Beginning November, 2023 through January, 2024, the VTRC examined Vermont emblematic cases. This was to help shape the thematic foundations to steer the work outlined in Act 128. By "emblematic," we mean cases that symbolize and embody the Act 128 mandate, but also resonated with the VTRC mission. We centered the Act 128 communities including: Native American or Indigenous; individuals with a physical, psychiatric, or mental condition or disability and the families of individuals with a physical, psychiatric, or mental condition or disability; Black individuals and other individuals of color; and individuals with French Canadian, French-Indian, or other mixed ethnic or racial heritage.
Addie Card photo from the Library of Congress. French-Canadian at the Mills at Winooski
Lewis Hine photographer of North Pownal, Vt. This helped bring about child labor laws.
What are some themes we heard from the public?
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Health: stigmatizing processes, lack of understanding of patients' perspectives, taking away people's rights and ability to decide, racism, transphobia, poor access to care.
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Criminal Justice: police profiling, excessive police response, white jurors' deciding people of colors' fates, white rage, embedded racism in positions of power, parental accountability.
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Education: inadequate policies protecting students (esp. Students of color and/or with disabilities), lack of accountability, need for better educator training on rights and discrimination, chronic stress placed on BIPOC students, need for laws on restraint and seclusion, teachers fearing retaliation when speaking up about rights.
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Eugenics: need a list of perpetrators and who benefitted from eugenics, generational harm, targeting families, VTRC's duty to find and disseminate the truth, othering, lack of bodily autonomy, poverty as a main underlying factor, horrific treatment of children.
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Housing: discrimination in maintenance request responses, racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, VT keeping people who are "different" from living here, "band aids on problems that need surgery," zoning bans on multi-generational homes, racist foreclosures, settler colonialism.
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Safety: lack of accountability, hate speech, ignorance, attack on Black women in leadership, no protection from law enforcement, protection of perpetrators but not victims, bias in law enforcement, police not believing Black women, lack of respect, fear, issues with free speech.
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Public Accommodations: harsh punishment, failure to see disabled children as normal, accessibility in policymaking, ableism, dehumanization, lack of accountability, VT's history of treating disabled people horribly, need for the State to offer accessible information, lack of compliance with Fed laws, individualizing access needs, continuing the harm that eugenics caused.
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Historic Context for Present Truths: invisibility and hypervisibility, normalization of racism, mass incarceration as slavery, racist social consciousness, VT not wanting Black folks, VT marking itself as a white space, insidious racism, government complicity, impunity and lack of safety, invisibility even in death.
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Incarceration: asking if VT profits off prison labor, incarcerated people treated as expendable, racism in criminal justice, school to prison pipeline, media influencing people's perceptions, racialized definitions of crime, lack of economic opportunity leading to crime, ongoing legacy of slavery.
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Indigenous Health: medical colonization, lack of laws, lack of cultural humility/cultural competency, lack of intercultural approaches in medicine, failure of government to meet Indigenous needs, racism, lack of Indigenous representation in healthcare, eugenics playing a role in mistrust, dominance of biomedical model, continued forms of generational violence and erasure, intergenerational trauma, origins of modern healthcare in eugenics.
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Immigrant Housing and Labor: discrimination, lack of resources for undocumented folks, everyone deserving housing and security, lack of legal framework to facilitate housing for undocumented folks, trying to keep Vermont looking a certain way, taking advantage of undocumented people, horrible working conditions, lack of regulation for undocumented laborers, exploitation, taking advantage of lack of enforcement.
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"Civilization Fund" and Indigenous Medical Students: Vermont not being exceptional, agency of Indigenous youth, Vermont institutions complicit in Indigenous genocide, erasure of complicity, forced assimilation.
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Eugenics: racial identification ambiguity, intergenerational harm, oppressive social statuses, blood quantum not being a fact, paper genocide, intentional and unintentional erasure, identities mention in eugenics survey being understood differently over time by different people.
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French Canadian Labor: harm to children, targeting populations due to lack of institutional power, difficult lives for Franco-Americans in VT, exploitation of children and link to enslavement, systems not working proactively to protect people, ongoing lived experience of discrimination.
Photo courtesy of the Vermont Historical Society. Reverand David Lee Johnson and family
Overall Themes
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Lack of respect for people's rights.
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Failing to recognize people as human beings.
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Lack of accountability.
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Lack of protections for individuals and populations.
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Embedded forms of discrimination – racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, antisemitism, xenophobia.
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White people deciding people of color's fate.
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Stigmatizing processes and policies.
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Need for better training on bias
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Police not believing Black people.
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Invisibility of certain population in VT.
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Continuing historic harms through present systems.
Why do these matter?
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These themes help us to focus our work on addressing specific issues that people in Vermont are facing.
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They help us to identify systems that are causing harm.
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They show us that our work is needed.
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They also show the need for reforming systems, institutions, and widespread attitudes in Vermont.
Empty Chairs - 2021 - Covid Remembrance
If you have any questions about this or any of our research, please reach out to us at vtrc@vermont.gov.