It’s been more than four years since I’ve posted here. And, like many who have been writing here since November 8, the election result we got was not the one I figured would happen.
However, here in my corner of Vermont — the state that gave Donald Trump his lowest percentage of the vote of any state in the nation — there has been a lot of mobilizing going on.
The day after the election, the first ones to get together and plan for life under Trump was the LGBTQ community. They quickly built up a database of things that needed to be done before Jan. 20, 2017, and shared it with the community.
Not long after that, there was another informational/organizing meeting, this time for people with disabilities worried that a president-elect who mocked them would make life difficult for them.
Hunger advocates met with members of our citizen-legislature to figure out ways to keep the food shelves open.
Civil rights advocates met with many of those same lawmakers to hear what sort of actions the Legislature will take to blunt the worst of a Trump administration.
Several communities have signed on to be “sanctuary towns” since the election, and the incoming state attorney general has made it clear that Vermont will not aid the Trump administration in any deportation sweeps.
And two young college students are busy forming a chapter of the NAACP in southern Vermont, a state that never had a NAACP chapter until one was formed in the Burlington area last year.
These actions, and more, are taking place all over Vermont. My newspaper, The Commons, has been documenting it for the past few weeks.
The mourning period has given way to determined efforts to stand up to Trump on every front.
But that’s what this state does. We still believe in small-scale democracy, in the idea of commonwealth and the public good, and coming together in times of crisis instead of turning on one another.
Yes, I was as angry as Kos at the Americans who voted for Trump and want nothing to do with them. They voted for the destruction of our nation, and they will ultimately regret making that choice.
However, from here in Vermont, I want to offer some hope that this state is on the case and people of goodwill are coming together not just to fight to preserve what we already have in place, but to keep moving forward toward a better future.
