Lissa Weinmann
Cuba’s crisis is our crisis
Lissa Weinmann is a board member of Windham World Affairs Council, a partner in 118 Elliot, and director of the Brattleboro Words Project. She helped found and direct Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba, a coalition that helped ease the embargo's restrictions on food sales to Cuba, and she directed the former World Policy Institute's National Summit on Cuba.
Nobel laureate honored with plaque
Jody Williams, who has led worldwide efforts to ban land mines and autonomous killer robots, returns to the place where her journey began: an elementary school in Brattleboro
Rain fell softly and a light breeze dropped leaves to form a golden path as Jody Williams walked toward the front door of the Green Street School on the morning of Oct. 2. Her brother Mark held an umbrella to protect their mother Ruth's hair, done especially for the...
World Affairs Council can use some fresh energy
Seyed Hossein Mousavian was a truly compelling speaker with a wealth of knowledge and deep insights to share. It was a privilege to hear him. Many thanks to the Windham World Affairs Council for once again bringing high caliber speakers to illuminate and interact with our community. The Council...
More
Irresponsible to publish this rant
I was seriously shocked and saddened by the cover of the Voices section this week. Were you aware that Jessica Mack's rant about a local business had been debated and responded to on Facebook over a three-to-four-day period? And that the signs were put up by an employee, not the owners, and were taken down immediately once the owners realized people felt they were in bad taste? Also, the signs had nothing to do with homelessness and everything to do...
Clinton has withstood a lifetime of attacks
MacLean Gander has written one of the most honest, intelligent, insightful pieces I've seen on the “hate Hillary Clinton” phenomenon and on what I've come to think of as a mass demonstration of “mother hatred” - deeply ingrained and rarely acknowledged. This piece is in marked contrast to “The two Hillary Clintons” piece running alongside it, which is emblematic of that same irrationally bitter vein. There is one Hillary Clinton. She will be our first female president. Bernie Sanders fully...
Maze of contradictions
Cuban cinema has a rich history, and social commentary has always found a way into drama, but Cuban director Ernesto Daranas' Conducta (Behavior) catapults current filmmaking from the country into a whole new dimension. The film rumbles quietly with the subtext of the changes afoot in Cuba today. For some, these changes present new opportunities. For others, like Chala, Conducta's troubled but lovable 11-year-old protagonist in danger of slipping through the cracks, change exacerbates current problems and brings uncertainty about...
Our brand-new reality
The news was as stone cold as the freezing Hampton Inn meeting room where community members sat for four hours: The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced that over the next three to four years rules governing decommissioning will be rewritten - too late for decisions being made right now about the future of Vermont Yankee. In other words, we are guinea pigs in an experiment to see how long our country can delay facing the gigantic problem of nuclear...
From a nuclear to a waste-management economy
Recent haggling over spending on overdue upgrades for fire and police facilities raises questions about why more help isn't available for a town that must play first responder for Vermont Yankee (VY), the state's lone nuclear power plant. That unique and onerous responsibility will continue long after the plant ceases producing electricity, especially as Entergy, the plant's owner, pulls back on its emergency planning obligations. Emergency readiness might actually need to be expanded in the years following closure due to...