Sunday, July 19, 2020
“I think it’s important to show the support and to show the allies that we have in the community,” said Adam Carnes. He and Tia Marosy brought their young son, Felix, to the event. They moved to Burlington from Brooklyn two years ago. Being Black in Vermont, Carnes said, can be isolating.
“I feel like taking [Felix] to stuff like this is really important to see that you might find your community and feel like you’re at home here,” Marosy said. “I also hope that it’s not just a show. I hope there’s actually some substance behind it.”
The Burlington City Council voted unanimously in favor of the street painting in a July 13 meeting. The resolution, drafted by Councilor Karen Paul (D-Ward 6), Councilor Zoraya Hightower (P-Ward 1) and city racial equity director Tyeastia Green, says the mural will be maintained through October 2023.
Volunteers stood in lines at the end of Church Street awaiting name tags and painting assignments that routed them to an assigned letter, already outlined on the roadway. Organizers poured paint and guided them in filling in the letters. Drummers from Jeh Kulu Dance and Drum Theater kept the mood lively.
Elijah Hines awaited his turn to paint with Piper Turosak. Hines recalled some of his own experiences as a Black man living in South Burlington. His brother, Isaiah, led a push as a student at South Burlington High School to change its mascot from the Rebels. Isaiah was harassed for his advocacy, and a South Burlington man was convicted of a misdemeanor stalking charge against him.
“We have both faced a lot of racist name-calling,” Elijah said. “There’s been a lot of shit that’s gone down, and our family hasn’t been protected in the same way that a white family most likely would have.”
But Elijah said events such as this could engage the wider community in conversations about race. “There’ve been things that have kind of made me ashamed to live in Burlington, and live in Vermont, and this is one of the things that helps to change that,” Hines said.
Turosak agreed and said art can be powerful by starting conversations and reminding people of the racial justice work still to be done in Vermont.
“I’m an art student myself, and I’ve done murals and posters, and it genuinely changes people’s minds,” Turosak said. “Public art — it’s the most impactful thing, because it’s there for everybody to see and it evokes an emotional response.”
The City of Montpelier took similar action in June. The Black Lives Matter sign painted on State Street was almost immediately defaced with dirt, oil and graffiti. A muralist for the nonprofit Arts So Wonderful, Jamie Bedard, told Seven Days that her own Black Lives Matter mural, on Burlington’s old YMCA building, was also targeted with graffiti. In both cases, the artwork was quickly restored.
Mayor Miro Weinberger, who took a turn with a roller, said that the city will take a “hardline” approach to any vandalism, prosecuting anyone who tries to deface the Main Street mural. Weinberger said he views the painting as a reminder of the city’s commitment to racial justice, which he said was solidified by the recent declaration of racism as a public health emergency.
“This is something that is symbolism of the work we’ve started together as a community and we intend to do,” Weinberger said. “I hope it’s a reminder to everyone that’s committed to that work.”
Tags: Black Lives Matter , public art , Burlington City Council , Karen Paul , Adam Carnes , Tia Marosy , Elijah Hines , Piper Turosak , racial justice , Miro Weinberger , Web Only , Image , Slideshow
Friday, July 17, 2020
Winooski is the most diverse school district in the state. More than 50 percent of its approximately 870 students are nonwhite, and many are New Americans, making the Onion City the only “majority-minority” school district in Vermont.
Yet the emotional — and blunt — stories told Wednesday by members of the newly formed group, Winooski Students for Anti-Racism, made clear that the diverse district still has plenty of problems. The district employs just one full-time teacher of color in its middle and high school.
Tags: Winooski , schools , racism , high school , Sean McMannon , superintendent , Winooski School Board , Margaret Bass , Michael DeCarreau , Web Only , Image
The Vermont Department of Health has only been able to confirm two infections in the Manchester-Londonderry area so far this week, and all 405 samples processed from a pair of emergency testing sites have come back negative for the virus.
“This is a good indication that these cases are not spreading within the community,” Health Commissioner Mark Levine said.
Town residents began panicking last weekend as local doctors at an urgent care clinic reported a sudden spike in positive COVID-19 tests. Manchester Medical Center, an independent commercial clinic, has reported roughly 60 positive tests over the past week — far more than the total cases recorded in nearby towns since the pandemic began. Businesses shut down, the weekend farmers market was canceled, and rumors abounded about the sources and severity of the suspected outbreak.
But the clinic was using a new antigen test for the virus that causes COVID-19, which state health officials don't recognize in their official data. So while the state scrambled to trace patients' recent contacts and set up mass testing sites, it also sought to verify the initial cases by using the traditional polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, testing method.
As of Thursday night, only two of 17 completed retests could be confirmed as positive COVID-19 cases, Levine said at a Friday press conference. The other 15 were negative.
"Although our investigation is not complete, it appears that many of the positive antigen results reported by Manchester Medical Center might have been false positives," Levine said.
State officials said they still don't have enough information to confirm the presence of an outbreak. The state was still waiting for hundreds of outstanding tests, plus dozens of confirmatory PCR tests for those who had tested positive through the antigen method.
The antigen test used at Manchester Medical Center was approved in May by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, though it is not used widely in Vermont and health officials here consider it relatively unproven. Antigen tests can provide results in just 15 minutes, whereas the traditional PCR tests take days to be processed. The antigen tests, however, are known to miss as many as 20 percent of infections — what's known as a "false negative" result.
A positive antigen result is typically seen as very reliable, making the spate of likely false positives in Manchester especially befuddling. Levine suggested that the problems could stem from a "systematic issue" in how the test kits were being processed at the clinic, but he said the department needed more data.
Levine also noted that many of the antigen tests were performed on patients who did not have COVID-19 symptoms. The tests were only studied on people with symptoms, and current federal and other public health guidance does not recommend their use in general screenings.
Dr. Janel Kittredge-Sterling, one of the clinic's co-owners, has emphatically defended the positive antigen test results on Facebook and in a Thursday interview with Seven Days. On Friday, as Levine called more of those results into question, she continued to express confidence but wrote in a text message that "we have to be critical of all data."
The state recorded nine new coronavirus cases statewide on Friday, bringing the total since March to 1,334. Of those, just over 200 are considered active infections. Four patients are currently hospitalized.
Tags: Manchester Medical Clinic , Mark Levine , Vermont Department of Health , Manchester , COVID-19 , coronavirus outbreak , antigen test , false positive , Web Only , Image
Though Vermont’s infection rate remains among the lowest in the country, COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing elsewhere, with no end in sight.
Further complicating parents’ decisions are the mixed messages coming from the national level. President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos have urged schools across the country to reopen this fall, while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that opening them too soon in some areas could further spread the virus and extend the pandemic.
Dr. Lewis First, chief of pediatrics at the University of Vermont Children’s Hospital, is also editor of the AAP’s peer-reviewed journal, Pediatrics. He points out that, as of early July, no children had been hospitalized in Vermont for COVID-19. As he explains below, the benefits of students returning to the classroom far outweigh the risks posed by the virus itself or by children’s continued home isolation — assuming, that is, that the prevalence of the virus remains low.
Tags: Lewis First , Vermont , education , schools , opening , COVID-19 , coronavirus , University of Vermont Medical Center , Web Only , Image
Thursday, July 16, 2020
The event, aired on Vermont Public Radio, was the second of four statewide primary election debates hosted by the station and Vermont PBS.
Similar to Tuesday's debate among Republicans, candidates were given time to interrogate their opponents. But in contrast to some of the softballs lobbed by their GOP counterparts, the four Democrats showed up with a bag of grenades.
Emerging from the rubble with the most airtime were assistant attorney general Molly Gray and Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden), who, whether directly or indirectly, were the subject of all eight of the field's questions.
Tags: Tim Ashe , Molly Gray , Debbie Ingram , Brenda Siegel , Democratic debate , Lieutenant governor , Web Only , Image
Standing near the newly raised Black Lives Matter flag, the mayor said the city and its partners — which include the Howard Center, Burlington Housing Authority, Champlain College and more — have committed to root out racist practices in their organizations.
"We have with us the broad array of stakeholders necessary to take on the massive challenge of eradicating systemic racism and the profound health disparities that racism creates," Weinberger said. "This work will be difficult and will need sustained focus and energy from our full community to meet the aspiration of being better anti-racist organizations."
Tags: Burlington , Mayor Miro Weinberger , racism , anti-racism , Vermont Racial Justice Alliance , UVM Medical Center , Burlington City Council , Black Lives Matter , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
More than 50 people gathered at Lakeside Park in the city's South End on Wednesday evening to hear about the plan. The new homeless shelter would take the place of the seasonal low-barrier shelter currently on South Winooski Avenue.
Built by South Burlington startup Beta Technologies, the shipping containers would be converted into micro sleeping units and outfitted with running water, electricity, heat and air conditioning. The facility would be managed by ANEW Place, a homeless organization that operated the low-barrier shelter last winter and the temporary shelter at Burlington's North Beach during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
"It's kind of outside the box," ANEW Place executive director Kevin Pounds said. "Basically, like taking the tiny home concept and applying it to a homeless shelter."
Tags: homelessness , Burlington , ANEW Place , Miro Weinberger , low-barrier shelter , Web Only , Image
The nationwide spike in COVID-19 cases — including record caseloads and deaths in states such as Texas, Florida and Arizona — prompted the move, Spiro said in an announcement on Wednesday.
“Vermonters are doing a great job of containing the virus. However, the public health situation in the rest of the country has dictated that we move nearly all of our courses online for the fall semester," he said.
Tags: Castleton University , COVID-19 , coronavirus , higher education , Vermont Tech , Northern Vermont University , James Lambert , Jonathan Spiro , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
They outlined approaches for combating Vermont's demographic crisis, largely emphasizing job creation and deregulation. They weighed in on whether they support a carbon tax — no — and explained how the state would be better off if they were elected.
But one of the more illuminating points during Tuesday's event — the first of four statewide primary election debates hosted by Vermont Public Radio and Vermont PBS over the next eight days — came when the five hopefuls were offered a chance to ask one of the other candidates a question.
What followed was a series of odd exchanges that featured a surprising number of softballs and few of the pointed questions that voters have come to expect in political debates.
Tags: lieutenant governor , Vermont , Scott Milne , Meg Hansen , Jim Hogue , Jim Hogue , Dana Colson Jr. , Web Only , Image
On Monday, Gov. Phil Scott signed into law H.716, which grants free and permanent hunting and fishing licenses to the approximately 6,000 members of Vermont's four officially recognized Native American tribes. Introduced in February, the bill passed both legislative houses with broad support from across the political spectrum, and with an endorsement from Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan.
“This bill is very significant,” Stevens wrote in an email to Seven Days. “It finally recognizes the agreements our Abenaki ancestors retained in our 1796 land grants and other treaties to always reserve the rights to hunt and fish in our territories. This helps our people continue to have access to our natural food sources, and removes the financial barriers that may have prevented some of our citizens from that access.”
As Stevens noted during a February 5 press conference when the bill was introduced, the Abenaki weren’t seeking preferential treatment or looking to deprive others of their property rights. The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department already issues free hunting and fishing licenses to seniors, veterans and people with disabilities. This legislation simply adds a new category of hunters and fishermen who are exempt from state fees. Abenaki sportsmen must still abide by all fish and wildlife regulations and seasons. The new law takes effect on January 1, 2021.
Tags: Don Stevens , Abenaki , hunting , fishing , license , Web Only , Image