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Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
BRATTLEBORO-As member of Representative Town Meeting more than several years ago, I found the old boys’ club of the RTM to be very active and likewise very effective at blocking certain people and certain ideas from discussion and or consideration.
A recent advocate for RTM admitted very clearly that part of the dynamic of the RTM has included flooding the meeting with friends to vote with the clique (my word).
I found this to be quite true and very frustrating for the several years I was part of the RTM team. I found my presence to be ineffective and the experience quite unfulfilling because discussions were systematically and repeatedly cut off when someone suggested they had heard enough even though others were waiting to speak.
The vote would be taken to end the discussion, the clique voted yea, and the others were essentially censored. And the town was robbed of the opportunity to hear from those who were not in the clique.
When my generation (over 70 years young) was growing up, we got the message loud and clear that our democratic republic, the USA, demands of us citizens (voters?) some responsibility, i.e., participation in and paying attention to the ongoings of the current society in which we live. I wonder...
I want to start a conversation about the Constitution, and I wonder how many folks have read it recently. Some folks believe the Supreme Court is the interpreter of the Constitution and so do not take the time to read it personally, to our collective detriment, I believe. It...
Valarie Kaur's new book, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto for Revolutionary Love, is a moving and expansive read for me. Valarie's life experience as an American woman of color has much to offer all of us who are willing to listen. She asks: “What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb? What if our America is not dead but a country that is waiting to be born? What if...
Would you invite a known coronavirus carrier into your home to live with you and your family? Allowing 5G into Vermont would be like inviting the coronavirus to live with you and every other family in Vermont. Reckless! Self-defeating. For a healthy future and full internet convenience/ capability, hard-wired physical cable to every home and business will satisfy our state's internet access needs safely. Thank you for insisting on health and safety for all.
Appalling to find a burning torch at the top of Main Street in Brattleboro, in celebration of Winter Carnival week! Burning fossil fuel for looks-ism is a questionable choice in the face of the climate crisis emergency. Apparently the town manager, Selectboard, and Town Meeting members do not believe the climate crisis is an emergency! It most certainly is, folks! It truly is real. Forests are still burning in Australia, following the Amazon and California fires, and land masses in...
The Brattleboro Selectboard needs new energy, like a shot of vitamin B12 or something. Kurt Daims offers just that shot of energy in his candidacy for a one-year position on the Selectboard. Kurt is passionately dedicated to improving Brattleboro's experience and expression of democratic governance, being particularly attentive to including individual voices and ideas that culminate in a collective voice of the town's conscience and innate sense of well-being. He wants to help Brattleboro grow healthfully and deliberately into a...
While the major media (owned and controlled by 1-percenters) continues to announce the voters' support of the current federal administration as 40 percent (ignoring some reports it's slipping to 30-percent range), they refuse to acknowledge or repeat the fact that 60 percent or more of voters disapprove of the current administration and policies. The truth is most of the country rejects the bully tactics and trajectory of destruction brought to Earth by these seemingly soulless, heartless creatures of selfishness and...
