Town Meeting voters in Newfane will be debating a resolution that calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and calls on the Vermont Congressional delegation to support Sen. Bernie Sanders' Resolution 504, currently tabled in the U.S. Senate.
Resolution 504 calls on the State Department to certify that U.S. weapons are not being used to commit war crimes. If the State Department cannot certify that within 30 days, then the arms shipments must be stopped.
U.S. weapons and ammunition are part and parcel of the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, which have led to more than 29,000 civilian deaths, including more than 10,000 children. More than 10 children a day lose limbs because of the onslaught.
Sen. Peter Welch and Rep. Becca Balint have both expressed a desire that Israel not kill civilians indiscriminately, but neither has done anything within their power as members of the U.S. Congress to work towards that goal.
Dan DeWalt, a frequent contributor to these pages and one of the founders of this newspaper, writes that if he didn't love his country, he "wouldn't spend so much time trying to get it to live up to its purported principles." Since the eruption of violence in Israel/Palestine on...
Dan DeWalt, one of the founders of this newspaper and a longtime activist for social justice, clean energy, peace, and restorative justice, describes this piece as "a collaboration with another Windham County citizen whose job status would be at risk were they to disclose their name." Washington is preparing...
What makes politicians publicly embrace a lie when the truth is staring them in the face? "There is an apartheid state here. In a territory where two people are judged under two legal systems, that is an apartheid state." A simple statement of fact - in this case made recently by Tamir Pardo, a former head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, referring to Israel's current system of treatment of Palestinians. Pardo is not the only Israeli official to say so.
America's radical right has chosen to target drag shows and transgender people in their latest assault on family values posing as a defense of family values. Shocked cries about grooming and child abuse are spewing from their mouths like pea soup from Regan in The Exorcist. The very folks who are trying to bring back child labor and want to take food out of the mouths of poor children, are now suddenly very concerned for those children's welfare. Strange that...
On Jan. 26, Brattleboro was treated to an evening of Windham County’s Got Talent. Young contestants got a chance to perform for the judges and the public. One young student, after an investment of time and hard work, was excited to perform Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.” However, less than hour before the performance, a parent voiced an objection to the song and asked that it not be performed. To their credit, the organizers encouraged the youth to go forward with...
History - what could be simpler? Things happen, they get written down, we read about it. For instance, the Boston Tea Party was an act of piracy, the revolution was a criminal enterprise. Not so fast, you say? This take might have been the historical view of the British, but it misconstrues the noble acts of self-determination and free speech that is the real story of that conflict. Or consider the Spanish-American War, which gave the Cubans a new American...
The candidates in the race for the U.S. House seat represent an surprising array of choices for Vermonters to sort through. If you think that the U.S. Congress is doing a fine job and should just keep on doing what it always has, then Molly Gray, who is somehow perceived as an interloping carpetbagger while simultaneously being a native daughter of Vermont, is the choice for you. She is the darling of the Democratic establishment and will be a loyal...