BRATTLEBORO-My name is Gemma Seymour, and I am running for a three-year seat as Representative Town Meeting Member for Brattleboro District 8.
I have been a resident of District 8 for over nine years, and a resident of Vermont for over 10 years. I am a mixed-race Asian American woman of color with a modest income who is partially disabled and a member of our local LGBT community. I am a renter, and I live in the downtown area, where quality-of-life issues impact me every single day.
I am a parent with a daughter at university and the daughter of a disabled mother. My family has been in public service for generations, and I wish to continue that tradition.
We face a number of challenges in the current socioeconomic environment, while our cost of living climbs ever higher, putting more and more of us at risk. In the face of the compounding effects of climate change, we are running out of time to build a sustainable, equitable future not only for the Vermonters who are already here, but for the Vermonters we know are coming here to seek refuge.
Bill McKibben is a very smart man, but he is also completely misguided in his attacks on "Big Oil." Everyone needs to stop blaming corporations for their actions. Shell, BP, and ExxonMobil, or whoever, aren't responsible for society's addiction to oil. They are certainly not responsible for Bill McKibben's...
I have over 25 years of professional experience working with computer systems and communications networks. I founded the first 100-percent-broadband-end-user internet service provider in the nation in 1994. I've been on the internet since 1986. I got my first computer in 1982. I've been using computers since 1978. I...
With Town Meeting Day approaching, I am contemplating how Vermont's direct democracy tradition tends to moderate political opinions expressed publicly and how a shared cultural experience means everyone is starting from the same set of assumptions about the nature of reality and knowledge. In a world in which first motor vehicles and then global communications in the palm of our hands every waking and sleeping moment have resulted in massive cultural upheavals and mobility, it's not hard to understand why...
As I have written often, Vermont has the 51st largest economy of the 50 states plus Washington, D.C. Our state lags the nation by significant margins in growth of the gross domestic product, both gross and per capita. We pride ourselves on our ecological consciousness, yet we lead the nation in miles driven per capita. And our population is slowly but surely eroding. What to do? Many people believe they have the answers - some say lower taxes and businesses...