By Tammy Lancour
Friday night in St. Albans City Hall Auditorium, Vermonters for Vermont Initiative hosted a town hall informational forum on critical race theory equity teaching.
The evening opened with reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and signing “God Bless America.” Linda Kirker, a former state legislator, shared her poem “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave!” Kirker also said CRT “pertains to equity, not equality, and creates divisions,” and added that it “segregates students based on skin color.”
University of Vermont professor Aaron Kindsvatter, one of the event’s speakers, said he’s concerned that UVM is looking to adopt its definition of racism and anti-racism from Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi. Specifically, a racist would be defined as “one who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inactions or expressing a racist idea.” The phrase anti-racism would pertain to one who “is supporting an anti-racist policy through their actions or expressing an anti-racist idea.”
“CRT is so very effective and so very pernicious,” Kindsvatter said. “It fundamentally gives those upon whom it is inflicted a choice between temporary status as a good person who is ‘doing the work’ — work which is purposely never clearly defined so as to make it indefinite — and being understood as some un-human composite, such as a fragile white, a self-hating person of color, a white supremacist or a multiracial white. CRT gives a person a choice between being valued as a human or being dismissed as a problem, and that is no choice at all.”
Vermont Grassroots founder Ellie Martin addressed the audience and talked about growing up in Vermont as a young girl, and “not liking communism and not wanting it in Vermont or America.”
“Communism has infiltrated our American society and I’m fighting against it everyday,” she said.
John Klar, an attorney and farmer who runs Vermont Liberty Network, said critical race theory is most easily understood as the direct opposite of the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr.
“It segregated students, and allocates wealth and opportunities solely based on skin color,” Klar said. “It is [cult-like] in its insistence that one must either bow to its anti-constitutional tenets or else be attacked as a white supremacist.”
“Parents must inspect their children’s school materials. School choice is the future,” he added.
Vermonters for Vermont Initiative founder Gregory Thayer told the audience that CRT is not about race but “about Marxism and tearing down our American history, culture, our statutes and systems, and its about destroying our American Freedom and Liberty.”
Thayer started his organization in 2018 to educate all Vermonters because of what he has witnessed first hand.
“CRT violates our Constitution, the 14th Amendment, the Bill of Rights, the 1964 Civil Right Act. It also violates everything that Dr. Martin Luther King fought for and taught us, as well as Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington,” he said.
The night concluded with some audience questions on how to get involved and see what is being taught in schools. Klar told the 75 people in attendance that they have a right to ask for and petition their local school board and teachers for documentation and curriculum being taught to their children.
Watch the video of the St. Albans Townhall Informational on North West Access TV.
I am writing because I share your concerns about CRT. I share little of your politics.
I am somewhat of a recovering liberal. I no longer feel a connection to any political party. In my view, they are all cults.
I heard Gregory Thayer say on the WVMT Morning program that some involved in this ‘movement’ have voiced that it shouldn’t be so politicized. It would be very wise to heed those words. I would say you should be completely disconnected from politics. You may get more people to hear you and become involved, which I would very much like to happen.
I live in Burlington. I almost attended the meeting in St. Albans last Friday – didn’t feel like driving there and I am somewhat concerned about being involved with extreme politics — both conservative and liberal. I would attend one in Burlington or close to.
To say that Burlington’s politics are deeply troubling is a gross understatement. The black community has taken the mayor hostage. And the Diversity Director, Tyeastia Green has power over him. She grew up in the city where George Floyd was killed and came here from there. She is on a white hating mission.
With the mayor’s support she is going to have a lot of say about getting the CRT curriculum in Burlington schools. I highly suspect though that it is already happening.
I am involved because by chance I came across a CCTV (12.15.20) CEDO sponsored interview where she was being interviewed by three black young new refugee boys. It was a very disturbing interview. As is another one on Digger with David Goodman. I hope you will take the time to listen to them. You will learn a lot.
She told them that white boys would ‘beat the crap out of them because of the color of their skin.’
When they expressed gratitude for the opportunities that they are receiving in the U.S., she said yes BUT, what are you giving up for it. Imagine! They said they came from hell.
Seems to me she hates white America.
I was so concerned that I contacted them and we met. I have complained in writing to the mayor and council many times. I am ignored.
Here’s a few of her statements:
In reference to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, she says this: “They (white people) have taken people who they find acceptable and they have catapulted them. They say this is the standard of what you (black person) should aspire to be — be that docile black man so that you can be acceptable to us. That is wrong.”
She complains that revolutionaries like Angela Davis, Malcolm X and others who took up arms against the police have not been exalted.
She likens the Burlington Police to Hitler and David Duke.
She directs the policing study contract.
On the question of reparations, she emphasized the evilness of white people:
“There have been other harms done to other groups of people in this country – the indigenous population – they got treaties, land and money for white people stealing their land.
The Japanese got money for white people putting them in internment camps. The Chinese got money for white people being racially offensive to them.
The only group of people who have not gotten any kind of relieve from the damage done by white people is us.”
She also heads a very biased Reparations Task Force in Burlington which is out to prove that Burlington held more slaves than are history suggests. In the Digger interview she makes the assumption that because freed slaves did not settle here, that there must have been something very nefarious involved.
I simply think that they might have just felt safer in Canada and may have followed family there. But then, I am not out to shame Burlington.
Again, please listen to the interviews mentioned.
I wonder if it would be legally possible to stop what is happening.
It is logic and critical thinking like this that will get you in serious hot water at UVM or any other institution that preaches this marxist propaganda. Professor Kindsvatter is very brave, even with tenure to openly propagate the truth about CRT. UVM is constantly sending emails to its students, treating them like mental snowflakes and encouraging them to seek counseling anytime something traumatic happens in the world, but it has no problem teaching the “white” kids to embrace the ethnic guilt trip and hate themselves.
The giant GRIFT, which is BLM and CRT, is unraveling behind the scenes. Evidence of millions of dollars spent on homes, cars, travel, etc. Shaun King recently deleted his Twitter page. Why? There was no uplifting of minorities after millions of dollars donated by corporations and citizen activists. There is no list of scholarships, grants, or community development projects underway by these GRIFT organizations. There is a list of politicians that laundered millions of dollars through these non-profit SJW outfits. Likely, there is a similar GRIFT underway in the Pride organization as well. The entire racism, whitey bad narrative is nothing more than a smoke screen to launder money and divert attention away from the FACT that elections are rigged. Those in power pushing the narratives are nothing more than money grabbing frauds – their time in the spotlight is coming to an end. The jig is up. South Africa is a prime example of how this evil-money changers scheme ends – society collapses
It might be worth checking in with your own school and Supervisory Union in regards to whether they actually have a Vermont Critical Race Theory curriculum as some have suggested.
My own District’s Superintendent got back to me on the questions of if the District has a curriculum “that addresses the history of racism in our nation, progress our nation has made at fulfilling our ideals and current challenges” and “if so, is it based on CRT”.
His reply was “We haven’t adopted any formal curriculum and certainly don’t have any intention of adopting CRT. Our focus is on teaching U.S. history and World History from a factual perspective that is rooted in well documented facts”.
Gives one hope we might actually pull out of this steep dive into tyranny and communist agendas set forth by the Cabal last century (or you could go back to the Annunaki still pulling the strings from the shadows today) that this discussion even happened here in Chinarmont.
Maybe we WILL be the Vert Mont we always envisioned.
If you haven’t seen the first ten minutes of LA BELL VERTE – a film that was banned after it came out of course and hard to find (The Green Beautiful), watch it and tell me you can’t visualize THAT being the reality of Vermonters – individuals coming to individual life solutions and coming together at harvest time to share the wealth, no one goes hungry and everyone is taken care of – through cooperation, collaboration, contribution and just plain helping each other out.
The petty divisions disappear when one focuses on LIFE and commonalities, instead of differences.
Differences are low hanging fruit for those who want to control what we believe and how we think for their financial benefit (have you priced a textbook lately?).
Clearly this conversation was a bit one sided, but we’ve heard enough from the supporters…this dose of common sense and actual research is refreshing and gives one hope for your state formerly known as La Verte Mont, now sloping into Chinarmont…can we pull out in time?
Not if our compromised and corrupt legislators have a say…people’s assembly anyone?
Old hands, such as Pelosi, Biden, Schumer, Sanders, etc., know exactly why they support BLM, CRT, Gay rights, etc., and exploit COVID and mail-in ballots, etc., to stage a COUP D ETAT, i.e., oust a President who had won, stopped the counting to reassess the situation, and lo and behold, the next morning that President had been successfully made to lose, by hook and crook.
Pelosi and Schumer, with masks, were kneeling, on TV for all the people to see, for Floyd and BLM
All create divisions, stress, etc.
Divide, conquer and command/control, break their will.
It goes significantly deeper than just Schumer and Pelosi although she is the tip of the spear from what we see she’s merely just trying to get rich. Greed is her sin well along with lying and racketeering and potentially complicit in murder among other choices especially her stock options.
Deep state all day and involved with Jan 6th as well as fake impeachment, electoral college etc.