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September, 2014 Vol 1, Issue 2
Rising Tide VT: We Have Only Started Citizens Take Fracked Gas Fight to VGS Piping Facility
Burlington- Stepping up their campaign to stop the
planned Addison County “Fracked Gas� pipeline, citizens and organizers with Rising Tide Vermont have entered into the early stages of a direct action against Vermont Gas. Beginning with a sit-in by Sara Mehalick at the Canadian-owned company's headquarters in South Burlington, the climate justice organization has since played a pivotal role in the collective resistance to the controversial expansion of the fossil fuel industry in the Green Mountain State.
Contents: 1- We Have Only Started 4- No Trespassing in the Public Space 5- Gender Based Violence In the Wake of Isla Vista 7- Jane Jacobs and the 1950s Urban Planning Slugfest 9- Stabilizing the Burlington Housing Crisis 12- What is Labor Day?
Following the arrest of Mehalick who had chained herself to door ofVermont Gas Systems' South Burlington headquarters, the struggle turned to the September affected homeowners who conducted an extra-legal “knit-in” at the same location several weeks later. Jane Palmer of Monkton was arrested and charged 9/16: Wounds of Waziristan Film Screening, 7pm with trespassing as she demanded an explanation The Block Gallery, 1 East Allen St, Winooski for the continued violation of her property and land Hosted by the Peace and Justice Center, WOUNDS recounts the stories of those directly impacted by drone rights by Vermont Gas. attacks in Pakistan. More recently, organizers and volunteers with Rising Tide Vermont conducted a sit-in at a Vermont 9/19: Slam Up: Same Brain Tour, 10pm Gas piping encasing facility in Williston, signalling Psychadelicatessen, 156 N Winooski Ave, Burlington another ever-so-slight escalation in their fight Comedy, poetry, and improv mix together in this against the pipeline. Marching across the pipe-yard musical performance-- featuring Burlington locals at the beginning of the workday, about a dozen Rajnii Eddins and Lizzy Fox Poetry. FREE! people sat down and blocked the drive-way for more than an hour as work in the yard came to a halt. 9/21: People’s Climate March, 11:30am After negotiating with police for much of that time, Assembly Location: Central Park West (between 59th the demonstrators left the scene before any arrests and 86th streets), NYC. or citations could be made for VGS. Take to the streets to demand action in the face of political gridlock on climate change. Need a ride? Upon seeing mainstream media coverage of the Visit: http://peoplesclimate.org/transportation/ action, Vermont Gas spokesman (and former South Burlington Police Chief) Steve Wark stated “These 9/22 & 24 New Jim Crow Book Discussion, 5:30pm are the same protesters that were here in South The Peace & Justice Center, 60 Lake St, Burlington Burlington a few weeks ago and assaulted an Hosted by the PJC, take part in two 90-minute employee. They cannot be trusted.” This continues a workshops to discuss Michelle Alexander’s powerful habit of intimidation and conflict of interest between Wark and the South Burlington Police investigation into the War on Drugs and our national Department. Sources within Rising Tide Vermont institution of mass incarceration and racism. Free for have strongly suspected Wark as the originator of PJC members and volunteers. $25 for non-members. the detainment and eventual search of multiple All participants eligible to receive a free copy of the computers, memory cards, and other electronic book. Register online at http://www.pjcvt.org/ devices belonging to individuals observing and recording the South Burlington sit-in and arrest. 9/30: Gasland Film Screening, 7pm The Block Gallery, 1 E Allen St, Winooski The latest in a string of actions by pipeline Hosted by the PJC, come see the film, followed by a opponents came on Monday the 11th an estimated discussion of local environmental organizing and 200 citizens and Bread & Puppet style performers resistance by Rising Tide Vermont. marched through downtown Montpelier and into the Capitol calling for climate justice and a halt to VWC Membership Assembly & Sweet 16 Anniversary the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure. This was Celebration Dinner followed up with a widely mis-reported Earth First! Saturday, November 8, 2014 "popcorn party" screening of Gasland at the home Barre Old Labor Hall ofVGS executive Don Gilbert. When Gilbert opened 46 Granite Street, Barre, VT the door to see who was projecting a movie on his home a voice from inside asked "Who's there ★ VWC Annual Membership Assembly, 1-5PM honey?" Gilbert angrily bellowed "It's Rising Tide!!" ★ VWC's Sweet 16th Anniversary Party, 6-8PM H.
EVENTS
3
No Trespassing on Church Street How a Public Street Fell to the Evil Empire
by Zach York In the spring of 2013, the City Council unanimously passed the “Church Street Marketplace Trespass Authority” ordinance unanimously. A year later the ordinance has brought forth a lawsuit and conflicting constitutional opinions. Initially before passing, the ordinance was vetted and endorsed by Assistant City Attorney Gregg Myers, in his constitutional analysis of the ordinance. After debate and encouragement by the Church Street Marketplace, the ordinance passed unanimously in February of 2013 by the Burlington City Council. The ordinance allows for the removal of persons who violate a limited list of undesirable actions as defined by city ordinances: Disorderly conduct, Unlawful mischief, Possession of an open container of
intoxicating liquids, Possession of a regulated drug. The punishment for one of these offences are: first offence is for banishment from the Church Street Marketplace for “balance of the day” remaining on the day of the infraction, second offence is banishment for up to 90 days, and the third offence delivers banishment for up to one year from the Marketplace. Issues have been raised by critics such as Sandra Baird, a lawyer and professor in Burlington, who claims that this ordinance denies the individual punished with a trespass many things such as right to travel, right of due process and other constitutional guarantees. With attorneys Carter and Franco, Baird sued the City of Burlington and Baird & Carter v. Burlington is currently being decided by the Superior Court of Burlington with a decision is expected soon. The difficulty with the arguments being made by Plaintiffs Baird and Carter is the standing they are using, or their justification to sue, is questionable. Neither Plaintiff have been directly affected by the ordinance, and have attempted to relate a taxpayer justification or a threatened trespass for a right to sue the city.
During the trial on May 2 of this year, the City argued that the ordinance was constitutional, and beneficial to some of the most vulnerable in society, those who suffer with mental illnesses. Testifying for the city, a representative of the Howard Center “Street Team” which is a rapid response team for downtown Burlington, commented how the ordinance primarily removes those who would otherwise pose a threat to persons with mental illness.
whom and why we have sex) we can and will be punished by men. The Isla Vista shooting is an example of male punishment in a world where harassment, lower wages, rape and even domestic homicide are common experiences for many women.
So how common? According to the RAINN network, there are 237,868 victims (age 12 or older) of rape and sexual assault each year.1 Nine out of every ten rape victims are women and nearly 1 in 6 women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. The vast majority Regardless of its effectiveness, the question remains, is (80%) of all victims are sexual abuse are under 30 when the assault occurred. Alcohol is used by either this ordinance constitutional? The city has decided perpetrator or victim during rape. Over 60% of all that this ordinance works, defended it in court and it the sexual assaults are not reported to the police and over has been endorsed by the Burlington Police 97% of all rapists do not spend a day in jail. 1 (This Department. However does that justify the fact that statistic is not included to suggest that I endorse this ordinance allows for the city to remove someone sending perpetrators to prison, I do not. I use this from a public space for up to a full year? The appeals statistic to show that many survivors have been shut process involves a committee meeting at the out of the mainstream process of accountability. Marketplaces office on Church Street. This means Prison is often a site of rape culture, and I have no desire to continue the racist, classicist system of appeals can be difficult, while a person is denied accountability we have in AmeriKKKa). access to a public space. Approximately 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence in their lifetimes. 2 Approximately While we await the decision from the court, there 80% of all women, trans and gender queer folks have been 66 people who have received a ticket and street harassment at some point in their have been banished from Church Street over the past experience lives. 3 year. If the concerns against this law are shown to be valid, one must hope the lawsuit being decided has When these facts are seen together, we have to enough standing to justify swift judicial action. H. recognize that gender based violence is pervasive. We begin to see that sexual violence, domestic violence, street harassment and lower wages work together to create a system where women are considered second class citizens. Women’s experiences though vary by race and class. Native American women are twice as Deconstructing a Massacre likely to experience rape as white women. 1 Unlike rape of most women which is done by acquaintances, By Emily Reynolds, Black Rose Anarchist Native American women are most likely to be raped Federation by a stranger, often a stranger not from their same race. 1 Racism and colonial violence often allow My stomach clenched the minute I heard the news of white men to commit acts of violence without ever the Isla Vista shootings. When I read his manifesto facing the consequences of their actions. words like, “The Second Phase will represent my War on Women. I will punish all females for the crime of So in the infamous words of Lenin, what is to be done? depriving me of sex. They have starved me of sex for How do we fight back? First off, we need to believe my entire youth, and gave that pleasure to other survivors/victims when they come forward with men.” brought me to tears. Unlike most, I realized stories of abuse, catcalling and rape. We should not that these were not the words of a madman. These minimize these concerns but listen to people as they were the brutally honest words of a man brought up begin to articulate their oppression. So many in a world where women are constantly devalued survivors have been silenced that admitting to having and viewed as bodies for male pleasure. The Isla Vista been a victim of violence is often a profoundly shootings remind us that we live in a world where important experience. When we tell victims/survivors women are considered secondary citizens. When we that it really is not such a big deal or ask them what demand sexual autonomy (the ability to choose with they were wearing, why they didn’t leave their abuser,5
Gender Based Violence in the Wake of Isla Vista
what they were drinking etc, what we are really saying is that we do not see the systems of power and oppression that cause so few women to speak out and fight back. When we really listen to survivors and acknowledge that violence has occurred, we begin to build a culture that acknowledges that we do not live in an equal world. When we begin to acknowledge that rape, street harassment and domestic violence are systemic problems; we can begin to build movements to fight back. Secondly, we need to build a feminist movement that helps us articulate our oppression. A feminist movement can help us to understand our position in a patriarchal society and help us to create powerful bonds of solidarity. The first time I read a feminist book about rape, I started crying. These women’s voices helped me to realize that the first time I was sexually assaulted at 14, I had not “asked for it” and that he had taken advantage of my youth and vulnerability to commit an act of violence. Rape continued(s) to happen throughout my life, but as I grew into the feminist movement I began to connect with my sisters who helped to lessen the impacts of
trauma and avoid sexual and domestic violence from occurring. When I was begin abused by my expartners, it was feminists who helped me build up the strength to finally leave. Third, we need to build a feminist movement that can fight back. Collectively, we can fight gender based violence in millions of different ways. One example of this is women at Columbia University publishing a rapist list on the women’s bathroom stalls to alert women of men to stay away from. 4 One of the men was even thrown off the editorial team of the school newspaper. This kind of collective feminist action shows us a way we can begin to take accountability for our own safety, with or without the mainstream institutions we live under that are so frequently hostile to our demands. We can write articles, build feminist organizations, hold marches, Hollaback at street harassment 5 . We can get creative! There are as many ways to resist oppression as there are ways to enforce oppression. Let’s start by committing to each other to fight for a world free from gender based violence so there will never be another Elliot Rodger. H.
Jane Jacobs and the 1950s Urban Planning Slugfest by Anonymous
The girl I’m dating asked me to write this article. I am a historic preservationist, not a Radical political theorist or whatever. Old buildings are what I do. But when she texted me to see if I’d write something about planning and architecture and how it affects community, I thought to myself, “Gosh, she’s dreamy,” and I agreed. As every preservationist knows, our profession (which centers on preserving the built environment) exists due in part to the tireless work of one activist: Jane Jacobs, and her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Generally speaking, preservationists do not chain themselves to buildings or sabotage construction sites. But it was grassroots activism that created the profession. As with so many things in the 21st century, this story begins with the end ofWorld War Two. We all are familiar, if only subconsciously, with the changes that occurred during the 1950s in the built environment. The densely built, heavily centralized cities of the early 20th century were beginning to sprawl outwards like cancerous growths—tendrils of strip malls and suburbs metastasizing across what had just a decade before been farmland, all connected by the quickly swelling veins and arteries of the roads. “Alienation” is a term often mentioned when the subject of this growth comes up, usually in terms of the social impact of suburbanization, but I feel it could equally be applied to the municipal planning of that age. Cars changed everything. They made it possible for folks to live far away from where they worked, where they shopped, where they went to church or held their KKK rallies or whatever the fuck white people in the suburbs were up to in the 1950s. Most of us take it so for granted that we get in the car to go anywhere that it can be hard to imagine any other way of life, but prior to the tides of suburbanization and the creation of the interstate highway system most cities were relatively compact affairs. Forms of suburbanization began long before the 1950s, but they were geographically restrained by the limitations of public transit. Cars changed all that. With the rise of
automobiles, commuters could travel farther, faster, on their own schedule. I’m not going to venture into the social impacts of that change, but it does bring me to the point I want to make about urban planning. Specifically, I want to state upfront and emphatically that urban planning from the post-WWII era was terrible. Basically, it all started with two pressing questions: where the hell are we going to put these freeways? And also: what should we do (and of course something had to be done) with cities now the middle class is leaving? All of this segued almost seamlessly into one of the other big concepts in planning at the time: urban renewal. Did you hear the intonation I wrote that with? I was shooting for something between Richard Nixon and Darth Vader, because it was seriously the worst. Most people are on some level familiar with urban renewal as a concept. Broadly stated, it was the process by which “blighted” communities—generally economically disadvantaged and non-white—had their homes torn down and were subsequently moved into hideous housing projects. Not that I imagine anyone reading this isn’t thinking to themselves, “That’s some bullshit!” right now, but in case you weren’t, it was some first class, Grade A bullshit. Speaking as a preservationist, the second layer of bullshit were the results of urban renewal. The buildings and freeways were just ugly as hell. What’s worse, the neighborhoods that got torn down often, from a planning and architectural perspective, contained real gems—interesting, varied structures built on a human scale, often with mixed commercial and residential uses, and, most important of all, they were populated with strong communities. Urban renewal, of course, simultaneously destroyed and geographically isolated chunks of cities and shredded the social networks of the communities it displaced. I’m not going to go on record saying that some white dude in a suit planned it that way, but, let’s be honest, The Man couldn’t have planned it better if he tried. Actually, I do want to go on record saying that some white dude in a suit planned urban renewal. His name was Robert Moses. Space dictates that I can’t give you a full account of all his many, many works, but if you want to raise your blood pressure I strongly suggest you go peak at his Wikipedia page. He was the leading urban planner of his day, and if you think of a given cross-town expressway in New York (cont. page 10) 7
Students gather in Montpelier to protest rising student debt
9
(cont. from page 7) chances are really good he had a hand in it. Also, the dude closed an aquarium out of spite when he didn’t get to build a bridge. In 1952, he decided to put roads through Washington Square Park, in Greenwich Village. It was a bad choice. Enter Jane Jacobs: writer, activist, general bad-ass. She’s one of my favorite people of all time, because she saw Moses’ destruction for what it was, and she was not having any of it. In collaboration with members of the Greenwich Village community, she worked to form the Joint Emergency Committee to Close Washington Square Park to Traffic. With her help, the community proceeded to collectively flip a shit. They staged protests and demonstrations, and, rather amazingly, won. In a karmically beautiful chain of events, other neighborhoods proceeded to organize against Moses’ attempts to bulldoze their homes, and he was ultimately ousted from power by his previous political allies due to increasing pressure from angry constituents.
This leaves us with Jane Jacob’s book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Her tome is over 500 groundbreaking pages long, but due to space constrains I’ll summarize the gist of it in one sentence here: urban planning theories of the 1950s ignored the realities of how cities function. As she saw it, the key to a thriving community was not strict zoning and renewal, but mixed-use neighborhoods, short street blocks, a mix of buildings, and an emphasis on density. The book has been critiqued (not without cause), but it’s also very good activist literature, and it’s a pretty early, unique look at urban planning. The upshot of her work and the book’s publication was a growing backlash against urban renewal, an increased interest in preserving buildings and neighborhoods, and (by extension) the creation of my profession. As any preservationist can tell you, change is inevitable in cities, but neither the form of that change, nor the way it affects communities, are foregone conclusions. It’s our job to make sure development occurs ethically and in a way that benefits the community as a whole.
A longstanding Burlington neighborhood is fractured and distorted in the windows of an upscale condominium on Berry Street. H.
Saturday, November 8, 2014 Old Labor Hall 46 Granite Street, Barre, VT
★ VWC Annual Membership Assembly, 1-5PM ★ VWC's Sweet 16th Anniversary Party, 6-8PM 11
What is Labor Day? Reflections by Colin Flood
freedom.” Not, in other words, a day to remember what the 8-hour day cost us, and what we had to do to get it.
Everywhere on Earth, except in the United States, May 1st, not the first Monday in September, is the international worker's holiday. This is ironic because May Day as a execution of four labor organizers agitating for the 8-hour day. Look it up; it's a called the Haymarket Affair.
So let us celebrate our history this Labor Day, remembering our power to frighten our bosses into giving us a day off. But as we celebrate, let us remember the martyrs of May Day, 1886, who brought us the 8-hour workday; Adolph Fischer, Albert Parsons, George Engel, and August Spies, whose last words were:
Labor Day, on the other hand, was created by President Grove Cleveland for the express purpose of distracting American workers from the accomplishments of our martyrs. Cleveland had just used federal troops to break a train worker's strike, killing 30 workers in the process, and he hoped that a government-sanctioned labor holiday would cool working-class anger – which is why we get Labor Day off, but not May Day. May Day might remind us of the wrong things.
“The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.” H.
Here's another interesting detail. In the United States, May 1st is actually also an official holiday called – wait for it – Loyalty Day. According to the law that created it, “Loyalty Day is a special day for the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American
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