Mimi Yahn
Relief from a lifelong burden
Today, something odd happened. The significance of my trip to the grocery store sunk in, and the shock of it stunned me.
For the first time in my life, I used food stamps at a grocery store. And for the first time in my life, I bought food without worrying about the cost.
Choose Clinton or choose Trump. It won’t matter.
Both candidates are products and proponents of a corrupt, corporate system that exploits on a massive, global scale in order to enrich a tiny elite.
For many of us here in Vermont, the decision to support Bernie Sanders for president of the United States was rooted in deep social-justice convictions, but not necessarily in the realities of our lives. Except perhaps for women - who understand on a daily, personal level the consequences of...
When did Senator Leahy turn his back on the voters of Vermont?
To U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy: You've made it clear that no matter how the citizens of our state vote, you will give our election to Hillary Clinton because you made a “promise” to support her and you never go back on your promise. But which promise came first? The...
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This radical feminist will vote for a straight, white male
I'll tell you right off the bat that I'm a radical feminist. I'm also “of a certain age” - one of those older women who's been fighting the good feminist fight for decades. For much of this political season, I'd mostly made up my mind to vote for the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein. I do believe quite earnestly that nothing will truly change until women take charge of running the world, so voting for yet another man - especially...
The day our democracy died
Ten years after Hurricane Katrina, commemorations are taking place across the country, but most especially across the Gulf South - and most particularly because of so much that changed and so much that didn't. New Orleans was left to fend for herself, the beautiful Crescent City punished for daring to be proudly Chocolate, its inhabitants strewn across the nation and disappeared forever by gentrification and White-ification. The hurricane made landfall in southern Louisiana on Aug. 29, 2005, and the combination...
Still searching for democracy at Putney Food Co-op
As a writer, social-justice activist, and outspoken critical thinker, I'm no stranger to controversy, but the controversy generated over the shift in governance at the Putney Food Co-op has been a little stranger than most. On the one side fly accusations of being “misinformed” and “alarmist”; on the other, wry comments about “drinking the Kool-Aid” and the “Whole-Food-ization” of co-ops hint at “Stepfordized” paradigms co-opting progressive ideals. All this over a food co-operative!? But the more I investigate, the more...
Losing our principles
Democracy is a tetchy, elusive proposition. It is the common goal of humans that spans centuries, nations, and cultures. It is as much an art as it is a science, a deep human yearning and a universal thread that ties humanity together. But it is something that must be practiced every day; left untended, it does wither and die. Here in Putney, democracy is just as elusive, and just as imperiled, as it is anywhere else in the U.S. and...