BRATTLEBORO-I am writing to express my strong opposition to the candidacy of Tim Wessel for Brattleboro Selectboard. His actions and statements make it clear that he is not the right person to represent a town that values justice, inclusivity, and compassion.
At last year's Representative Town Meeting, Wessel opposed a resolution calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, arguing that it "sends a message to Jews in this country that the one country where they should be safe and have self-determination" should have a right to "defend itself."
This statement is deeply troubling. It assumes that American Jews should feel a special allegiance to Israel rather than be free to live and thrive wherever they are. Many Jewish Americans in Brattleboro and around the country oppose Israel's behavior. Wessel's message is that their safety depends on a state engaging in genocide and occupation.
Wessel's paternalism and hubris were also evident in 2022, two years after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police, a time when many in this country were struggling to disaggregate deep-seated and systemic biases.
BRATTLEBORO-Mark Treinkman's full-throated advocacy of genocide provides us with a patronizing litany of reasons why Israel should be able to continue to slaughter babies, torture doctors, rape prisoners, dismember children, bomb ambulances, bulldoze homes, starve an entire population, and carry out other horrors that are illegal under international and...
BRATTLEBORO-John Ungerleider has built a career at SIT and elsewhere around the false equivalency that the people of Israel and Palestine could achieve peace if they would come together to talk as coequal partners. This normalization paints the Israeli occupation of Palestine as a benevolent and paternalistic system that...
What is happening in Palestine and Israel has finally put to a lie the pretense that the United States was or ever could be an "honest broker" - as Washington has long labeled itself - in negotiating a fair and just peace. Since Saturday, Oct. 7, regardless of whether they are liberal, conservative, or somewhere in between, U.S. officials with President Joe Biden first out of the gate have been falling over themselves in the rush to justify any action...
It was deeply disturbing to hear a member of Brattleboro's decidedly homogenous, all-white Selectboard declare that even though the town has no employees of color, he considers town government “diverse.” I'm not going to try to parse what he meant by that. As a person of privilege, I admit to frequent stumbles in how I talk about race and diversity. In fact, I'm anxious about writing this letter lest I appear to be trying to speak on behalf of people...
Below is an e-mail I just sent to President Obama about the recent vote by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to remove Curtiss Reed Jr. as head of the commission's Vermont State Advisory Committee [The Commons, Dec. 9]. I encourage you to use this message, modify it, or write your own to the president, urging him to fill two vacancies on the commission so that the panel may revisit the ill-advised and misguided decision to remove Curtiss. Here's the...