Social justice leaders address citizen resistance at Alliance for a Better Vermont forum

Clockwise are Ashley Moore, of the Alliance for a Better Vermont; Vermont Executive Director of Racial Equity Xusana Davis; Rutland Area NAACP President Mia Schultz; Rutland City Alderman Thomas Franco; and Sen. Kesha Ram, D-Chittenden.

Four social justice leaders on Monday joined a meeting organized by Alliance for a Better Vermont to advance social justice causes, and the discussions included how to respond to the increasing pushback from Vermonters who don’t share their views on racism.

“Recently we’ve been seeing a lot of pushback to having critical race theory taught in schools,” Ashley Moore, of Alliance for a Better Vermont, said as she introduced four guest speakers to the Zoom forum.

The guests included Sen. Kesha Ram, D-Chittenden, Rutland City Alderman Thomas Franco, Vermont Executive Director of Racial Equity Xusana Davis, and Rutland Area NAACP President Mia Schultz.

According to Ram, the new social-justice-themed curriculum has sparked a debate over whether it’s right for classrooms.

“When speaking to the flare-up right now of people questioning and trying to understand what is critical race theory, how does it intersect with my kids’ learning experience, you know I keep pointing people to WCAX, where the reporter … essentially said something like ‘[CRT] is the idea that systemic racism and the history of slavery still impact every facet of society today.’ And I thought … there it is. You either agree with it or you don’t,” she said.

Schultz referenced the ongoing fight in Rutland over the Rutland High School use of the ‘Raiders’ mascot, and hinted that she will be attempting to introduce legislation that regulates how local schools select their mascots.

“I do have lots of big plans to bring legislation forth,” Schultz said. “We had a little bit of a mascot problem here, so that’s been on the top of the list here to try to introduce some legislation to eliminate that problem.”

The group generally agreed that Vermont has a serious issue with racism. Ram said that Vermont has a history of not embracing minorities.

“They [people of color] saw that if you were going to stay here, you had to fit a really specific mold to be treated humanely,” she said. “And so we have a history, that is still repeating itself, of driving out hyper-visible black and brown people in the state, unfortunately.”

Franco shared that he does not consider Rutland to be inclusive toward minority groups.

“You know Rutland does not necessarily have the best reputation when it comes to things like this,” he said. “So as I came here, and you had mentioned some of the work, the Declaration of Inclusion, for instance, you know we are at a very critical moment where a lot of folks do have things like this on their mind.”

Franco also referenced recent pushback against progressive social justice initiatives.

“There are a lot of loud voices in the room that are getting a lot of attention that are not seeking to understand,” he said.

Davis said people of color largely have a distrust of public health institutions due to incidents in history, such as the Tuskegee experiments involving giving syphilis to black men in the 1930s.

“When we think about Tuskegee, when we think about eugenics in Vermont, when we think about all of the institutions that have created distrust from marginalized groups, the fact that the U.S. government was sterilizing migrant women at the U.S. border as recently as last year, and then you turn around and say ‘why don’t brown people want us to give them shots in the arm?'”

Ram said former President Donald Trump is one indicator that racism still permeates society.

“There’s been a lot more recognition and acknowledgment that these are urgent issues for impacted populations in the state,” she said. “I just hope it doesn’t take the exploitation of black pain and consuming videos of black men being killed, or having a president like Donald Trump, for us to have these realizations.”

Michael Bielawski is a reporter for True North. Send him news tips at bielawski82@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @TrueNorthMikeB.

20 thoughts on “Social justice leaders address citizen resistance at Alliance for a Better Vermont forum

  1. Is their anything that they don’t find fault with? I’ve never seen any racism in Vermont until these people who’s job it is to find racism even if it doesn’t exist came along. I’m getting tired of this BS. These people need to get a real job and do something constructive.

    • Sadly, they earn their livelihood from a lucrative social justice grievance industry that has enabled numerous frauds to falsely yell “fire” in public.

  2. Psychologically, the Hero complex. You probably know people who exhibit the trait. Create a problem that doesn’t exist, inflate its importance and insist they have the solution and are essential to implement it. At your expense and inconvenience. They generate a dogma, a cult following, and they tend toward a Jonestown level of fanaticism. If they’re frustrated, their adherents will torch the neighborhood and kill someone. The AGW cabal or the Marxist/Socialists are prime examples. The Antifa Fascists. The political sector is rife with them. Most, like Joe Biden, have deluded themselves and create disasters rather than solutions. Obama set race relations back by a half century.

  3. Barak Obama and his merry band of Muslim Brotherhood brothers started this way back in another election cycle along with Hillary Clinton and her hero Senator Byrd – the Grand KKK wizard who was also a dear friend of Joe Biden. The kids do not understand the real history of what this game is all about. I hope they one day wake up and learn the Truth – right now the Left is using them as useful idiots and their indoctrination into nonsense and lies is not doing them or their future any good.

  4. Vermont says, “Let them be drug dealers, we’ll even help pay their way!”

    You folks are the biggest racists on the planet. Who wants their kids to be drug dealer and while we’re at it pimps and hoes? Almost forgot Vermont was trying to legalize “sex workers” because it to was racist not to allow it.

    The racists, the vast majority of them can be found under the golden dome. What did these people vote for on this?

  5. As Critical Race Theory becomes the newest “religion” to worship in Vermont, those that follow these grifters had ought to apply some critical thought into what they worship.
    Vermont Executive Director of Racial Equity Xusana Davis chiding us for “the fact that the U.S. government was sterilizing migrant women at the U.S. border as recently as last year” and” people of color largely have a distrust of public health institutions due to incidents in history, such as the Tuskegee experiments involving giving syphilis to black men in the 1930s.” has little correlation to how people of color are treated in Vermont. In fact, Ms. Davis, Vermont’s government has enacted special treatment for “people of color” for decades, most recently segregating out special covid vaccination treatment for “marginalized populations” and preference for licensing marijuana dispensaries to “people who historically have been disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition.” Ms. Davis is one of the Vermont state employees whom makes the decision whom gets these licenses.

    For many decades Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams wrote and spoke about race in America- how they saw the damage wrought by government and “Activists” upon Blacks in America- and what they saw as the answers to help. What these gentlemen advised is certainly not what CRT expouses- nor what government policy has been for the last 50+ years. As with so many current day problems, more of the same isn’t going to change things, but it does make some people very rich.

  6. “We had a little bit of a mascot problem here, so that’s been on the top of the list here to try to introduce some legislation to eliminate that problem”; we will micro-manage you and make you submit through the law if need be.

    “And so we have a history, that is still repeating itself, of driving out hyper-visible black and brown people in the state, unfortunately.” So you come here, berate us as racists, denigrate are traditions, lifestyles, etc. and you wonder at the push back you receive? It’s not because you may be BIPOC, it’s because you are a disagreeable idiot.

  7. A video that says it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4OHxUwigY

    CRT is junk theory, junk thinking, junk living, junk treating others, junk virtue signaling, junk wasting our time, junk patting yourselves on the back, and especially junk teaching our children. Pushing pure junk on our kids.

    It’s part of the plan to turn people’s brains to mush so that they’ll accept the social justice embodied by the Great Reset folks, who really only want the state’s jackboot on our (global) throats. That’s their goal but they say it in such a nice way … things like “stay safe” and “we’re all in this together.” No, we are NOT all in this together.

  8. Hegelian dialectics again: manufacture a problem so a solution is necessary, and someone somewhere along the way, profits from the manipulation. Always about money. Cui bono?
    Being color blind is something most Vermonters ARE. Vermont has historically BEEN color blind –
    EXCEPT when it came to the Abenaki’s.
    But lets not talk about the REAL Native Vermonters who were ACTUALLY forcibly sterilized in our historically recorded eugenics program that also targeted poor white women and children…lets just sweep that inconvenient bit of our history under the rug and call it ‘racism.’ Those poor white women and children weren’t targeted because of their color – but because of their CLASS.
    CLASSISTism IS a problem in Vermont – this is a state for the rich and not for anyone who is willing to bend their backs and get their hands dirty – which is what Vermont has always been: a landed state – a farm state – and self-sufficient, self-reliant – and generosity amongst neighbors.
    The racism in this state HAS been instigated – by the mental health and health industry.
    I don’t see anything different going on – just a different brand today.
    And blinded by the divide and conquer political agenda, libtards suck up the propaganda sent down the pipeline by the NWO technocrats – Vermont is too peaceful – we need to make race an issue.
    The REAL issues in this state are around MONEY and CLASS that is color blind.
    I’m pretty sure money is not a goal for Vermonters to have over a healthy lifestyle.
    We are safer here because we talk to and know our neighbors, and may have babysat their kids, or given them a ride or gotten groceries for them. We have long tradition of caring for each other.
    This is divide and conquer b.s. pushed by…the nanny state…and enacted by its paid henchmen and women.
    Saying something is true does not MAKE it true.
    Wake up Vermont – your in the throws of a coup.

  9. Comrades. This is The Alliance for a Communist Vermont. We all know that Communism is the better way don’t we?

  10. Seems to me these “social justus” and “racial equity” titles are just trying to stir up a bit of racial discord so they have something to do… I’d suggest they die on the vine
    like any occupation that produces nothing.. I’m totally sick of hearing about
    the blacks, genders, climate and whiteness.. how about the flood at the boarder, the economy, gas and food prices, rising 80’s era inflation, taxes… we need more whining on those topics not what their pushing..

    • and the biggest thing we need is school choice so the younger generation isn’t poisoned by their propaganda that they want to force on them without them having a choice.

  11. I’ve asked a few people of color that I know about this and their answer is always the same. Vermont is one of the most inclusive least racist places I have ever visited.

    Let’s just say I don’t want what these people are smoking….

    • But in fact we do know what they’re smoking – there’s a direct correlation between recreational drug usage and homelessness in places like California.

  12. As a lifelong resident of vermont spending most of my life in Rutland I find it pretty insulting that these people have dragged themselves into the state of vermont to start a battle that never existed.

    A friend of color once said to me that you don’t find racism unless you go looking for it.

    That is exactly what is taking place with these four people.

    None of these people originated here however they know more than anyone that has been living here for decades.

    It is time to ditch critical race theory it is time to educate our children with things that will make them better their lives and succeed.

    Teaching hate through critical race theory is as racist as it can get.

    Of course no one wants to go along with their fantasy of destruction of the united states of america.

    And now one has to chime in to try to destroy the wonderful memories of the Rutland Raiders.

    Maybe their efforts would be better concentrated on improving our schools and lowering our taxes…

    Anyone that listens to this garbage hasn’t been paying attention.

    I guess these people never reach out to contact successful black people in america who claim that was only because of america and the freedoms that we practice and the people that supported them that they have been so successful.

    Maybe each one of these people should sit with Candice Owens, a fine young black lady, who loves america and protects her on a daily basis from people like these four who are hell-bent on destroying Rutland and America.

    If you really want to help Rutland vermont quit with the racist garbage and become a participating member of the city.

    I guess these four people aren’t paying attention to the number of people crossing our borders illegally to come into our terribly racist country! This is said with much sarcasm!

    America is the last beacon of hope in the world and we don’t need people like you hell bent on destroying her or the city of Rutland.

  13. “The group generally agreed that Vermont has a serious issue with racism.”

    I grew up here and I’ll state that, curiously, I had never observed racism here until these S.O.B.’s imported themselves and their racism to boot.

    One way or another, we are obliged reject these hateful racists and their hate-filled agenda.

  14. If these folks have nothing better to do than tell 95 percent of our State’s population how ‘racist’ they are, they should expect some ‘push-back’. Here’s a clue – your lies aren’t going to wash and the ‘push-back’ is just getting started.

  15. I see they had to mention Orange Man Bad – I guess they haven’t seen Hunter Biden’s text messages and emails or Joe Biden’s well documented speeches as a US Senator from Delaware. You kids need to review the Biden legislative history post haste!

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