A 32-year-old Vermont farmworker and Migrant Justice activist died of COVID-19 in Mexico last week after being deported in March, the group said Tuesday. 

Durvi Martinez, a trans woman who used they/them pronouns, "was a brave and outspoken advocate for immigrant and LGBTQ rights," the organization said in a statement Tuesday announcing their July 1 death. "Durvi will be remembered as a loving and supportive friend."

Martinez is believed to have contracted the new coronavirus in Mexico, but Migrant Justice said it holds U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement responsible for their "unjust" detention, deportation and death.

"Rather than releasing Durvi, ICE deported them to their death," the group said.

More than 1,000 people marched through downtown Burlington on the Fourth of July to draw attention to the country's legacies of racism and oppression.

The Black-led event began at 4 p.m., just as many others in the city were sipping beers or barbecuing to celebrate the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Protesters gathered outside Burlington City Hall, then walked up the Church Street Marketplace and through Pearl Street to Battery Park.

Organizers with The Black Perspective said they asked Church Street businesses to close early in solidarity. Leunig's Bistro & Café lined its shuttered outdoor seating area with Black Lives Matter flags, and Outdoor Gear Exchange posted fliers announcing its early closure so employees could attend the rally.

Other businesses and restaurants stayed open. The mass of mask-clad rally-goers squeezed past shoppers and outdoor diners along the Marketplace and chanted the names of Black men and women killed by police.

A white man faces criminal charges for unleashing what was described as a racist tirade against a white Winooski woman and her biracial daughter as they left the city's post office last week.

The Chittenden County State's Attorney's Office accused Don Lindsay, 66, of Winooski, of disorderly conduct with a hate-crime enhancement. He pleaded not guilty during a June 30 arraignment, but police said he admitted to saying "some nasty things."

"I don't like Blacks I'm sorry I am prejudice but I don't care," he allegedly told Winooski Officer Jason Ziter, according to a court affidavit.

Lindsay explained to Ziter that he had lost his patience at how long Megan Gregory, 31, spent inside the Winooski Post Office on Main Street, where COVID-19 restrictions allow just one customer at a time inside the lobby.

A shackled teenager "did not appear to be resisting" when former St. Albans police officer Joel Daugreilh used pepper spray on him inside a holding cell, a state police investigator concluded. 

Daugreilh, 34, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to a misdemeanor count of simple assault. He was charged Monday, the result of an about-face by Vermont Attorney General T. J. Donovan, who had previously declined to bring charges for Daugreilh's November 2017 conduct. 
A police affidavit filed in state court reveals new details about the mysterious case. Daugreilh resigned from the St. Albans Police Department during an internal investigation into whether he used excessive force, but the episode was not made public for more than two years. It came to light shortly after another former St. Albans cop, Sgt. Jason Lawton, was charged in September 2019 with assaulting a shackled detainee in a department holding cell.
When Vermont Public Radio sought records from the Daugreilh investigation, Donovan instead reopened the case, telling the news outlet in January that he'd discovered "new information." The footage has yet to be publicly released.

Multiple cameras captured the encounter between Daugreilh and 18-year-old Nathan Willey, according to a state trooper who reviewed the tape in 2017 and described the contents in a criminal affidavit.

Updated on June 30, 2020.

The Vermont Attorney General's Office on Monday charged a former St. Albans police officer with assault for pepper-spraying a handcuffed man in a holding cell in 2017.

Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan initially declined to prosecute former corporal Joel Daugreilh in 2018, but he reopened the case in January when Vermont Public Radio requested video of the incident.

By that time, St. Albans police were facing public scrutiny over a different case in which a former sergeant, Jason Lawton, punched a handcuffed woman in a holding cell. Donovan's office charged Lawton with assault in November 2019. That case is pending.  Daugreilh resigned from the St. Albans force during an internal investigation into the pepper-spraying incident. Faced with a request for public records about the case from VPR, Donovan told the news outlet that he'd discovered "new information" about the incident and would hire a use-of-force expert to review it.

An investigation by the Vermont Human Rights Commission has found "reasonable grounds to believe" that Chittenden County State's Attorney Sarah George discriminated against a former employee "based on his national origin, race and color."

The HRC released the finding June 25, more than three years after Abdullah Sall first filed his complaint. The parties have six months to settle, after which the commission could decide to take the case to court.

The unanimous finding names the Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs and the Chittenden County State's Attorney's Office as respondents in the case. But much of the report focuses on George's role in terminating Sall.

"This case is really important because it really reflects what people of color have always known to be true about racism," said Bor Yang, the HRC's executive director. "It isn't always the white supremacist. It shows up in very subtle ways."

Sall announced his intention to sue George in February 2017, a month after George dismissed him. George had been appointed Chittenden County state's attorney just eight days before she fired Sall, a receptionist.

In his May 2017 HRC complaint, Sall alleged that he was subjected to a hostile work environment and was harassed about his accent. He claimed that one reason George fired him was because people couldn't understand what he was saying. Sall's attorney, John Franco, told Seven Days at the time that his client faced “disparate treatment” in George's office because he's a Muslim immigrant from Liberia.
Though the investigation didn't find enough evidence to support Sall's hostile workplace claim, the HRC did conclude that Sall was treated differently based on his race — specifically because George terminated Sall but let two white employees with similar performance issues stay on the job.

"One of those women was completely failing at her job and was given probation and support," Yang said. "She made the same mistakes [as Sall], the same serious mistakes, and she had been kept on. She had been given a chance over and over and over again."

Two Vermont companies laid off a total of about 100 workers this week in the latest sign of a pandemic-induced economic downturn.

Northfield sock maker Darn Tough Vermont cut nearly 50 manufacturing jobs, while National Life Group laid off 53 employees at its Montpelier office.

"Many people are talking about the post-COVID world, but with each day, we learn that this virus will be with us for a long time," Vermont Chamber of Commerce president Betsy Bishop said of the news. "The National Life and Darn Tough announcements are likely just the early signs of changes in our economy."

Darn Tough was expanding operations before the coronavirus hit American shores. The company signed a lease at a second facility in Waterbury, and CEO Ric Cabot told Vermont Public Radio in January that he planned to add another 100 employees to his workforce of more than 300.

"A few months ago we couldn't grow fast enough," the company said in a June 22 Facebook post announcing the layoffs.

A Black man who claimed Bennington police racially profiled him has settled with the town for $30,000, the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont said Wednesday.

Police were looking for a drug dealer in July 2013 when an undercover officer spotted Shamel Alexander riding in the backseat of a New York taxi. Officer Andy Hunt pulled over the cabbie and eventually questioned Alexander. Alexander was not the dealer police were seeking, but, after searching his bag, the officer found $1,500 worth of heroin.
Alexander was later convicted and sentenced by a state judge to 10 years in prison, despite having no criminal history. He appealed to the Vermont Supreme Court, which vacated the conviction in 2016 on the grounds that police had no lawful basis to stop Alexander.
Alexander also sued the Town of Bennington for civil rights violations, claiming his arrest was part of a pattern of racial profiling by the Bennington Police Department.

Bennington twice tried unsuccessfully to get the case dismissed before agreeing to settle, the ACLU said.

"Our client is grateful to have this case resolved, having shined a spotlight on system-wide discriminatory police practices in Bennington," staff attorney Lia Ernst said in a press release. "This settlement does not alleviate the need for top-to-bottom changes to a deeply troubled police department and to a municipal leadership that continues to deny there is even a problem with unconstitutional police practices in Bennington."

Town Manager Stuart Hurd said the municipality did not admit liability as part of the settlement. "This has been pending for four years," he wrote in an email. "All parties agreed it’s best to avoid further long and protracted litigation."
A 2017 study by University of Vermont economics professor Stephanie Seguino found that Bennington police stopped Black drivers at more than double the rate of white drivers. It was one of the worst racial disparities in the state, the researchers found. The study was cited as part of Alexander's civil rights lawsuit and criticized by the Town of Bennington as "seriously flawed."

A 2019 study by the Montpelier-based Crime Research Group was also highly critical of Seguino's earlier work. Its analysis found no racial disparities in traffic stops by Bennington police.
Earlier this year, an outside report by the International Association of Chiefs of Police critiqued the Bennington department for a "warrior" culture and found many residents didn't trust its officers.

The town selectboard commissioned the review in wake of criticism that police mishandled harassment allegations reported by former state representative Kiah Morris. Morris, the only woman of color in the legislature at the time, cited racist harassment in later resigning her seat.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington is closing a long-running Winooski parish and two rural churches because it doesn't have enough priests to staff them.

St. Stephen Catholic Church on Barlow Street in Winooski will hold its final Sunday mass on June 28 before the parish is dissolved and its assets merged with nearby St. Francis Xavier Parish.

St. Edward Catholic Church in Williamstown and North American Martyrs Catholic Church in Marshfield will also close, on July 1.

The Winooski closure is the first since the diocese announced a strategic plan last year that forecast future mergers. It was triggered by the departure of pastor Stephen Hornat, an Edmundite priest assigned to the parish for the last five years.
Hornat said the Society of St. Edmund, a Catholic order headquartered at Saint Michael's College in Colchester, is also facing a priest shortage and decided to withdraw those assigned to a few area parishes.

Earlier this month, the diocese informed the St. Stephen parish that it didn't have anyone to replace Hornat.

"The decision to close the church was made because of the decline in the number of priests and the inability of the Diocese to assign a priest to serve the community, as well as the very close proximity of St. Francis Xavier Church," said John McDermott, vicar general.

The diocese has lost about 60 percent of priests since 1990, according to figures published in the most recent issue of Vermont Catholic magazine. As of July 1, it will have 57 active priests serving 68 parishes and 114 church buildings, McDermott said. Nearly one-third of active priests are over the age of 60.
All three churches had been closed since March because of the coronavirus pandemic, during which time the diocese streamed mass online. Churches statewide were allowed to reopen on June 1 with reduced capacity, per an order from Gov. Phil Scott.

Though barely one square mile in size, Winooski has hosted two Catholic parishes for more than a century, the result of cultural divisions between French and Irish congregants. Originally the Irish parish, St. Stephen is the smaller of the two, with about 175 registered families, Hornat said. Its congregation trended older, but was enlivened by a handful of New American families with children.

"It was a very active parish," he said. "They were very much engaged in social outreach to the Winooski community."

The swift closure has left some longtime members feeling like their community has disintegrated overnight, music director Peg Lesage said.

"In the middle of this pandemic, it seems like one more blow," she said. "We can't even say goodbye the way we would normally say goodbye."

Lesage, who has attended St. Stephen since 1987, said the prospect of trying to join a new church while social gatherings are limited and mass-goers are masked feels daunting.

"It's hard to think about starting over," she said.

There are no immediate plans for the church property. The City of Winooski leases a portion of the land from the parish for the Winooski Senior Center, Lesage said.

McDermott said the pastor at St. Francis Xavier and Bishop Christopher Coyne will hear recommendations from parish members about how to dispose of it.

Last year, the diocese placed the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Burlington on the market for $8.5 million. The listing is still online.

Catholic church membership in Vermont has dropped from 142,000 in 1990 to 112,000 in 2019, the diocesan magazine reported. Annual infant baptisms have dropped by 80 percent. Funerals, meanwhile, are down just 12 percent.