Like many other folks, ’outrage fatigue’ has distracted me from the everyday injustices that are happening right here in Vermont. That is one of the collateral costs of the Trump circus playing out like a bad soap opera in Washington.
It’s easy to assume that, in our tiny, generally progressive state, overtly threatening racist acts and sexual exploitation are both infrequent and met with swift justice. Would that it were so.
I am learning that Vermont justice seems ill-equipped to address these threats, even in the twenty-first century.
Case in point is the sorry tale of Kiah Morris, formerly our lone black female legislator, who was successfully felled by a self-entitled white nationalist by the name of Max Misch, who got his fondest wish when, in order to protect her family, Rep. Morris abandoned her reelection bid.
Sounds like AG TJ Donovan, who recently ran a strong campaign for Attorney General, caved like a cheap suit when Ms. Morris appealed to him for relief from Misch’s harassment.
Who buys his argument that Misch’s threatening behavior is nothing more than ‘free speech’, protected under Article one of the Bill of Rights? I don’t.
There is real harm in Misch’s menacing words and presence, not just to Ms. Morris and her family, but to her constituents who, it could be argued, were unjustly deprived of Ms. Morris’ future representation by a single bigot and not the electorate as a whole. That sounds like election tampering to me.
I don’t believe that Mr. Misch should be allowed to succeed by hiding behind a key provision of our Bill of Rights, which was, after all, intended to protect the individual from abuse; not to open them up to intimidation.
AG Donovan has a lot to answer for if he fails to make a better case than this.
And while we are at it, what about the shabby job done by the Franklin County States Attorney’s office in prosecuting accused serial sexual abuser and former state senator Norm McAllister?
No thunderous “Me too” challenge here! Instead, having outlived one of his accusers and gotten the benefit of another accuser’s unjust shame, his attorneys only had to answer for accusations from the third woman, who was a crushingly poor victim of marital abuse, low on self-esteem and easily intimidated under questioning. The attorney for the state only managed to get the least of the counts against McAllister to stick.
After pleading guilty to the one charge of procuring and receiving a laughably light sentence, considering the predatory nature of his still-alleged history; McAllister, all-lawyered up, has now managed to get a mistrial called on even that procurement charge and is scheduled for a new trial in March. None of McAllister’s other history of accusations from other women will be allowed to be heard at the new trial. The poor woman who must now repeat her grueling trial experience, was first encouraged by the state’s attorney to pursue her complaint against McAllister under the belief that she would not have to stand alone. Having witnessed her humiliating testimony first hand, it is difficult for me to believe that she will be willing to go through that again.
My guess is that the whole thing will be dismissed, a quiet footnote in the evening paper.
In other words, McAllister will, like Misch, get off scott-free.
Vermont justice, it would seem, is not just blind, but sclerotic and decidedly white-male.