[The following was written for the town listserv and is reposted here.]
I’m a member of the local selectboard but I don’t speak here for town government, nor could I. This is my opinion and I’m happy to discuss it with any of you. (Though I believe listserv rules prohibit personal heckling, so you might have to write me directly with your differing opinion.)
Consider this:
“Once they have your vote after perpetrating a genocide, they know there’s nothing you won’t allow them to do.”
I share the opinion. The thought was expressed yesterday by Anthony Zenkus, a professor at Columbia University.
I understand voting for harm reduction; of course I do. And yet. Both major parties knowing that everyone believes an alternative to the duopoly can never arise has caused the mess we’re in: where both options are horrific. The Dems’ VP candidate sent military to shut down protest of an oil pipeline in his state to ensure it happened. Kamala Harris literally laughed when someone recently brought up the thousands of black men she caused to remain incarcerated after they should have been released. Both of them place the protest of what is plainly an ethnic cleansing as more of a threat than the ethnic cleansing itself. And as we all know, “Project 2025” seeks to destroy as much government as possible and generally create a theocracy.
I will say: whatever we let the ruling class do elsewhere, they will bring home and try on us. It’s not an if but when. Police around the country already routinely train at the direction of the IDF.
We need a movement for ranked-choice voting to allow alternative parties to flourish, and we need it yesterday. That movement needs teeth. In this atmosphere, the only “teeth” our reps respect is people willing to tell them, and follow through on, this: “If you don’t cosponsor ranked-choice voting, I will not vote for you.”
One thing is clear. This threat is the only one they listen to.
If anyone in Hartford agrees and wants to join me to work on building this movement and perhaps some other things that must happen alongside it, let me know.
This is the third in a series of four posts on related subjects. Yes I’m a selectboard member; no I’m not speaking for the board or the town. (As if I could!)
This will be the first time I have publicly discussed this, because I prefer focus not be on myself when hundreds of children and workers in scrubs are found in mass graves on hospital grounds with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. But since it’s been mentioned around town: I was among the 90 arrested at the protest at Dartmouth on May 1. It was a principled stand in the tradition of a dozen mass student-led movements spanning American history, which created changes we all consider good. These changes simply didn’t happen until thousands (or tens of thousands) were arrested at hundreds of protests.
People in power seem to only like protest action that exists politely in the periphery. Perhaps so they can ignore it. If you think protests need to be polite, to be officially permitted—such that they can be ignored—then it’s possible you don’t fully grasp what protest is for.
The arrested Dartmouth protesters, 73 of whom are students and faculty including former Jewish Studies Chair Annelise Orleck, will have our day in court, assisted in defense by the NH ACLU. We will use the court to speak. Again, that’s largely what Hartford residents pay me $100 every two weeks to do: to speak on behalf of what I’m hearing. What I did getting arrested isn’t much, but it added to the numbers, in solidarity. If we all do a little, if we all speak and demand and do a little, maybe things will budge.
Fighting for justice “over there” *IS* fighting for justice here. It sets the standard that no one can be starved or blown to bits in the name of capital, hegemony, or anything else. All have dignity. Including us. Gazans would do the same for us; indeed they literally have. They’ve stood up in protest of all kinds of things: lack of U.S. civil rights, apartheid in South Africa, income inequality when our banners decryed the chokehold of “the 1%.” Crucially, however, we and Gazans stand for one another not out of reciprocity, but because it’s right.
To the idea that I’m an “individual member pushing my agenda,” that’s only true in small part. Sure, I’m acting on what I believe, but this is no different than how other board members act, in that I’m also supporting hundreds of folks in town who happen to share these beliefs. We shouldn’t let anyone silence the beliefs of a group of citizens by trying to ascribe those beliefs to a single representative alone.
I’m also here supporting the hundreds of students and community members who came out to protest May 1, and the hundreds who support sending a message to our national representatives via a ceasefire resolution. One gentleman cited a chapter of Vermont law that outlines the limited powers selectboard members have. That’s why the worth of a resolution—which the state grants us the power to make—is merely in its ability to send a message. We’ll soon decide whether this message is worthwhile.
Judging by how often it comes up, folks seem to want to assume the board neglects “the business of the town.” Especially if it’s made known that in our free time, we think about non-town things. (Or in this case, how non-town things affect our town.) Anyway, below is a response to questions posted here yesterday, sent by the town manager after I passed around an early draft of a response. I’m spreading the response because others may wish for updates on the same subjects.
Fairview Terrace retaining wall: “The Selectboard has heard from design engineers who have opined on project costs and the Selectboard has approved of a plan to propose a $4,100,000.00 bond to the voters in November to support construction to allow the road to be reopened to one-way traffic.”
Former Hartford Diner site: “As Brandon has stated, there is pending litigation. However, I share your concerns over this eyesore and hope to find the best way to clean up the site, without running afoul of the property rights of others. This may require the Town to take title to the parcel, at least long enough to perform the needed cleanup work.”
Status of replacing aging/failing water lines in Wilder: “We have engineers working on design and we expect work to begin this year.”
Accessible doors to the Bugbee Senior Center: “The Town has architects designing needed improvements to the facility, including ADA access.”
The listserv has its limitations, so if you’d like to hear what I have to say without this filter, email hey@brandonsmith.com to be included in future mailings.
This is the second in a series of four posts on related subjects. Yes I’m a selectboard member; no I’m not speaking for the board or the town. (As if I could!)
Did you know that almost four months ago, the death toll in Gaza largely stopped being counted because most of the people who did the counting—medical and public health professionals—had been killed by American-made bombs? We hear that 40,000 people have died, but we no longer really know. Chances are it’s much higher. Israel just bombed 1.5 million people living in a massive tent city, forcing them to evacuate yet again.
Does it sound remotely like a proportional response to you—proportional response is technically international law—to destroy the homes and civic infrastructure of 1.7 million of Gaza’s 2 million people, kill many tens of thousands, and starve hundreds of thousands, after an attack that killed 1,200? (Especially given that Israel refuses to investigate how many of those deaths were from Israeli “friendly” fire.) The U.N. hasn’t thought it proportionate. As of two weeks ago, Israel had violated 62 U.N. resolutions and counting. When Iraq violated two, we launched a ground invasion of their country.
To all who think this irrelevant to Hartford, ask yourself how much of our economy comes from Dartmouth and Dartmouth hospital. (If we’re honest, it’s a huge percentage.) Dartmouth has six billion dollars in accounts which are, as we speak, political tools to prop up the business concerns these assets are invested in—including weapons manufacturers and countless others profiting from Gaza’s immolation. If you live off the local economy, like I do, then you live off the returns of these investments. That’s how directly we benefit from the murder of Palestinians.
I’ve mentioned that Hartford residents alone have sent $2.8 million in weapons to Israel since October. And yet, the value generated by Dartmouth’s investments is far greater than our direct contribution. That’s why protest is necessary: our livelihoods shouldn’t be derived from how profitable it is to starve brown people or slaughter doctors and journalists. The professors were right Monday evening when they voted, for the first time in the college’s history, to censure their president for her role in the arrest of ~75 students protesting for their institution’s divestment.
The listserv has its limitations, so if you’d like to hear what I have to say without this filter, email hey@brandonsmith.com to be included in future mailings.
I love the Hartford listserv. The town I grew up in didn’t have anything like this, and I wished it did. We had the internet; we just didn’t use it like this, like a real community. In 1997, in the fourth grade, I started a chat room on the early chat protocol, “mIRC.” My room was called “#Kids97”. Mostly I had fun programming the “bot” that patrolled the room. I could have it boot out anyone who said this word or that. I had lots of fun with my little power trip, loading in a long list of swear words. Perhaps “Gaza” is such a swear word here. I regret my 11-year-old policing of the internet. Don’t be like me.
Monday evening I attended a conference call, err, conference Zoom, with several Hartford residents and at least one person involved in the pro-Gaza, anti-genocide resolution recently passed by the Lebanon town council. Much of their discussion centered why Gaza is germane to Hartford. It’s not just the tax dollars we all send over in the form of weapons. (I hear Sharon’s selectboard recently featured a calculation of the amount their town’s residents send to arm Israel.) The Hartford connection is about our local Congressional delegation, as I mentioned earlier. It’s the environmental impact, which we know affects us. Scientists have estimated the flattening of Gaza has released more CO2 than 20 small nations do in a year. It behooves Hartford residents to know about police training: how it’s well-documented that many police-training operations have been designed and tested in Israel, on Palestinians. And it’s about a slippery slope. If we don’t agitate about this being done in our name, then what’s to say the next one that follows—or the one after that—doesn’t touch Hartford physically? Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. (MLK again.)
All this and more is why Hartford residents are organizing to present a ceasefire resolution to the Hartford selectboard, akin to the ones passed in at least thirteen other Vermont towns. A list of those towns is here:
Lots of folks have weighed in about what they feel is an acceptable form, or topic, of discussion. On the listserv and among the Selectboard, which again, I don’t represent here. I think THIS is the most germane thing to Hartford: our discussing with one another, civilly, about what constitutes acceptable speech and protest, and why. This is *it*. This is what my home town was lacking. So I don’t post here all the time, but when I do, I want it to count. Noam Chomsky famously said that any truly meaningful statement, if compressed into what can be featured in a 30-second sound byte, would sound like the ranting from someone *unwell.* Because it’s not enough time to explain your evidence or your thought process. So here I am, writing long. I’m not doing it to spite you!
President Biden’s remarks over the weekend about a few hundred student protesters were more pointed and irate than he’s ever been about the killing of more than 30,000 Gazans. Let’s put that in context. Yesterday, more than 300 bodies were discovered in mass graves in a second hospital complex in three weeks. The bodies of many people in scrubs, and many minors, were discovered with their hands and feet bound, indicating they were killed in that state. We’re supposed to believe college students trying to force divestment from this is more of a problem than the thing itself? Do we really believe that my saying the wrong thing at the wrong time is the primary problem here?
I had always thought that us educated folk drew the line, of what can be protested, somewhere well before “genocide.” Now I’m not so sure.
This week, someone shouted me down to say they disagree with my posting here. Totally fair! I was eager to hear their argument. (They keep a really nice yard and I respect their opinion on guns.) Their argument was that “breaking the rules,” for instance the rules of a listserv—which again, I maintain I only bend—is similar to what Donald Trump does; why Trump is bad news. They said it feels dangerous when someone thinks rules don’t apply to them. My thought is this: the severity of rule-breaking is context-specific. Courts usually acknowledge this. Protesters break rules to call attention to something. To make others think “why would they risk getting thrown in jail? Is this so important to them?” In other words, to educate. It’s pretty clear Donald Trump breaks rules for his own personal gain. Perhaps Biden, too, as he continues to ignore the Foreign Assistance Act.
If we can’t tell the difference between these two contexts, we might be lost indeed.
Epilogue: As of Monday, college students, including some from Hartford, at the following institutions have started encampments demanding divestment from Israel: Columbia, Barnard, NYU, The New School, MIT, Emerson, Tufts, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Michigan, Vanderbilt, Washington University. At many of them, administrators have had students and/or professors arrested for their speech. (See a theme?) Dartmouth students, many of whom live in Hartford, held an emergency meeting Monday night to discuss whether they should start their own action. I don’t know the outcome of their meeting.
Kristiana Rae Colón, center with the red scarf, leads a “Brown Friday” protest in a Chicago shopping district. This reporter broke the news that Colón, daughter of an Alderman, likely had her phone surveilled by Chicago police trying to learn where the protest was headed. Photo credit: Bryant Cross.
This story of mine, published on the website Reader Supported News, first divulged the identity of protest organizer Kristiana Rae Colón, the likely target of police cellphone surveillance.
(Colón was the organizer of that day’s protests, told police as much, and police were later recorded asking one another whether they were receiving any information from the “girl” organizer’s phone.)
It served as my very quick education into the world of police surveillance technology. More stories on the subject will follow.
Brandon Smith 