By William Boardman
posted
Aug 30, 2012
Vermonters have always been independent, whether it was having
their own republic (1777-1791), re-electing a Congressman while he
was in jail (Matthew Lyon, 1798), or sending a Socialist to the
Senate (Bernie Sanders, 1994-2012).
Vermont is a place where the protest vote can be in the majority
and protest itself is currently in full bloom across the
state.
It's not just Occupy somewhere, of which there are several in
Vermont, but a whole host of issues and actions ranging from
rolling a tractor over several sheriff's cruisers in Newport up
north to getting arrested at a "die-in" at the Vermont Yankee
Nuclear power plant in Vernon down south.
Here's a sampling of current Vermont protest
activities:
• POLICE VIOLENCE in Burlington continues to roil
a lot of people, with a series of rally/march/speakout events on
August 8, 9, and 13, as the mayor vaguely promises some sort of
investigation, the police chief goes on vacation, and the local
newspaper takes an atypical editorial stand against local
authorities.
• F-35 STEALTH FIGHTER basing at Burlington
Airport, threatening the habitability of hundred of nearby homes,
has raised a continuing hue and cry especially in the neighboring
cities of Winooski and South Burlington, pitting low income
neighborhoods and one city council against the Air Force, Vermont
congressional delegation, Burlington mayor and the Vermont Chamber
of Commerce, despite clear errors of fact and methodology by the
Air Force in its environmental impact study. Resistance to the
F-35, which began two years ago with a handful of people, is now
widespread, as is support for anything military. There
was a public forum on the F-35 in the city hall auditorium on
August 8.
• TASER ABUSE by Vermont State Police, resulting
in a man dying in Thetford, has moved into the courts, as the dead
man's life partner is suing the state police for both compensatory
and punitive damages. Vermont's governor continues to support taser
use even as he misrepresents the fatal incident and an online
petition calling for a taser moratorium has reached 1,179
signatures.
• SMART METER DANGERS statewide have been widely
debated and protested since the spring. Even though there is no
reliable science showing whether they're safe or not, the power
companies continue to install them, mostly with state support. The
legislature, persuaded there was significant doubt, passes
legislation allowing Vermonters to opt out of having a smart meter,
at no cost to the individual; and anyone with a smart meter already
installed can have it removed, at power company expense.
• OIL PIPELINE across Vermont's Northeast
Kingdom, the rural state's most rural area, has provoked protests
from environmentalists who don't want to see corrosive tar sands
oil moving at high speed through a pipeline that is already 70
years old. 350.org Vermont, the Sierra Club Vermont, and others
joined in creating a "human oil spill" to get the attention of the
New England Governors' conference here July 30.
• EMINENT DOMAIN used by a Vermont power company
to put a powerful antenna next door to the home and studio of
Russian-born artists on a mountaintop in Wells has already moved
through a variety of court and regulatory procedures, with a ruling
for the power company by the Public Service Board. The artists have
filed an appeal and organizing a day of protest at the summit of
Northeast Mountain on August 25.
• NUCLEAR POWER, with the focus on Vermont Yankee
nuclear power plant in Vernon, has been a subject for protest since
before the plant was built in 1971. Arrests in non-violent
civil disobedience actions this year total well over 200, with the
August 1 arrest of nine members of the Shut-It-Down Affinity
Support Group, who staged a die-in protesting the plant's continued
operation after the expiration of its original license.
• INDUSTRIAL WIND FARMS are frequently
controversial in Vermont. Green Mountain Power's 21-turbine project
on Lowell Mountain in Lowell is now in its third year of
protest. On August 6, police arrested six protestors for
blocking construction equipment in a non-violent road
blockade. Those arrested ranged in age from 50 to 71.
May Day in Vermont this year saw a crowd of 1,500, give or take
a few hundred, gather at the capitol in Montpelier for a "Put
People First" rally to address issues of economic justice,
healthcare, workers' rights, women's rights, disability rights,
migrant justice, and a healthy environment.
The "People's Convergence" at the governors' conference July
29-30 gathered hundreds of people from eastern Canada and the U.S.
objecting to a range of government and corporate practices ranging
from drowning native lands for hydro power to promoting tar sands
oil instead of developing "green energy," from banking corruption
to exploiting migrant workers. When some two dozen protestors
tried non-violently to block busloads of dignitaries on their way
to a dinner party on July 29, Burlington responded with violence,
pushing that issue into prominence.
In probably the most dramatic reactions to police behavior,
Roger Pion of Newport became something of an instant folk hero
when, apparently acting alone for reasons he has kept to himself,
borrowed his parents' 20,000 pound tractor on Aug. 2 and rolled it
over seven sheriff's cruisers and a van for transporting
prisoners. At Pion's arraignment at Newport Superior Court
Aug. 6, his attorney David Sleigh persuaded the judge to drop one
of 14 charges, but Pion remained in jail on $50,000 bail on the
other charges.
Pion was arrested July 3 and ended up in the hospital with injuries
inflicted by police. The police reports blame Pion, while his
family appear on amateur video saying the police have been
harassing Pion for 17 years and were the aggressors in this
incident.
Together with the Burlington police using pepper pellets and
state police having a taser fatality, the Pion case contributes to
an emerging perception that Vermont has too many police and too
much policing, but this sense is not yet an organized
movement.
Other threads of Vermont protest come from Ron Paul supporters and
libertarians like the Vermont Campaign for Liberty, as well as the
perennial, but low key campaign for a Second Vermont Republic,
after secession from the United States.
And from another direction comes the Ecosocialist Convergence
which occurred August 13-15 in Glover, Vt. at the home of the
internationally famous Bread And Puppet Theater
troupe. Co-organized by Ecosocialist Horizons, the two-day
event mixed workshops, forums, and assemblies offered in the spirit
of this quote from Zapatista Subcommandante Marcos, who says: "this
isn't about constructing a world rebellion. That already exists.
It's about constructing a space where this rebellion encounters
itself, shows itself, begins to know itself."
Tagged:
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