway when I started this book, but also what was happening in the fabric of our culture, our politics and all of that. Why is everyone so angry? And why are so many people also so sad and lonely?” he said,“This book begins a month after the war is ended. And it's about these people trying to rebuild this really divided nation” Kiernan said.

Scenes of the smoldering ruins of Lahaina, Maui, are the latest evidence that no place, no matter how idyllic, is safe from climate disruption. The wildfires that destroyed the town this week are the deadliest in the modern history of the U.S.The Maui wildfires were far more lethal but they share common elements with the floods that ravaged parts of Vermont last month. Both disasters were fueled by climate change. And both have displaced numerous people from their homes.Disasters such as these are expected to force millions of Americans from their homes and communities in coming years. Many residents will never return. In 2021, one in three Americans had experienced some kind of weather disaster.Journalists Tik Root and Jake Bittle cover climate change as staff writers for Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Root recently reported on how FEMA’s flood maps failed to cover many areas in Vermont that were flooded this July. As a result, many flooded residents falsely believed they were outside the flood zone. The outdated maps reflect past floods and do not take climate change into account.Bittle is the author of a new book, “The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration.” He said that climate change is forcing a mass migration in the U.S. as people try to escape the next climate disaster. This migration is different than the Great Migration in which Blacks fled from the south to the north to escape political persecution, slavery and Jim Crow laws.“The migration from climate starts all over the country, it starts in coastal areas, in the desert, in wildfire areas, and the movement is much more chaotic.“It's not so much that you're picking up in one place and moving all the way across the country to another place. It's that you're being buffeted around by these bigger forces.”This summer’s floods disabused many people of that notion that Vermont is a safe haven from climate chaos. “There's a big question about where people will go,” Bittle said. But rebuilding or relocating after disaster opens up new possibilities. “You have an opportunity to build a society that is safer and fairer and more equitable.”

Will it be three indictments and Trump’s out?Stuart Stevens doesn’t think so. “The indictments will help (former president Donald) Trump in the Republican primary, of which there’s a certain crazy logic,” he said. “The Republican Party now is pretty much officially a white grievance party. And there's no greater way to prove the grievance than to be indicted by the Deep State.”Stevens contends that the Republican Party that he spent his career promoting has morphed into an authoritarian movement. Stevens was a former top adviser on five Republican presidential campaigns and dozens of GOP campaigns for governor, Congress and the U.S. Senate. Today, he has abandoned the Republican Party and is now doing all he can to stop it. He is a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, which is working to defeat Trump in the 2024 election. Stevens grew up in Mississippi but now lives in Stowe.Stevens says that the Trump era “is sort of like a pandemic: Whatever you say in the beginning will sound alarmist, but in the end will prove inadequate.”"I'm working on the assumption that Trump will not be convicted before the election,” he said. “And it'll be sort of a moral test for the country because Trump's basically running — his theme is so I can pardon myself. And by pardoning myself, I'm pardoning you, because you invested in me, and we were right, they were wrong."We've never had an election like that." Stevens has a new book due out in October, “The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy.” This follows his 2020 bestseller, “It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump.”“It's an existential crisis,” Stevens said of the political precipice on which the U.S. teeters. “I can't really tell you by 2028 if we have an election in America, that it will be a democratic election.”

The brick crashed through Lauren Chooljian’s window accompanied by a message scrawled on the side of her house: “THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING.”Chooljian had a good idea what this attack was about. She is a senior reporter and producer at New Hampshire Public Radio. She had been investigating alleged sexual misconduct by Eric Spofford, the founder of GraniteRecovery Centers, New Hampshire's largest substance use disorder treatment and rehabilitation network. As more and more women told her of being sexually harassed and abused by Spofford, Chooljian has faced mounting threats, lawsuits, and attacks on her home as well as the homes of her parents and editor.“That’s being a journalist in America today,” Chooljian told the New York Times.Spofford denies the sexual misconduct allegations.If the attacks and lawsuits were intended to silence Chooljian, they failed spectacularly. In June, NHPR released a seven-part podcast series, “The 13th Step,” hosted by Lauren Chooljian. The series investigated Spofford and systemic abuse in the substance use disorder treatment industry. New York Magazine recently named “The 13th Step” one of the best podcasts of 2023.In late June, several weeks after the podcast dropped, federal authorities charged three men for their role in the attacks on Chooljian’s house. The complaint said that “a close personal associate” of Spofford’s solicited the attackers. Spofford has also sued NHPR for libel and demanded that it retract the stories about him. The attacks occurred two days after the news organization refused to take down the story. A New Hampshire judge dismissed the libel complaint last year, but Spofford has now demanded access to Chooljian’s interviews and notes. NHPR is currently fighting the request.The attacks on Lauren Chooljian take place within a larger context of journalists being increasingly targeted. Former President Donald Trump frequently urges his followers to confront journalists, who he calls "enemies of the people." Last year, 41 journalists were physically assaulted, according to the U.S. PressFreedom Tracker, and there has been a rise in libel and defamation suits.“We should all see journalism as an essential piece of our democracy,” Chooljian told The Vermont Conversation. “If people are afraid to report wrongdoing, then wrongdoing will never come to light.”

In the early hours of July 11, the rain-swollen Lamoille River rose up out of its banks and tore through the heart of downtown Johnson. Parts of the small Vermont town lay in ruins. Johnson’s wastewater treatment plant was destroyed, and the downtown supermarket, the town offices and fire department, surrounding farms, the Johnson health center, and dozens of manufactured homes all sustained heavy damage.How do you recover? Johnson may have a homegrown answer as it recovers from twin disasters: the opioid crisis and a flood fueled by the climate crisis.Jenna’s Promise is a recovery community in Johnson that helps women with substance use disorder. It is named for 26-year-old Jenna Tatro, who died in February 2019 following a drug overdose at her family’s Johnson home. Her grieving parents, Greg and Dawn Tatro, founded Jenna’s Promise as a place they wish had existed for their daughter — a community-based center for women in recovery.In just a few years, Jenna’s Promise has expanded into a number of formerly vacant buildings in Johnson and now includes recovery housing, a workforce development program, a popular downtown café, a coffee roastery, and a surplus goods and appliances store. The flood damaged one of Jenna’s Promise recovery housing locations and filled the basement of Jenna’s Coffee House, but the café is up and running again.Are the lessons of recovery transferable from one crisis to another? Greg Tatro believes so. “You gotta have hope and keep moving ahead, even if it's small steps every day,” said Greg Tatro, the owner of the 67-year-old family business, G.W. Tatro Construction.

Vermont Sen. Peter Welch spent last week touring his flooded state and assuring residents that help was on the way. Welch has a lot of practice with this. First elected to Congress in 2006, he experienced Vermont’s first so-called 100-year flood following Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.In Irene’s aftermath, Welch fought with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to enable Vermont to rebuild roads and bridges to withstand the new realities of climate change instead of being forced to replace the shattered infrastructure with the same inadequate design and materials.“This is all about climate change,” Welch said of the flood devastation that he observed last week. “It's astonishing to me, but there's a lot of people resisting acknowledging that we have to act and act quickly to address climate change. And I think that does not reflect denial. I think it reflects desperation to try to hang on to whatever fossil fuel interests that some of my colleagues represent. And (it) reflects a fear about making the transition from a carbon-based economy to a clean energy economy because it is disruptive.”Welch returned to Washington on Tuesday to give his debut speech on the Senate floor. In that speech, he outlined his two top priorities as senator: “Our challenge is strengthening our democracy and improving the living standards for everyday Americans. … If we don’t do both, we won’t do either.”In a wide-ranging Vermont Conversation interview with Welch, we discussed his visit to flood-stricken parts of Vermont, the fragile state of democracy and the surprising common ground that the progressive Vermont Democrat has found with far-right Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.Welch remains guarded in his assessment of the fate of American democracy. "It's a jump ball," he said. "Jan. 6 was of course the most vivid manifestation of the erosion of democratic norms. … But you're seeing many of the candidates running for Senate and for Congress — and of course (Donald) Trump running again for president — who were in denial about the outcome of the last election or peddling 'the election was stolen' lie."The reason I think is so important for our democracy to work is that's the tool that we use to address the challenges that Americans face."

Rick Dente thought this might be the end. The 77-year-old owner of Dente's Market in Barre was trying to save what he could in his family store as flood waters rose on Monday night. The store has been in business since 1907 and had survived previous disasters. But Dente, the affectionately nicknamed "Mayor of North Barre," didn't realize that this time was different. He was suddenly in water up to his neck, pinned to a door, his tired legs giving out. Just when Dente thought it was over, three tenants who lived above his store came down, ropes around their waists. They banged open the door and rescued the exhausted shopkeeper."Someone was watching over me," Dente told me on Saturday, standing inside his mud filled market. When the flood waters receded this week, volunteers streamed into Montpelier and Waterbury and other flooded Vermont communities to help muck out. But Barre, the Granite City, has until now been hauling itself back to life largely on its own. The flood left the downtown covered in deep mud. The city public works department spent days sending snowplows through the streets to clear the mess. Some streets are still impassable. The city is under a boil water notice.Saturday was the first day that volunteers were invited into Barre. People came in droves. I came to the Aldrich Public Library where volunteers were lined up to get work assignments. Volunteer coordinators were sitting under tents with laptops dispatching people to homes that needed help. One tent was for volunteers willing to do light work, another was for heavy work. I walked down Main Street in Barre talking to volunteers and business owners. Volunteers carrying mops, buckets, and shovels were moving up and down the street. My final stop was at the beloved Dente's Market, whose owner who, like his city, nearly drowned but now has another chance.

Randall and Elm Streets in Waterbury felt like a raucous New Orleans funeral on Thursday. Residents and businesses lost so much when the waters of the Winooski River inundated parts of the downtown, flooding some 40 homes and six businesses. But scores of volunteers came from everywhere to give so much back. Prohibition Pig, the popular restaurant and brewery at the corner of Elm Street and Main Street, was the center of cleanup activity. By midday, the staff were serving free food and pizza donated by American Flatbread. A who’s who of Vermont craft beer brewers, including John Kimmich, owner of the Alchemist brewery — which operated a pub that was flooded out of this location when Tropical Storm Irene hit in 2011 — dropped off coolers full of beer for the volunteers. A public works crew from St. Albans drove around with a giant vacuum truck — dubbed the “suck truck” by grateful residents – that pumped out flooded basements, a backbreaking job that took days when Irene flooded these same homes.Behind the celebratory vibe, there was also a somber reality. ProPig would be closed for the foreseeable future and owner Eric Warnstedt had to tell its 49 employees that they were laid off. The brewery was flooded and 3,000 gallons of their famous craft beer was lost.But the buzz, enhanced by the excellent beer, was palpable.I spent Thursday walking around the neighborhood talking to the people who were hard at work and elbows deep in mud.

The rain began on Sunday, and by Tuesday morning, July 11, residents of Waterbury, Vermont, woke up to find the downtown flooded and roads closed.Waterbury took a hard hit, but the damage and destruction were far greater in other Vermont communities. Montpelier, Barre, Johnson and Ludlow, to name a few, were inundated. All of these communities face a long road to recovery.Gov. Scott called this week’s Vermont floods “historic and catastrophic.” Climatologists call it “the new abnormal,” another eruption of climate chaos that is sweeping the globe.For Waterbury, where I live, this was the second so-called 100-year flood in a dozen years. In 2011, Tropical Storm Irene devastated downtown Waterbury, with flooding damaging 222 homes, one third of the structures in the village.This week, some 40 homes and six businesses were flooded in Waterbury, with most of the flooding occurring in basements. Waterbury may have been spared the worst of the damage thanks to flood resilient measures it took when rebuilding after Tropical Storm Irene.I spent Tuesday sloshing through flood waters in Waterbury and talking to my neighbors about what they’re going through and how they’re coping.“I feel a bit out of body, like I'm floating a little bit in this surreal situation and I can't really think too far ahead,” said Georgia Ayers, who had to canoe to her flooded house. “We just need the water to recede so we can get to work.” This is an audio postcard from one Vermont community rising from a disaster.

The simple version of American history depicts the original 13 American colonies banding together as one, declaring their independence in 1776, fighting and winning an eight-year-long War of Independence against the British, and then triumphantly establishing the United States of America.But how united was this new nation? Political historian Eli Merritt asserts that despite its harmonious sounding name, the United States was actually more like a shotgun marriage that nearly ended in a quick divorce.Merritt is the author of a new book, “Disunion Among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution.” “The American Union was an unwelcome alliance formed by bitterly conflictual colonies and regions,” he wrote. The primary purpose of the original American government, he said, was to prevent the colonies from disintegrating into civil war.Merritt is a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University and writes political commentary for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and for his Substack, American Commonwealth. Merritt said that America’s founders warned of the danger of demagogues.“The first step in democratic breakdown is the election of a demagogue to power,” he wrote. "The demagogue is someone who wins votes by dividing the people not uniting the people … through fear mongering, through hate mongering, through bigotry. And sadly, it works. “The demagogue converts into an authoritarian once drinking at the cup of power. … We did see precisely that with Donald Trump.”Merritt argues that the founding story of the U.S. affirms that “when a government turns unconstitutional and repressive, you have the right of revolution, which means first, the right of resistance.”Merritt said he believes that Juneteenth is a far more significant day of independence than July 4. “This is the emancipation of 4 million enslaved people,” he said. “It is clearly the most important event in all U.S. history.”

Brett Forrest has been explaining Russia and Ukraine to the world for two decades. He is an award-winning national security reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where his investigative work focuses on the former Soviet Union.It is a dangerous time to be a reporter in Russia. In March, Russian authorities arrested Forrest’s Wall Street Journal colleague, Evan Gershkovich, on spying charges, which he vehemently denies. Gershkovich is in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison facing a sentence of up to 20 years. “I never felt like I was in the crosshairs of the state,” said Forrest. The invasion of Ukraine changed all that. “When Russia began enacting new laws about criticizing the war, or even calling it a war in Russia, I began to feel like maybe the state had taken a turn and was now looking at all of us as a target.”Forrest has a new book, “Lost Son: An American Family Trapped Inside the FBI’s Secret Wars,” in which he investigates the mystery of a young American, Billy Reilly, who vanished into Russia’s war with Ukraine. Forrest cracks an FBI coverup to learn what happened to the unwitting Reilly.Forrest said that “what happened in Ukraine can also be traced to the fact that Vladimir Putin has simply stayed in power too long. And this is often what happens when leaders stay in power too long. They begin thinking about their place in history.” Forrest said that other world leaders “think squarely about what's best for the people. And I don't think that Vladimir Putin really has that in mind anymore for Russians.”Forrest said that Putin has staked his leadership on the notion that he can assure domestic peace. Upheaval at home and in Ukraine, he said, “is the price for the illusion of stability that he’s created in Russia over the years.”

America’s school children are in trouble. Just this week, test scores were released that showed math and reading performance of 13-year olds in the U.S. hit the lowest level in decades. In Vermont, just 27% of eighth graders were proficient in math in 2022, down from 47% in 2013.This academic decline is compounded by what the U.S. Surgeon General has dubbed “the health crisis of our time” in youth mental health.What can be done to stop this downward slide?Around the country and in a handful of Vermont communities, community schools are succeeding against the odds at improving student outcomes and family well-being. In 2021, Vermont passed the Community Schools Act, which provided over $1 million in grants for community school pilot projects in Hazen Union School, Vergennes Union Elementary School, White River Valley Middle School in Bethel, the Cabot School and North Country Supervisory Union.What are community schools? It is a strategy that encourages deep partnerships among students, schools, families and communities. Schools become hubs of learning and engagement, and a powerful tool to tackle extreme inequality and racial injustice.Community schools address the needs of the whole child. If a student is struggling because they are hungry or unhoused, they need more than tutoring. That’s why many community schools include partnerships with local health centers, legal clinics, housing assistance and other social services. The schools help the student by helping the family.For the past two years, I’ve been researching community schools for a book that I co-authored with the founders of this movement, “The Community Schools Revolution: Building Partnerships, Transforming Lives, Advancing Democracy” (free download at communityschoolsrevolution.org). We explored the remarkable impact that these schools have had in thousands of schools, especially in under-resourced communities. For example, at the Oyler School in Cincinnati, once dubbed a “dropout factory,” high school graduation rates rose from around 30 percent to over 90 percent. The entire Cincinnati city public school system has now adopted the community school model.At a middle school in Brooklyn, math proficiency increased more than seven-fold and English proficiency quadrupled, and the school’s bilingual debate team has won numerous citywide and national debate competitions. The success of this model is why New York City has opened more than 400 community schools in the last dozen years.At Hazen Union School in Hardwick, Principal Dr. Jason Di Giulio said that “schools have almost put up walls and become fortresses up on a hill and separate from their communities.” This isolation has been exacerbated by the national epidemic of school shootings. Di Giulio said that Hazen Union, one of Vermont’s pilot community schools, is trying to “break down the walls of school, let the community in, send the students out, have learning happening all over the place and recogniz[e] that learning doesn't just happen sitting in a chair in a classroom.” One result is that Hazen Union is now drawing students from outside its district.Jane Quinn, who directed the National Center for Community Schools, said that community schools have had a significant impact on reducing chronic absence and increasing student engagement. “Because community schools are involved in the community and are getting students more involved in their communities, we've seen dramatic increases in student engagement, and that is not trivial,” she says. “We have known for 30 years that student connectedness to school is the protective factor against all of the major risk factors.”On this Vermont Conversation, we discuss the impact of community schools with Hazen Union Principal Jason Di Giulio and community school coordinator Dani Smith, as well as Vergennes Union Elementary School Principal Matthew DeBlois. We are also joined by three founders of the national community school movement, Marty Blank, Jane Quinn and Lisa Villarreal. “The school isn't just that place on the hill that’s shining, it's really connected," said Di Giulio. "The community's dreams for us are similar to our dreams for us, too.”

Rep. Becca Balint ran for Congress last year as a bridge builder and a peacemaker. But five months into the job, the first-term Vermont representative is appearing on national news and going viral on social media as she slams anti-LGBTQ+ attacks as “garbage” and slaps down far-right trolls such as Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo,Balint’s willingness to rumble in the culture wars and push back against political opponents has earned her respect from her Democratic colleagues. This week, House Democrats voted to appoint her to the House Judiciary Committee, one of the most high-profile assignments. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said that Balint “will be a strong voice on the Judiciary Committee and I look forward to working with her to fight back against MAGA extremism and continue putting People Over Politics.”Rep. Balint, who is filling a vacancy left by Rep. David Cicciline, D-R.I., on the Judiciary Committee, will be the committee’s sole openly gay member and the only democratic representative from the Northeast. She also serves on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee and the House Budget Committee, though she is likely to have to step down from one of those committees when she joins Judiciary.Balint entered electoral politics after being a middle school teacher in Windham County for 14 years. She served eight years in the Vermont State Senate, including two years as Senate President Pro Tempore.For Balint, the current wave of GOP attacks on queer and trans people — over 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in state legislatures this year — is personal and infuriating.“To bring in queer and trans kids into the conversation [Republicans] have decided that this is a boogeyman that they can use to raise money, turn people out to the polls …something else to rile the base.“For me, it is so cynical and so cruel to decide that the enemy that you're going after are our children and their parents who are just trying to do the very best they can do.”Balint said that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2015 legalizing same-sex marriage spawned a backlash.“There is always a backlash when Americans gain rights when they are accepted in their communities,” she said. “What I didn't anticipate was that there would be so many bystanders who do nothing.”Rep. Balint spoke with The Vermont Conversation in the midst of a standoff by far right Republican lawmakers in the Freedom Caucus that paralyzed the House for nearly a week.Balint called the Freedom Caucus an “extremist coalition.”“They're not about freedom at all. They are not about giving families the freedom to do the very best for their kids. They're not about women's reproductive freedom. They're not about us being a free society where we can read the books that we want and have them available to us. They have completely and totally — not just co-opted freedom — it's a perversion of freedom and a free society.”“I really want us as Americans who still believe in a democracy, in a free society, to be much more strong about pushing back about this notion that they are the party of freedom, because it's just not the reality on the ground.” Balint said that she can be both a fighter and a peacemaker. “I'm hoping that when I'm called upon to be fierce, and to call people on their garbage as I said in committee, or if I'm called upon to have a very heartfelt, deep conversation with constituents or others within my caucus who are still struggling, I want to be both those people. Because we can't be railing at people who are struggling with trying to understand what for them is a hard issue. But we also can't allow these kids and parents to be dehumanized and demonized. And so it is the work that allies need to do right now. And I want to be a good ally.”