Vermont is known as a progressive safe haven. However, some of our citizens struggle to connect personal experience to this sentiment.
The purpose of publicizing these feelings is not to throw shade at the national progressive movement that Senator Bernie Sanders is trying to foster, but to point out that Vermonters in marginalized positions - be they poor, disabled, LGBTQ, people of color, indigenous, immigrant, or non-mainstream in other facets of identity - help to create this state and make it what it is, yet still, we find ourselves excluded from the movement.
This is an awkward juxtaposition.
To call out when we have been excluded invariably elicits an accusation of sabotage, selfishness, or saltiness. To ignore it is to relegate ourselves to invisibility, thus fortifying the very systemic inequity the progressive movement works to deconstruct.