The Nuclear Free Jubilee was a smash today. Approximately 900 people showed up to watch or be part of the Bread & Puppet procession down Main Street. The parade ended on the Brattleboro Common and Bread & Puppet founder Peter Schumann led a performance that ended in casting away Entergy Vermont Yankee.
Following Bread & Puppet was the amazing Reverend Billy. Reverend Billy delivered… and exorcized Vermont Yankee from Windham County, “Nuclearluja!”
After Reverend Billy came Deb Katz of Citizens Awareness Network, Peter Shumlin, Anthony Pollina, Gaye Symington and many others. Narissa and Katryna Nields also did a spectacular show that ended with people jumping on stage for their final song.
A great event on a great autumn day. Here’s a snapshot of today’s events. Hope you enjoy.
Note: I didn’t live in Vermont when we were getting into the whole civil unions things, though I’ve heard it got fairly nasty at times. This, I think, is demonstrably worse. I posted this to Daily Kos and thought it might be good to include here as well, even though it’s not local. So…
I’m going to give a little bit of personal history here. I am openly queer, and have been for most of my adult life. I am 5’1.5″ and though I am physically stronger than I look, there are a whole lot of people who could fairly easily beat the crap out of me if they choose to do so. Everything I’m talking about here on a personal level is old. I haven’t had cause to feel for my safety due to another person’s malice in more than a decade.
That said, I’ve been threatened and chased on several occasions. I once had a knife pressed against my throat. I’ve had death threats left on my answering machine. While engaged in an anti-war protest once, I had an ROTC student grab me by the throat and press his arm against my neck until his friends pulled him off.
All of this was scary. Some of it was very scary. I don’t know how much of what happened was real danger as opposed to people just trying to intimidate me.
But this crap (with a hat tip to Pam’s House Blend) scares me in ways that I can’t entirely articulate. I will warn everyone now that this video disturbed me deeply, and I would not recommend you allow any kids to see it. It’s that bad:
The text posted with this video (linked here) includes the following:
This footage was recorded 10/23/08 in Oakland, CA, on a public street corner near Lake Merritt. I was on my way home from the Lakeshore district when I encountered this group of supporters of Prop 8 (proposition to ban gay marriage). After turning my vidphone on, I was screamed at, physically intimidated and eventually attacked by one of the sign-wavers.
About two dozen men and women were standing under the I-580, chanting “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” and “Mom and Dad, not Dad and Dad”, etc. There were at least three counter-protesters present as well.
[…]
Something to keep in mind: when I hit the record button, I hadn’t said a single word to anyone, or interfered with the rally any way. I stood a fair distance away from the sign-wavers (remaining at least four feet away from all of them…until they approached me). But as soon as they noticed me filming them, I was greeted with curses and threats of violence. “Get that shit out of here. I’ll knock it out of your hand.” None of these folks knew me, yet they instantly knew they hated me.
Eventually, as you can see, some of the protesters surrounded me and began poking at me with their signs. Others, some of the most visibly angry and hysterical among them (apparently minors), hid their faces behind their banners while continuing to scream at passing traffic.
[…]
The woman continued to poke at my face with her sign and call me “nasty.” Genuinely disturbed by the complete lack of rational behavior I’d seen up to this point, wanting to look into her face and possibly connect on some level with her as a fellow human being, I pulled a corner of the sign down away from my eyes and asked “why are you calling me nasty?”
That’s when she attacked, clawing, grabbing and then shoving. I didn’t fight back; she was much bigger than me. After calling me a “nasty fucker” and threatening to kick my ass, she pried my phone out of my hand and tried to break it in half while her friends egged her on.
[…]
After she took away my phone, I stood there stunned, not really sure what to do. One of the counter-protesters (the woman who you see saying “No on Prop 8” towards the beginning of this clip) intervened and calmed the attacking woman down enough that I felt safe enough to dart forward to try to take my phone back. After a second or two of grappling, she let me have it back and went back to screaming at cars from a lawn chair near the side of the road.
[…]
I stood there for another minute or two, checking the phone’s applications for damage. One of the other sign-wavers, a teenage boy standing nearby, leaned over and whispered “fuck you, dyke.”
Even though I wasn’t hurt besides a small scratch on my hand, and my phone was okay, being attacked definitely shook me up. I was a bit tearful. Call me naive, but I never thought I’d actually be in physical danger just for shooting footage and pulling the edge of a person’s sign out of my eyes. Verbal insults, sure. But attacked? Yikes.
The man holding the “Vote No” sign noticed that I was in tears and approached me. We hugged to a chorus of jeers, exchanged some reassuring words, and I turned to leave. Someone screamed after me: “keep crying, and keep walking.”
So that’s exactly what I did.
I’m voting no on Prop 8. I’ll take love over hate any day.
I don’t know if I have this kind of courage. I hope that if I were in these circumstances, I would show the strength not to run, but I just don’t know. I see stuff like this and my hands just start shaking and I get pulled back to that sense of vulnerability that happens, like when a group of homophobes started shouting at me from their car when I was on my bicycle one day and then proceeded to chase me in their car, yelling and threatening me the whole time (fortunately for me, bicycles can go all sorts of places cars can’t get to and it was a heavily trafficked area, so there was no opportunity for them to catch up, but still).
So I see this. I read it. I watch it. And I just think… wow.
I get violence. I understand it. I think it’s ineffective and futile, but on a raw psychological level, I get why people become violent and I get how mob mentalities can go a bit crazy from time to time. I’ve studied the psychology. Hell, I teach the psychology. But there’s a big difference between abstract understanding of violence and really knowing it for what it is. I know violence for what it is in the direct, personal level. I’ve seen enough of that.
But this… this… involving children in it?
This isn’t just violence. This isn’t just mob mentality. This is sick. This is pure, unadulterated hate.
We’ve got to show these people for who they are, everywhere we can. We have to publicize this and make sure that everyone knows what the Proposition 8 movement is, at its core: violent, dangerous and anti-person.
Loud and clear: we have to expose this everywhere we can.
(Musician and philosophy professor Oliver Carling of Buel’s Gore, Vermont gives us all some timely voting encouragement. – promoted by Maggie Gundersen)
This little ad on the TV has me amused. This is not the first time we’ve seen this ad, with the very same people. It’s the one he uses campaign cycle after cycle, and to effect. It’s not an attack ad, nor is it negative really. Kind of a neutralizer ad suggesting the democrats may not fully support their candidate.
I must say hands down this is my favorite go to tool in the whole Douglas Campaign re-election chest. It’s predictable, we see it campaign after campaign. But my question to Governor Douglas is that are we to think the ad’s still current? I mean here we are a couple years later, has their opinion of Douglas not to have changed? How will these “democrats” vote this election cycle?
To me it’s kind of reminiscint of the whole Douglas theory of governorship; take old ideas, give them a new spin, repackage it, and sell it to the people as what they need. I’m not buying it, it’s a rope a dope, a shell game. Watch one hand while the other does what it wants.
He’s had a fair shake at being Governor of Vermont, what has he really done for us? Sure, he can point fingers and blame everyone but Douglas, but is that moving our state forward? Are any of us better off now than we were before he became Governor? We need to think about this dearly as we vote for the next governor.
I still don’t know how this election will playout with the record turnout predicted. It’s quite possible that a vote for anyone other than Douglas, may do nothing but help Douglas out. It’s a sticky situation. If the election gets tossed to the legislature, a majority of Vermonters would have not voted for Douglas, but he’d be the candidate with the most votes. This would mean Vermonters wanted a new governor, but were unsure of who among the other candidates.
What would the legislature decide? Boy, that’s a whole other can of worms, makes who you vote for this fall awfully important. Lots of things to think about in the weeks leading up to the election…….
In the waning days of peace and prosperity brought to us by the last Democratic administration, a really crappy Belgium Beer infected pop-culture with a viral commercial, which became the functional equivalent of a mass media “I'm with Stupid” t-shirt (clarification, NOW it's a Belgium Beer & it still tasks like yeasty seltzer). Of course it's fitting that Democratic administrations lose deficits while, under Republican administrations, we lose multi-national employers.
For those of you who enjoy the “WHERE ARE THEY NOW” entertainment genre, this follow-up succinctly demonstrates what happens when voters entrust peace, prosperity, national security, fiscal responsibility, global economic leadership and competitiveness and the governance of the U.S. to the Republican party.
Truly, we have come to point in U.S. history where there is no legitimate, objective debate that incompetency and fidelity to failed policies is the baseline “credential” to be a Republican leader. (and don't forget that corruption and deceit receive extra-credit for climbing the GOP leadership ladder). Fiscal irresponsibility, lost wars of ideological choice, regressive taxation, crony capitalism, rule-of-law and equal protection are jettisoned and fear is the structural foundation of every national policy and political campaign waged by GOP leaders. From the incompetency of the Reagan years to the lawlessness of the Bush years, this is the legacy of Republican rule.
Flip over for more memory lane, . . .
With less than two weeks to go to this year's election, do you remember when Governor Dean took health care and economic development seriously?
With less than two weeks to go, do you remember when President Clinton dedicated his administration to peace and prosperity while the Republican congress dedicated itself to tearing the country apart and engaging in class warfare and competitive corruption?
With less than two weeks to go before the election, do you remember how Vermont's last Democratic Governor made it his job to call or visit at least 10 of Vermont's significant employers EVERY WEEK of every year he served us as Governor to ask these employers what the State could do help them grow their Vermont businesses?
With less than two weeks to go before this year's election, does it matter that Jim Douglas' Republican administration has overseen the loss thousands of good paying jobs, the cultivation of low paying benefit-less jobs, the institution of continual under-employment and wage stagflation and the abandonment of Vermont's economic development initiatives?
VPR “Vermont Edition” host, Jane Lindholm, provided a bona-fide journalistic interview of Governor Jim Douglas today. The podcast is available on the VPR site, and I highly recommend clicking over for a listen.
Oddly, the interview ended at 12:40 despite the fact the show goes to 1pm. Did Jim Douglas point to his watch and motion to Lindholm that he had to cut out? 🙂
Lindholm and VT Edition producer, Sarah Ashworth accomplished something that's pretty difficult to encounter when reading or listening to Vermont news programs. The show offered very informed questions as well as clear, hard-hitting follow-ups. Real honest to goodness journalism.
The show deserved praise, so I sent the following note along to Jane. As an aside, I think it's important to let Vermont's reporters know when we appreciate a job well done, in addition to the times we're not that impressed. There's a saying that goes, “If no one's complaining, it means you're doing a good job.” Well, it's also nice to send out a quick, “Keep up the good work!” note as well, in my humble opinion. My quick note to Jane is below the fold.
But more importantly, go listen to the podcast on the Vermont Edition page:
Thank you for today's interview on Vermont Edition. The use of respectful yet uncompromising news questions along with journalistic, fact-checking follow-ups is the kind of reporting we need in order to learn more about the real issues here in Vermont. Unfortunately, it's far too often that interviewees are given softball questions and allowed to simply say what they assume listeners of similar views want to hear. We have come to expect this in national news reporting, which has devolved from journalistic integrity far too significantly in a way that leading news organizations have acknowledged help lead America to an unnecessary war in Iraq.
Today's interview with Governor Jim Douglas was incredibly candid, offering the kinds of frank questions and follow-up fact checking that Vermonters and Americans are no longer accustomed to or even expect.
Please keep up the good work in this direction, Jane, no matter who your interviewee may be.
If Walmart is a green company then John McCain is a candidate of change. Both are ridiculous suggestions, and both are being propagated by these two antiquated refuges of Republican America.
McCain, for his part, is suddenly casting himself as an agent of change after spending the last two years cozying up and currying favors from the Bush-Rove-Falwell axis.
And Walmart? Well, the world’s largest retailer has launched a much-ballyhooed greening initiative that has won acclaim from everyone from the Wall Street Journal to Bill Clinton.
Just to be fair, let’s take them at their word for second – Maybe McCain and Walmart read some polls and learned that, wow, people want change and want to go green.
But even if that’s the case, it doesn’t make them the gold standard. They’ve still got a lot of atoning to do.
When Walmart builds new Supercenters, they don’t hesitate to pave over wetlands or suffocate corn fields with asphalt. And their green plan for these new stores seems to overlook that rainwater flushes garbage form their Supercenters’ Mega-Parking Lots into the local waterways.
And then there’s China – they place that produces 70% of Walmart products. Don’t even get me started about China. The stories about mercury spills and raw chemical discharges would disgust you.
I hope Walmart can reform some of these practices. I hope that they’re serious about being greener. But I’m not going to hold my breath – It’d be like taking McCain’s word that he’s going to bring change to the White House.
That’s the term the former Fed-Head and still occupier of a post in the supposed economic gods pantheon, Mr. Greenscam errr … span, used to describe his reaction to the recent economic turn of events particularly as they apply to the financial markets.
You mean “caught with hand in cookie jar”, don’t you, big Al?
Way back in the early 1980’s I, nothing more than an enlisted man in the US Army working on tugboats, saw it with great clarity … the newfangled “trickle down”, cheap labor, borrow and spend economic theology being pushed by the likes of Ronnie “doubler of payroll taxes on the working class” Reagan was a scam. It was as obvious then as it is now. You can’t simply borrow money forever without the bills coming due!
But you, Greenscam, sat down with the aforementioned Reagan and “Tip myself over to present my posterior as a sign of surrender to all things Republican” O’Neill (then speaker of the House) and came up with a grand scheme to borrow our way out of the Vietnam war debt created inflation morass that chased Carter out of the Presidency. The scheme included such things as tax breaks for rich folks, and to keep those tax giveaways popular the scheme included an increase in domestic spending … all paid for by debt. You’re scheme, Greenscam, also included almost doubling the payroll tax on working Americans so excess Social Security monies could be collected and used to fund your Greenscam/Reagan/O’Neill credit cravings.
It would have all fallen apart a decade or more ago, but two things happened: 1) H.W. Bush came to his senses and re-entered the time when he considered your scheme “voodoo economics” and increased taxes, and 2) Bill Clinton realized he couldn’t fund his Presidential ambitions and followed H.W’s lead by another common sense tax increase (not enough maybe, but adequate for sure).
It took a return of the Reagan legacy in the form of Dumbya Bush to help undo the budgetary advances made by his two predecessors.
Greenscam, you told congress there was something wrong with budgetary surpluses … ostensibly because there really was nowhere for those surpluses to be put. Of course paying off our national debt was out of the question … so said banker you who has no problem with the public dollar paying hundreds of billions of dollars a year in interest payments … money that could have funded education, medical care, environmental protections, worker safety, infrastructure maintenance and more.
Boy … you sure kept your economic class in style!
Of course the workers of this country, you know … the folks who actually make the gears turn, were not of concern to you. As a matter of fact, Al, you insisted one of your jobs was to keep wage inflation down (while making sure stock inflation soared). Recently I caught you making just that sort of claim on Bloomberg News: you told the show’s host that you are very concerned about income disparity and the way to keep that disparity down is to allow more trained workers in as immigrants so America’s well trained workers will have wage competition!
Never occurred to you the income disparity is between the upper 5 or 10 percent (ie. YOU Greenscam) and the rest of us … did it?
Shock and disbelief? Fat freakin’ chance. Greenscam, anybody who’s ever balanced a checkbook knew exactly what was coming down the pike with your borrow and spend, cheap labor economic theology … and we’re seeing it today.
