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Dear Readers,

Last night, Amanda Janoo became Vermont’s Democratic nominee for governor. Supported by a grassroots team of volunteers and outspent two-to-one, Janoo was the clear underdog. But with a slim margin of 2,000 votes, the first-time candidate prevailed, and Vermonters showed the Democratic establishment that we, too, are ready for courageous change.

“We didn’t have the establishment or the support of big political kingmakers on our side,” Janoo said, after the AP called the race. “But we had something so much more powerful. We had you.”

Last week, I had the honor of introducing Janoo at a campaign event at the Tillerman Inn, just down the road from where we live in central Vermont. I’m sharing my remarks below, which capture the infusion of hope that Amanda’s campaign has spread across Vermont. Though we are small, we have always been a “brave little state”—a symbol of what’s possible when we lift each other up above the fray to see that another way, a more just and sustainable way, is possible.

I was first introduced to Amanda by our mutual friend Nadine, who’s been involved in the campaign since almost day one. (My husband also happened to be Amanda’s teacher twenty years ago on a study abroad program for Vermont high school students in the Indian Himalayas. A lovable trait of our little state to be sure: when you meet someone new, it doesn’t take long to unearth all sorts of undiscovered connections.)

Since then, I’ve gotten to know Amanda through her vision for governance. And I’ve been so utterly inspired that I’ve spent a lot of my summer canvassing, writing letters to the editor, asking others to write letters, distributing yard signs, and conducting late-night opposition research!

In short, Amanda has given me a re-invested sense in local politics. In what is possible here at home when we let ourselves long a little bit for the Vermont we want for ourselves and for future generations.

And that longing is what I want to talk about ever so briefly before we get Amanda up here!

A couple nights ago, my daughter and I saw the movie version of Hadestown. The Broadway musical—which was written by Anaïs Mitchell, who grew up right here in Addison County!— has a message that feels more vital than ever. There’s this one refrain that I keep coming back to. It’s about the young man Orpheus, who is writing a song to bring the world back into balance. And the refrain goes: “He could make you see how the world could be, in spite of the way that it is.”

And this, in a nutshell, is Amanda’s gift, too:

“She can make you see how the world could be, in spite of the way that it is.”

Just today, Amanda sent out a newsletter to supporters and volunteers, acknowledging what she called “one of the most saddening, politics-as-usual lines one hears on the campaign trail.” In response to the detailed, forward-thinking—POPULAR—policy plans she has laid out, she hears another kind of refrain: “But that will never pass.”

In other words, we preemptively shut down our own imagination for what’s possible. We bound our sense of possibility by only seeing what’s right before us. And what’s right before us right now is a deeply dysfunctional system, and a legacy of “business as usual.”

AND, it is tremendously difficult, and takes a whole lot of courage, to stick our necks out there and say, publicly, I believe in another way. Because part of the entrenched system that we are in is a knee-jerk response from even the well-intentioned and the like-minded to label any such belief as too naive, or too righteous, or too unrealistic.

BUT what we are seeing and experiencing in our country right now is a shift toward what Amanda is bringing into this barn tonight. Mamdani, and primaries in NY and CO and elsewhere, have shown that it is possible to orient our governance not toward what is politically popular, but what reflects what the populace—the people—need in order to live a meaningful life. And that kind of governance, and those policies, are exactly what Amanda’s vision is all about—a platform built on our right to healthcare and housing, and on our most precious assets: our communities and our children.

As a mother of two young daughters, I just have to say one more thing. Which is that they hear us griping a lot, and they hear us despairing. (And there is so much to despair about). But lately, they also hear me talking with excitement in my voice, and see me waving my Janoo signs on the street corner, sporting our pins and t-shirts. And I am so grateful for this. Grateful not only that our household is infused with a different kind of can-do energy. But also that Amanda has given me, and by extension, my girls, this example of courage. This example of sticking one’s neck out to say there is another way, come along, and we’ll find it together.

As Amanda said today in the close of her newsletter:

“In this moment of rising costs and authoritarianism we have the opportunity to show that another path forward is possible. That’s what this campaign is all about.”

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While out canvassing recently, I spoke to a lifelong Vermonter who said he hadn’t given much thought to the upcoming primary election on Aug. 11. It’s not that he doesn’t care, he explained, but he was too busy staying abreast of Washington politics.

I get it. I have this impulse, too: to train my attention on the biggest threat, especially when the stakes for our democracy feel so high. What’s more, the pervasive havoc of this presidency — the violence and destruction and cruelty of it — sets the beauty of a Vermont summer apart and makes it difficult to believe that anything we could do here in our brave little state has much bearing.

But what I’ve come to realize is that this redirection of our attention to national politics is a stolen sense of agency all its own: an imposed futility that is both dangerous and by design. This, too, is one of the tactics used by authoritarian governments attempting to amass their power. If they can keep the fires of destruction burning bright and broadly, our captivation with those blazes will blind us to our immediate surroundings. The gravity of elsewhere erodes our footing here, and without quite realizing it, and mostly unintentionally, we forfeit our own power.

The neighbor I talked to is right: The stakes for our democracy have never been so high. What we must do in the face of that threat is pay vigilant attention to its source and, just as importantly, reboot our agency here at home, beginning with voting in the upcoming primary.

President Trump’s tampering with the upcoming midterms has already begun. As the The New York Times recently put it, he “is trying to use the levers of the federal government, along with personal influence over state and local lawmakers, to reshape the rules governing the 2026 midterms and future elections in extraordinary ways.” And on July 16, in a prime-time address to the nation, Trump used the pulpit of the presidency to undermine Americans’ confidence in the election, spouting far-fetched claims that have been discredited time and again, creating a pretense, according to The Guardian, for denying the results in November.

Although his address did little to persuade even his Republican allies, Trump is wielding his influence wherever possible. He recently put presidential powers, newly expanded by the Supreme Court, to use by firing the Democratic members of the Election Assistance Commission. The federal commission, whose mission is, in part, to help Americans participate in the voting process, acts as a nonpartisan liaison between the federal government and the states, helping officials administer their elections by certifying voting machines and maintaining the national mail-voter registration forms, among other critical tasks. The two Democratic members Trump fired had “resisted his efforts to require would-be voters to document their U.S. citizenship before registering,” The Associated Press reported, a demand to address a virtually nonexistent problem.

For months, the administration has been laying the groundwork to control the outcome of the election, from stripping Black power from Southern states in midcycle redistricting, to executive orders to control the U.S. Postal Service’s delivery — or lack thereof — of mail-in ballots. But now, in the heat of summer, as Trump’s poll numbers plummet, the administration is attempting to strangle the voting process in increasingly desperate ways. The president has threatened to yank anti-terrorism funding from any state that refused to back his SAVE America Act, and the Department of Justice has sent letters to election officials in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., warning of criminal prosecution over noncitizens voting, despite an abundance of research demonstrating this to be a nonissue.

Looming largest of all is the surging presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement around the country, an ominous reminder of the administration’s power to reach far into state jurisdictions with its federal muscle and weapons. Agents detained three people in Middlebury on July 7, one from the parking lot of a dentist’s office, amid the new average of 2,000 daily arrests. Each of these detentions is a loved one disappeared from their family, their workplace, their neighborhood — a life exploded into disarray and devastation. Trump, unrestrained even after the killings in Texas and Maine, will continue to sow violence in our streets between now and November to intimidate voters into staying home.

If all this chaos is meant to deliver a message, it is this: We are in control, not you.

But here’s where our agency comes back to life: Our elections are not administered by Trump or the federal government. They are run by us. By Vermonters who answer only to their constituents and locally elected officials.

Our state’s elections are where we assert our commitment to the democratic process. Voting in the primary on Aug. 11 is a literal use of our voices, but it’s also a symbolic signal, a counter message to the federal government that we will not be silenced in November. Regardless of whether you vote Democratic or Republican, let’s show the country that we Vermonters take our constitutionally granted rights seriously.

Early and mail-in voting for the primary is already underway. You can check your voting status and request an absentee ballot by visiting the Vermont Voter Portal.

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Dear Friends,

Last week, we wrote about the shooting deaths of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastian Guerrero by ICE agents in Houston and Biddeford. At the time of our post, little had been released about Sebastian Guerrero. Now we know that he was the father of a three-year-old daughter. A daughter who witnessed her father dying in the street, and her mother wailing over his body. He was known as a devoted father and tireless worker, employed by Door Dash as a delivery driver and by a vet clinic as a late night cleaner. He was an immigrant who, according to Mufalo Chitam, director of the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, was working legally, having obtained a Social Security number and authorization to work under the Biden administration.

On Thursday, Johan’s wife, Karolina Rojas, spoke out for the first time. Holding back tears, she described Guerrero as “a hard worker devoted to his family,” who “always dreamed big… and worked so that his ‘Gordita,’ as he affectionately called his daughter, would never go without… He wanted to be there for every step his Gordita took.”

Disturbing details have since emerged about David Michael Brouillette, the 37 year old ICE agent who killed Johan, that include a history of racist beliefs, and allegations of violence against women, including against his two ex-wives, and allegedly throwing his 13-year-old daughter through a glass coffee table, bringing child protective services and the police to their home.

His ex-wife, Ashley Brouillette, told NPR that racism may have played a part in Durán Guerrero’s death: “His nickname in high school was ‘White Boy David,’ if that tells you anything.”

David Brouillette’s violent background has trained a new light on ICE’s hiring practices. In their desperation to meet Trump’s quotas, the agency is rushing the vetting process designed to prevent people like Brouillette from wielding weapons in our neighborhoods.

Demanding Justice:

On Saturday, July 25, hundreds of communities across the United States will hold vigils, protests, and demonstrations to demand justice for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Johan Sebastian Guerrero, and many more, like Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán, who have been killed because of the inhuman practices of CBP and ICE. Let’s ensure that Lorenzo’s and Johan’s killings do not fade from public attention. Let’s send a clear message that no government agency should be allowed to kill anyone, intimidate witnesses, or operate with impunity.

This day of non-violent action is being planned by volunteers and organizations nationwide, including the Disappeared in America Project. Find all events here.

Organizers demand:

1. Immediate Transparency: DHS must immediately release the key witnesses to Lorenzo’s death and halt their deportation proceedings so they can safely participate in any investigation and legal process.

2. Full, Independent Investigations: We demand a transparent investigation into these killings that includes cooperation from all law enforcement agencies and accountability for any officer found to have committed misconduct.

3. ICE Out!: We call on all state and local leaders to end the use of state resources to support federal immigration enforcement and remove ICE from our streets. DHS must remove all ICE agents from the streets and all cities and states must stop all coordination with ICE.

Braver Together ♡

Lorni and Liza

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A vote for Janoo is a vote for our young Vermonters, and the vitality of their future here in the Green Mountain State.

Nearly two thirds of young people in Vermont plan to leave the state within five years. That’s the latest finding out of UNH’s polling center—and a clear indictment of state leadership, which has failed to address Vermont’s affordability crisis in any meaningful way.

The trends have been worrisome for a while, and are getting worse. Skyrocketing costs of housing and healthcare have sent young people packing. As a result, our communities have withered and schools have begun to shutter.

We are writing (and voting) as two mothers raising our families in rural Vermont. In our eyes, the most important measure of Vermont’s vitality isn’t its natural beauty or even its town meetings, but whether or not our small towns have enough students to fill our beloved community schools. For us, Vermont’s future lies in whether or not our children—the next generation—will be able to afford to live here when they grow up.

Perhaps Phil Scott was the steady hand we needed during Covid. But after a decade in the Governor’s seat, he’s done little to assuage the pains of unaffordability—in fact, they have gotten much worse. With the August 11th primary around the corner, and the general election in November, Vermonters have the opportunity to elect a new governor who will do more than stand idly by.

A New Vision

We support Amanda Janoo for Governor because she is the candidate best equipped to address the root causes of Vermont’s affordability crisis. Born and raised in Strafford, Janoo cares deeply about thriving towns. She believes a different world is possible for our young people—one in which they have all they need to thrive right here at home. But her vision is not founded on a pipe dream. As an economist, Janoo sees clearly that we are living in a broken system that is not serving Vermonters, and proposes solutions as big as the problems we are facing. As an economist, her proposed solutions are based on practical, detailed policy.

Janoo also knows that the volatility in Washington, including Trump’s cancellation of federal funding intended for states, means that we need a blueprint for Vermont’s future that is shielded from national threats and pressures. She will prioritize strengthening our state’s rights, forming coalitions with neighboring states, decentralizing power and decision-making, and rejecting school consolidation. As a Vermonter, Janoo knows that even amidst today’s great challenges, our state wields the unique power of its small communities. And building an affordable future for those communities, she says, begins with tackling the root causes of housing and healthcare.

Homes Are for Vermonters to Live In

Vermont doesn’t have enough housing and the housing that is available is too expensive. For young people to afford to live here, we need to build more. But we also need to change the incentive structure so that those who are able to buy and build aren’t large investors and private equity firms, but young people, working families, and older Vermonters looking to age in place.

As an economist, Janoo knows that the long-promised prosperity of “trickle-down economics” has never benefited regular working people. Instead, her policies will increase both the housing stock and make homes more affordable for regular Vermonters. As Janoo explains, “Vermont’s housing crisis didn’t happen by chance. For decades, homes have been treated like investments rather than homes.” She proposes restrictions on investment from large out-of-state corporations. Additionally, homes that are vacant (23% at the last census!), speculative, or of very high-value would fall into a higher tax bracket. This tax revenue would flow into the Vermont Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which “supports Vermonters to buy and build houses, cooperatives, and community land trusts across the state, to ensure permanent affordability of housing now and for generations to come.”

Janoo understands that Vermont’s housing crisis needs more than simply building more homes—and she is unafraid to propose solutions that stand up to out-of-state corporate interests in order to truly protect the interests of Vermonters.

All Vermonters Deserve Free Primary Care

Vermont’s healthcare system is on the brink of collapse. We are witnessing this first hand as UVM Health—the primary provider of healthcare in our state—navigates a financial crisis. UVM Medical Center is losing $460K every single day and is seeking to recover $100 million annually from its budget over the next three years. Furthermore, Vermonters now have the infamy of paying the highest insurance premiums in the country, spending on average 20% of their income on healthcare. Janoo is proposing free primary care in Vermont, which would provide Vermonters with high-quality primary and preventative care at no cost to patients—no copays, deductibles, or insurance costs. The program would be funded through a fair-share income surcharge on Vermonters who earn more than $500,000 a year. This kind of free universal care would reduce overall healthcare costs by preventing ER visits and unnecessary hospitalizations, with projected savings of $250–300 million per year statewide. More importantly, it would reduce the burden of healthcare costs for regular Vermonters as well as small businesses that are currently struggling to cover insurance costs for employees.

Vermont’s deepening healthcare crisis is not going to go away by making incremental changes to a broken system—we need true leaders like Janoo who are willing to propose structural changes to a health network that simply isn’t working. Fixing our healthcare problem means our aging population will be well-cared for, young people will be able to live here, and small businesses and employers will have a path toward prosperity.

Courageous Change

What makes Amanda Janoo such an exceptional candidate is her ability to envision solutions that are built on what we love about Vermont. And this kind of leadership, which so many of us have been hungry for—for so long!—is drawing broad support, including from young people. As our 24-year-old friend, Jess Buxbaum, said recently:

Amanda Janoo says that “Vermonters deserve better than managed decline.” This is not a time to nibble at the edges of reform. It’s a time for brave solutions that will turn the tide of exodus. It is a time to stand up to big business and the federal government, and to challenge the status quo that has made Vermont so unaffordable to so many people who live here: the nurses and carpenters and farmers and teachers who make up our beloved communities—the neighbors who deliver our babies, build our homes, grow our food, and teach our children.

A vote for Janoo is a vote for our young Vermonters, and the vitality of their future here in the Green Mountain State.

See you at the polls on August 11th. (Visit the Vermont Voter Portal to request a mail-in ballot.)

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Jenny Bates is a mother and midwife. She lives in Lincoln, Vermont.

Liza Cochran is a mother, teacher, and writer. She lives in Lincoln, Vermont.

Dear Friends,

ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo last Tuesday. He was 52 years old, a Mexican immigrant, married with three U.S. born sons. His 35 years of living in Houston came to an end as he headed out on a regular work day, running his timber frame construction business.

According to the gofundme set up for Lorenzo’s family, Salgado Araujo was the kind of person who showed up—“for his family, for his friends, for his neighbors, and on every job he ever took.” At a packed vigil for him last week, Lorenzo’s son, Ronaldo Salgado, described how his father was always aware of how he might be judged for his dark dark skin but refused to let it define him: “He always said like, I’m not stupid. I’m a badass.”

A badass who liked to sing, dance and joke around, to sit on his porch after work, listen to music and pat his dog… a badass who celebrated birthdays, ate his favorite foods (chile rellenos, pozoles, and chilaquiles), and loved riding his John Deere lawnmower in the backyard of the house he built with his own hands… a badass who prided himself for a work ethic that allowed him to start his own company and put two of his sons through college (the University of Houston and Tufts University) and a third on his way to an engineering degree… a badass who was on track to obtain a work permit through the legal process.

Homeland Security has admitted that Salgado Araujo was not the target of their operation. They began following him and shot him in his van after they said he failed to stop. They claim he tried to use his vehicle as a weapon and that the agent fired in self-defense. Three of Araujo’s co-workers were riding in the van at the time. They say the officer was never threatened. They have been detained by ICE. Officers involved in the shooting were not wearing body cameras.

And now we have news that early yesterday morning, another ICE agent shot and killed 26-year-old Johan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine. Guerrero was from Colombia and was authorized to work in the U.S. He leaves behind a wife and a three-year-old daughter. In horrifyingly similar circumstances, Guerrero was on his way to work; following a traffic stop, he was shot through a car windshield. His wife and young daughter watched him die in the street. “I heard agony,” Mary Hayes told the New York Times, and described seeing “a screaming woman on her knees, next to a young girl. ‘I heard a howl that came from your soul, that your whole life had just changed and it was never going to be the same.’”

Once again, DHS claims that Guerrero attempted to flee the scene and that he weaponized his vehicle towards law enforcement. They say that the agent acted in the interests of public safety. Once again, ICE agents were not wearing body cameras. Once again, DHS has admitted that they were looking for someone else.

A Campaign of Terror

The anguish of losing a loved one in this way is unfathomable. Below, we have outlined how to support the Guerrero and Salgado Araujo families. It is also our responsibility to look at these murders through the wider lens of Trump’s ongoing effort to demonize immigrants and foment violence in our streets as he attempts to consolidate power.

Since Trump returned to office, federal immigration agents have shot at more than 20 people, nearly all of the victims in their cars. Some of the shootings have been fatal. Over the last two months, ICE activity and arrests have skyrocketed—a terror-inducing trend that has mostly managed to escape public purview. In a period of five days at the end of June, ICE officers arrested more than 10,000 people across the country. From Tuesday through Thursday of last week, ICE arrested more than 6,000 people—a pace of about 2,000 arrests a day.

The tempo of arrests as we head toward November’s midterms is no coincidence. According to Protect Democracy, one of the key characteristics of voter intimidation is increased ICE presence. In addition to utilizing such aggression as a mechanism of voter suppression, Trump’s mass deportations and violence toward immigrants fits the playbook used by want-to-be authoritarians around the world: ignite a base of nativist supporters by scapegoating immigrants.

Saying “NO MORE” Makes a Difference

Repudiation has been swift. Just hours after Guerrero was killed, protesters showed up en masse outside Susan Collins’s Biddeford office, demanding action from the Republican senator who cast the deciding vote to approve an additional $70 billion in federal funding for ICE.

Within 24 hours, the Trump administration ordered ICE to halt the majority of its vehicle stops, until further notice.

What We Can Do Now

(thanks to Rogan’s List and Jessica Craven)

1. Join the mass call TOMORROW at 8PM ET: Justice 4 Lorenzo & Johan Movement Call, “where we will gather in solidarity to hear from Lorenzo’s loved ones and local Maine groups, get updates about the cases, and learn how you can take action over the coming weeks to demand Justice. Sign up here.

2. Contribute to Lorenzo’s gofundme

3. Contribute to Johan’s gofund me

4. Donate to the Maine Solidarity Fund, an effort by frontline organizations in the state to pay bond, cover legal fees, and provide emergency support for those caught up in the deportation machine; or Project Relief Maine, a local mutual aid organization. We can give here and here.

5. Call Your Senators (find yours here) and Representatives (find yours here):

Hi, I’m a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is ______.

I am calling in response to the deaths of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo of Houston and Joan Sebastian Guerrero of Maine. They are 2 of the more than 20 people ICE has shot since September, nearly all of them in their cars. This has to stop! I want to know why these agents weren’t wearing body cameras after Congress has given them over 100B of our taxpayer dollars. I want to know why ICE agents aren’t being properly vetted, or receiving adequate training. I want to know why Republicans in Congress are OK with any of this, because it’s certainly not making us safer. People are being murdered on our streets. What is the Senator/Representative going to do about it?

Braver Together ♡

Lorni and Liza

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Trump will attempt to sabotage the midterms. We all know this to be fact. And yet one of the confounding characteristics of a country sliding toward fascism is that for many of us, our day-to-day lives feel relatively unaltered. We are still weeding the garden and dropping off our kids at camp; indulging in beach reads and ice cream cones; visiting family and hosting friends. What’s more, we are likely surrounded by people in our communities who aren’t yet taking this threat seriously. There is a certain toll this takes—the effort to constantly bring the world around us into coherence.

This post, then, is not about fear mongering or alarmist flame-fanning, but instead offers a hard look at Trump’s playbook, so we may respond in kind, together. As the good folks at Protect Democracy instruct us, it’s time to get into Election Protection Formation. We need to fly in synch against Trump’s plan by understanding:

1. What the Administration is attempting to do;

2. How to coalesce around our collective response (much of which will focus on local protection of our elections); and

3. The role each of us can play!

The outline below is taken directly (some of it word-for-word) from a conversation between Corey Dukes of Protect Democracy and Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, co-founders of Indivisible. We highly recommend listening to the interview in its entirety here.

We are sharing this framework in the hopes that it helps us to stay moving in alignment rather than feeling swallowed by overwhelm. The Administration will continue their firestorm of shenanigans, so our V-formation of geese migrating left will be key to weathering the maelstrom!

THE THREAT:

The election playbook we expect to see from the Trump Administration is made up of the same strategies we’ve seen from Day 1. What’s different this year is that every lever of federal power will be used to:

1. DECEIVE - They will supercharge lies and conspiracies and broadcast them out from the White House.

2. DISRUPT - They will deploy federal power against opponents and organizations they don’t like; they will use the threat of violence as a chilling effect to deter voting; they will manipulate rules to block eligible voters from casting a ballot.

3. DENY - They will use these tactics to create a pretense for the federal government to overturn results when their candidates lose.

There are countless examples of this play book in action; here are a few:

1. Stripping Black power from southern states in mid-cycle redistricting.

2. Proposed new rules for USPS and the related executive order (instead of a service provider, the USPS would function as a ballot distribution network that picks and chooses who gets to participate in elections).

3. President prioritizing the SAVE act (Trump knows that it won’t pass, but the Act’s failure provides a pretext for denying results).

WHY THESE EFFORTS WILL FAIL:

1. Our elections are run locally by individuals who do not answer to the federal government but who answer to their constituents and locally-elected officials.

2. The president is wildly unpopular. He’s running out of time to consolidate power across our decentralized system of elections.

3. We’re going to go out there and do something about it.

5 THINGS WE CAN DO:

1. Inoculate ourselves and those around us to the threat that we are facing. Make sure that we collectively understand the threat AND what our agency is against it. Read “The Many Ways Trump is Trying to Tip the Scales for the Midterms” in the New York Times. Share this BLV post with others:

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2. VOTE. Vote early, in person wherever possible. Make a plan and support others around you to do the same. Find out what your options are here.

3. Volunteer at the polls. Check out Power the Polls for volunteer opportunities near you. The most important thing we can do with our physical bodies right now is help protect the vote locally.

4. Know where your elected officials stand on this stuff, and how they’re planning to protect the vote. Write to them, show up at a Town Hall, get them to go on the record.

5. Organize within your communities. Mobilize others to help. This is an ALL-IN moment: We need labor, business, public health, faith communities, veterans, nonprofits, students, etc. to collectively acknowledge the risk and come together to counter it. This is the time for a broad coalition.

TO SUM UP… WHAT WE CAN DO NOW:

The most important action for all of us today is bringing ourselves into Election Protection Formation, aka coherence about the tremendous stakes of this election. Have a conversation with someone in your life about the threat we face, and the imperative for us all to act now. An easy in: Send a link to the podcast with Corey Dukes, and make a personal plea for them to listen.

Braver Together ♡

Liza and Lorni

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Dear Readers,

Summer is upon us. The long light of June promises backyards with friends and family, carefree summer evenings, and a change in routine that can rejuvenate our worn-down nervous systems. Taking a breath makes a lot of sense right now, but so does anticipating the upcoming elections! So, let’s do both: find that early June morning waiting with its birdsong and luminous light and listen for how it can summon a renewed sense of being a part of something big and important as we move, together, into election mode. And if the birds don’t do it, read this morning’s inspiring news of how the results of New York’s primaries demonstrate “voters’ hunger for insurgency over incumbency.”

As the indomitable reminds us:

Here’s what we can do:

1. Find your state’s primary election dates here. Request an mail-in ballot if needed—Vote.org is a good resource.

• Vermonters: Primary elections are August 11th. Will you be busy or out of town? You can vote early via mail or at your town clerk’s office. Request an absentee ballot online via the Vermont Voter Portal. Prefer paper? Download the early/absentee ballot request form and return it to your town clerk’s office. You can check the status of your ballot, including the date it was mailed to you, at the Vermont Voter Portal. Deadlines: Return your ballot to your town clerk’s office before the office closes on the day before the election or bring it to your polling place before 7 p.m. on Election Day. All requests for absentee ballots must be submitted by 5 p.m. or by the close of the town clerk’s office on the day before the election.

2. Track competitive races in the House and Senate and consider donating time or money to a race that matters.

3. Donate to and volunteer with grassroots political organizations that are working to help progressives and democrats win competitive elections:

• Swing Left

• Vote Forward

• Democracy Forward

• Black Voters Matter

• Fair Fight Action

• Texas Organizing Project

• Voto Latino

• FlipSeats.org

• States Win

4. Sign up to be a poll worker in November.

5. Keep your eye on the USPS’s plan to implement Trump’s executive order to send mail-in ballots only to voters on a federal list. The policy creates a new, regime-approved national eligible voter list and a series of last-minute mail-in ballot requirements that could disrupt voting all over the country.

Braver Together ♡

Lorni and Liza

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Dear Readers,

Welcome to Part 3 of this series!

Over the last few weeks, we’ve re-examined The Story of NOW and The Story of US, using a framework from the renowned organizer Marshall Ganz.

We humans look to stories to make meaning of our experience. Which has been nearly impossible amidst Trump’s “asteroid belt of provocation,” as put it recently. And that’s the intention: to drown us in outrage and panic to the point of story-making paralysis.

Our quest this past month has been to consciously step back far enough from the urgency deluge to see the bigger picture, to see how our individual efforts fit into a deeper sense of NOW and a broader sense of US.

I’ve saved the hardest for last it seems: SELF. How might I change my understanding—my story—of my own self, in order to continue this endurance sport of resisting?

*

Yesterday, the Times published The State of American Resistance Is Stronger Than You Think by Julia Angwin and . The authors, whose forthcoming book is On Courage: How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear, spent a year interviewing dissidents and activists around the globe. They were told again and again that:

From neighbors banding together in Minneapolis to New Haven’s pressure campaign against Avelo Airlines to underground networks of support for trans people, Angwin and Fields-Meyer cited the kind of sand-in-the-gears resistance that can—and has—slowed the fascist’s rampage. “Each is an example of a maneuver familiar to those who have fought tyranny abroad,” they reflected. And then Angwin and Fields-Meyer made an astute observation, one that aligns with Ganz’s Story of Us framework:

Marshall Ganz once wrote that “Social movements are often the ‘crucibles’ within which participants learn to tell new stories of self as we interact with other participants.”

Indeed, social movements are a novel geography for most of us, one in which we come into contact with people we wouldn’t know otherwise. They are also a habitat for longing. By definition, a tide of resistance is in opposition to one reality and in support of another.

“The things we want are transformative,” Rebecca Solnit wrote in A Field Guide to Getting Lost, “and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration—how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?”

A state of longing can feel like a ripped-away callous. What my heart wants is on display, even while the advent of that desired reality remains in doubt. And so there is, as Solnit describes, a feeling of sticking my head out “into unknown territory”—like I’m shedding my old skin without knowing what will flourish in its place.

My story of self within this movement, then, has meant finding others with whom I can hold a shared vision—with whom I can long alongside. And it has been the continuous lesson that I am one among many. The autonomy that I’ve been conditioned to prize gets me nowhere; the handful of sand that I alone can pick up is not enough to gum up the gears…. but many hands make mountains.

“Resistance starts with a decision that is as much spiritual as it is political,” Angwin and Fields-Meyer wrote. “What is needed now isn’t just an action checklist, but a new orientation—a posture for daily life. The people who survive political repression, and the movements that protect democratic institutions, are those able to redefine who they mean by ‘we.’.. ‘A key piece of fighting against authoritarianism is asking the question, What more can we do for each other?’”

Redefining “we” means redefining “me”—the self—to be more inclusive, to be more expansive. As Valarie Kaur wrote in See No Stranger, “When we choose to wonder about people we don’t know, when we imagine their lives and listen for their stories, we begin to expand the circle of those we see as part of us. We prepare ourselves to love beyond what evolution requires.”

*

To be curious about our own Story of SELF is, at its core, a form of self love. In doing so, we are bearing witness to our own struggle, and making meaning along the way. As Audre Lorde once wrote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

So, dear readers, I’m writing with an *INVITATION* to answer the following questions in the comments:

1. What sustains YOU in this movement work, when actions don’t?

2. What have you learned about yourself being in this movement? What are your “new stories of SELF”?

Leave a comment

Braver Together ♡

Liza

Dear Readers,

Welcome to Part 2 of this series.

Last week, in our post Re-examining the story of NOW, we introduced a framework from legendary organizer Marshall Ganz, and asked this question: What can Ganz teach us at a time when there is not too little urgency, but too much?

The cliff notes

At its core, Part 1 was about our perception of time—specifically, the depth of time.

The feeling of NOW is usually held in our bodies as urgency, which is a useful engine when we need to act, but not a sustainable state for our nervous systems longterm. And here we are nearly 500 days into Trump’s second term.

Can we change how we relate to NOW so that it instead encompasses a sweeping history, and a sense of the ever-growing body of people rising up? Can we reconfigure our conception of this moment, so that we feel the long river of time leading to NOW? So that its urgency feels radiant rather than panicky?

(Even if you don’t go back and read Part 1, take a quick gander at Ganz’s three circles that make up what he calls The Power of Story.)

Part 2: Re-examining the story of US

If Part 1 was about understanding NOW through the depth of time, Part 2 is about understanding US through the breadth of identity.

How can we hold ourselves as more expansive and more collective than our most American metric: the singular “I”? How can our concepts of success shift toward the collective rather than what we each accomplish alone?

In her new book, Climate Wayfinding, Katharine Wilkinson writes about the peril of going it alone. Although her focus is the climate crisis, the same applies to this wider political movement:

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And yet, most of us have been conditioned our whole lives to focus intently on the entity of self—on our singular, personal achievement and identity. What’s more, as Francis Weller writes in his book In the Absence of the Ordinary, “the self is experienced as insular, interior, segregated, and partitioned off from others in the world. Matters of boundaries and individuation abound. Specialness, mastery, and self-improvement flood the psychological landscape.”

In short, Weller explains, we “have been reduced to trying to keep ourselves afloat in the boat of self.”

Dear readers, how do we work against our socialization? As if channeling Ganz, Wilkinson explains that the “lionization of individuals, however visionary and bold, veils the collaboration and collectives that are the fuller, truer story. That fuller, truer story is one we need right now. We need a story of our possibility, a story of us.”

So let’s retrain our brains to consider ourselves collectively!

1. Bring to mind metaphors that embody a wider conception of self. Wilkinson writes about each of us being “a node of possibility for healing the climate crisis—whoever we are and whatever we’ve got to give.” She explains that in mycology, nodes are “the points of intersection in an underground mycelial network, where the fungal web grows stronger for its crossings and connections.” There are so many examples from the more-than-human world of cooperative life. This is how we humans are meant to live, too.

2. Seek out communal resistance. Last month, when I asked Anaïs Mitchell about her motivation for singing at an ICE protest, she talked about the power of “communal expression of resistance.” She wasn’t showing up to sing alone, but to be a part of a larger body of singers: the collective we. Sure, more people are more effective with their power pooled, but at the heart of this notion is the creation of a new reality by that communal act. What we’re fighting to bring about is manifesting right here in the gathering voices, amongst and between us. US!

3. See one another as a part of ourselves. “You are a part of me I do not yet know,” Valarie Kaur wrote in See No Stranger. It’s that simple. And that extraordinary.

4. Create “rooms” for gathering, from living rooms to church basements, public parks to classrooms, front stoops to summer porches. “Without places to metabolize what we are witnessing and reimagine what’s possible, the draw to disengage swells,” Wilkinson wrote recently in an essay in . “We need spaces where people can gather to grapple with fear, share grief, test ideas, build trust, and stoke courage. Such rooms are not peripheral to social change. They are its heart.”

The story of US asks each of us to find people with whom we are walking this path, people we want to keep walking beside into the unknown. People who we organize with, who we sing with, who we protest with, who we grieve with, and who we hope with. “Participating in a social action not only often involves a rearticulation of one’s story of self, us, and now,” Ganz wrote, “but marks an entry into a world of uncertainty so daunting that access to sources of hope is essential.”

“If the future lives anywhere,” Wilkinson wrote, “it must be within and between us.”

Part 3 (SELF) coming your way soon. In the meantime…

Election season is here

The midterms are five months from today! Change is on the horizon! Do you know when primaries are in your state? How to vote early or request a mail-in ballot? The League of Women Voters has a great resource to answer those questions and more. Click here: Vote 411 🌊🌊🌊

Braver Together ♡

Liza

Consider this post a gateway into a summer of gathering momentum. At this gate, this checkpoint, we’re putting two fingers on our wrist and measuring our pulse. And what I suspect many of us are finding—those of us a step or three removed from Trump’s torment—is a a combination of two things:

1. A frenetic to-do energy as spring picks up speed and the season of light extends on the horizon.

2. A degree of disassociation from the national crisis, a numbness or exhaustion or despondency that has taken root over the last 492 days. And like the most insidious weed in your spring garden, it’s established itself so slowly that you didn’t quite notice it was there until it had pervaded every last fertile inch.

Hold that pulse check—we’ll come back to it—and let’s turn to a framework from a legendary organizer and the brain behind Obama’s grassroots 2008 presidential campaign, Marshall Ganz.

SELF • US • NOW

Long before I was involved in organizing, myself, I was teaching writing, including as a teaching fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. And through a colleague (!), I was introduced to Ganz’s public narrative course, and the concept of three circles that I now pass on to my writing students, and use as a reminder-to-self to expand one’s own story beyond one’s own naval:

In case there are any Ganz disciples reading, I admit I’ve never taken the course, and that I’ve fallen in love with his framework designed for public narrative and applied it to memoir and creative nonfiction genres. But I think the concept still holds water. Here’s how I’ve explained it to my students:

In this way, as writers of personal narrative, we are almost always starting with the “self,” and moving our drafts toward widening circles of “us” and “now,” discovering along the way how our own experiences fit into a much lager map—a map that includes the reader:

But lately, wrestling with my own sense of overwhelm and futility in the face of our governance, I’ve returned to Ganz’s circles not as a writer, but as an organizer. At its core—and at the core of Ganz’s work, I believe—is the art of making the important feel urgent. Which would normally be a wholly useful concept for someone trying to mobilize community members into social and political action. But these are clearly not normal times. In fact, it feels like an infusion of urgency is the opposite of what we need.

Let’s return to our pulse.

I suspect that part of the reason dispirited apathy has taken root in your garden and in mine is because the feeling of urgency has been coursing through our bodies for 492 days. We’ve been inundated by persistent, daily evidence that things have gone terribly amok. We are drowning in urgency, by the grave need to curtail every goddam thing Trump is doing every goddam day. And our bodies—our animal bodies with their primal responses to threat—are reacting in kind:

• Our muscles tense

• Our hearts pound faster

• Our breathing accelerates

• Our blood pressure surges

• Even our eyesight sharpens

So what can Ganz, this grandfather of social organizing, teach us at a time when there is not too little urgency, but too much?!

“Movements tell stories,” Ganz once said, “because they are not just about rearranging economics and politics. They also rearrange meaning.” My conundrum: How can I rearrange the meaning of these circles so that urgency is not the endgame? What happens when we change the sequence so that rather than starting with SELF, we start with what we already have, which is the abundant urgency of NOW?

The question then becomes:

If the urgency of NOW is a given, how can we hold that sensation—that state—in our bodies in a way that is sustainable? And: what do US and SELF have to do with this enduring capacity?

Expanding our concept of NOW.

When our nervous system is in a state of heightened urgency, it can be difficult to step back far enough to see the sweep of how NOW arrived. Flooded with fight or flight hormones, our pupils are literally dilating to sharpen our visual focus and clarity. We are programed to take in our immediate surroundings to see the lion lurking or the boulder barreling our way. When ICE is at our car window—as I wrote about in Feb—this survival mode makes sense. But we can’t remain in fight or flight continuously. And so we need to consciously expand our concept of NOW by stepping back far enough to get a bird’s eye view—to see this moment as part of a longer, larger narrative. Rebecca Solnit is masterful at this; her new book The Beginning Comes After the End widens the viewfinder on our present political debacle. Here’s ’s excellent summary:

“The Beginning Comes After the End begins by situating our current period of what political scientists call ‘democratic backsliding’ within the context of tremendous social and political progress. The cornerstone of this analysis is the idea embodied in a quote by Antonio Gramsci that some of you are surely familiar with: ‘The old world is dying. The new is slow in appearing. In this light and shadow, monsters arise.’ The national (and indeed, global) resurgence of authoritarianism and its corresponding destruction of laws, norms, and institutions should be understood, according to Solnit, not as the failure of progress but as a retaliatory backlash to progress. For the past year, it has been easy to focus on shadows rather than the light, because in a world of ever-multiplying monsters, sometimes defense is our only option. But Solnit’s characteristically undulating thesis is that, if we step back and look for it, evidence that we are living through a period of tremendous progress is all around.”

By widening that lens, we can see the larger arc of momentum, and feel ourselves moving rather than locked in place—or worse, regressing. That is, we can sense how far we’ve come.

’ recent essay “It is important to remember that we are winning” also offers an expanded version of NOW. “Readers, I understand if nothing about this moment feels victorious,” Bucks begins… “But we are winning.”

Bucks contrasts an autocrat’s blueprint for submission with metrics that remind readers just how effective we’ve already been in staunching Trump’s strongman tactics:

Through collective action and agitation, we continue to reveal that this Emperor is as naked as they come. Even the most callous dictators require a popular base for their dirty tricks. Every strongman’s hope is that, over time, their opposition will become more demoralized and less willing to take to the streets. It matters then that Trump is historically unpopular. It matters that Republicans keep losing elections. It matters not only that anti-Trump protests continue to grow larger, but that the thousands of actions on May Day showcased an increased tactical sophistication.

“We are better at countering fascism than we were even a year ago. Yes, they have the guns, but the guns only work if every time you fire them, they’re met primarily by cheers, apathy and cowardice. How incredible that, up to this point, we’ve robbed this administration of that depraved, humanity-destroying luxury.”

Take that pulse again.

What do you find when your concept of NOW encompasses a sweeping history? When the urgency of the moment is framed within this perspective of backlash? Or within the context of an ever-growing body of people rising up? Does this shift in concept also shift the feeling in your body?

Returning to Ganz’s circles has “rearranged” the story of 2026 for me, and I hope you feel some of that, too. But, dear readers, we’re only one circle in! I’m excited to share Parts 2 and 3 (US and SELF) with you soon, which each have bearing on our understanding of urgency, and are integral parts of this story-in-the-making. In the meantime, it’s spring recess for congress… which means our representatives are home: let’s give them an earful!

What we can do now: attend a town hall.

Congress is on recess until the beginning of June—but this is no time for vacation. 5 Calls makes it easy to hold our senators and reps accountable: check it out.

Braver Together ♡

Liza

Ps- You can now read Part Two: Re-examining the Story of US.

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This post is an invitation from me (Liza) to subscribe to my new Substack Ordinary Animal.

Two years ago, I set out to write a book that illuminates the magnificence of our non-human neighbors, the many perils they face, and the transformative lessons we can learn from them. The act of writing has always helped me cut through the numbness inflicted by enormity—in this case the head-spinning scale of climate change. I hoped (and still do) that readers will have a similar experience perusing the pages of my book-to-be. Perhaps we can open our eyes, together, to the life of a mother moose or wandering wolverine or spawning cutthroat trout, even when it’s too daunting to look directly at our own predicament.

Ordinary Animal is an extended invitation for us to free ourselves from what the Alaskan author and wildlife photographer Seth Kantner calls “the terrible loneliness of a one-creature world.” And it is a summons to look anew at our own animal selves, and feel more fully our abundance of grief and love and longing at this fraught moment.

More personally, I am grappling in these pages as a mother, and as a descendent of an oil baron-turned-conservationist. I want to answer a question that has consumed me since I first imagined having kids of my own: Knowing that their most enduring inheritance will be a warming planet, what else do I want to pass on to my daughters?

To ‘mother,’ IMANI PERRY wrote, “is to tend, to study, to nurture, and to hand over our most precious inheritance.”

These words represent my effort to notice that “most precious inheritance” all around us. And then to offer my daughters a wider lens than our habitual human-centered one, a kind of kinship or curiosity to see ourselves in the grace and struggle of the bear and beaver and chickadee. And—I hope—an overwhelming sense of belonging to the world that may serve as ballast as the going gets tougher.

The book is half done. I can almost see the finish line on the 2027 horizon. Come on over and visit its new home, where you can read an excerpt about that mother moose.

Ordinary Animal

♡ Liza

Those of you who have followed Brave Little Voices over the last year know the story of Mohsen Mahdawi. A few days ago, the US Board of Immigration Appeals reinstated ⁠Mahdawi’s deportation proceedings. Please sign this petition to halt his deportation.

In Short:

On April 14, 2025, Mahdawi, who grew up in the West Bank and is now a permanent resident of White River Junction, was arrested by masked agents when he showed up for his citizenship test at the Colchester courthouse.

In Mohsen Mahdawi v. Donald J. Trump, et al., the Government argued that when Mahdawi was a student at Columbia, his advocacy for Palestinian rights was a threat to the peace process in the Middle East. On the contrary, U.S. District Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford determined that Mahdawi’s release would benefit his community, “which appears to deeply cherish and value him.” More than 125 neighbors, friends, and professors submitted letters on Mahdawi’s behalf, Judge Crawford explained, attesting to his “commitment to principles of nonviolence.”

On April 30, 2025, Judge Crawford determined that Mahdawi’s detention was nothing more than retaliation for constitutionally protected speech. “Even another day of detention is not to be tolerated,” Crawford said. When Mahdawi emerged from the courthouse, he did so with a calm, radiant smile, and his arms up in the sky, imparting his trademark peace symbols. “I’ve always learned that home is where you feel safe and loved, and those who surround you there are your people,” he told the crowd. “You are my people.”

Over the following months, the Government pressed on with deportation procedures, until this past February when immigration judge Nina Froes blocked the Administration’s efforts to deport Mahdawi.

Last month, the Trump administration fired Judge Froes.

And just a few days ago, Al Jazeera reported that the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned Froes’s decision and reinstated ⁠Mahdawi’s deportation proceedings.

What Can We Do?

Please sign this petition to halt Mahdawi’s deportation.

Brave Little Voices Archive: Mohsen Mahdawi

• March for Mohsen

• Mohsen is Free!

• Reflections on Our Brave Little State (a conversation between Mahdawi and on The Vermont Conversation. They had a second conversation on the podcast a year later.)

• “Stay busy with beauty”

Braver Together ♡

Lorni and Liza

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Here’s an important fact: Nearly all of Vermont lies within 100 miles of the Canadian border. As such, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has jurisdiction to operate along every road and river, and in every town and city, across our small state. As such, CBP works closely with ICE to round up our neighbors.

Since January 1, 2025, CBP agents in Vermont have detained 929 immigrants and deported 418 immigrants. In 2025, CBP was responsible for over half the detentions in our state.

“Stay busy with beauty as well as outrage.”

That’s how Anaïs Mitchell answered a question I posed to her recently about the power of song to nurture social change. “I remember going to demonstrations when I was young and noticing how expressions of beauty spoke just as loudly as expressions of outrage,” she said. “Both are valid but music and art have a way of saying ‘Listen, look, it could be like this instead!’ That’s been a life lesson of sorts.”

For Mitchell, a renowned musician and playwright, song has been woven into her sense of justice since childhood. But for me, well… I’m a latecomer to this party.

The first time I experienced song as a form of resistance was last spring, on a bright, brisk day outside Burlington’s federal courthouse. A couple hundred of us were gathered there for Mohsen Mahdawi’s hearing. Two weeks earlier, Mahdawi, a peace activist and permanent resident of White River Junction, had arrived for his citizenship exam in Colchester only to be arrested by masked agents. Since then, ICE had been holding him in a cell at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans. He was never charged with a crime.

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At the court house on Elmwood Ave, we stood in a loose cluster around the front entrance, awaiting the judge’s decision. Leaders from an alliance of nonprofits and student groups spoke on behalf of Mahdawi. Posters and banners and Palestinian flags danced above the scrum. The April sunshine felt glorious (it always does in Vermont), but unease stirred through the crowd. Inside, we knew a federal judge was deliberating. The decision he was set to hand down that day seemed like a bellwether for the country over. Were we really going to allow masked thugs to snatch our peaceful neighbors off the street and shove them into unmarked cars? Was this who we had become?

Enter Joanna Colwell and Grace Oedel, two local song leaders. As the speakers finished their remarks and the breeze picked up, it would have been easy for the crowd to deflate, for people to grow tired of waiting for who knows how long. But Colwell and Oedel began to fill the space with song, teaching us through call-and-response a bevy of tunes—some old, some newly written for this moment of state-sanctioned violence.

As we sang, our nerves metamorphosed. Regardless of the day’s outcome, there was a feeling of something being created that could not be taken away. And that something was fellowship—all of us there together, held in the common cadence of song. Thanks to Colwell and Oedel’s invitation, we had created what Oedel recently referred to as a “pop-up community” sung into being.

I’d been part of plenty of protests before, when chants and songs were yelled amongst marchers. But this felt different. We were singing to the courthouse, hoping that those inside, maybe even Mahdawi himself, could hear us. And the message we were imparting was one of hope and love.

This was the first time I met Colwell and Oedel, women whom I now know as friends. All these months later, what stands out to me still is their luminous faces. As they sang amidst the darkness that had brought us together, and amidst the stakes that felt so very high that day, they smiled. And we smiled back.

SONG AS ANTIDOTE

“It’s really dramatic how in a tense situation, a song completely transforms the environment,” Colwell reflected recently, “including our inner environment.” Even in the throes of chaos, or police presence, or imminent arrest, as soon as someone starts singing, everything changes. “Before long, everyone is singing,” she explained. “And then we’re all breathing together.”

Singing calms our nervous systems. And that calm travels outward like the ripples of a de-escalation stone tossed into the center of a pond—or protest. For this reason alone, it’s no wonder that song has always been a part of social movements: from Civil Rights anthems to anti-war hymns; from the student-led Otpor Resistance in Serbia to the singing revolution of the Baltic States. Songs keep the calm.

They also help us to carry on.

After Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed, when thousands of immigrant families in Minnesota hid in their homes, a new chorus of the age-old singing resistance rose up—from the ebullient “It’s Okay to Change Your Mind” sung to ICE agents to the solemn “Hold On” sung to locked-down neighbors (you can learn about the song’s Vermont roots on Rumble Strip). In recent months, the movement has swelled into a massive nation-wide ensemble. Singing Resistance is “building a mass movement of singers to protect and care for our communities in the face of rising authoritarianism,” the coalition explains. “We sing because song is an antidote to fear.”

And here lies the movement’s sustaining power—to “sing not only for the world we want to create, but to create that world right here and now.” Listen, look, it could be like this instead. Or, as Alice Walker once said: “Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming.”

SINGING “NO MORE” TO ICE + CBP

Next Friday, on May 8th, thousands of Vermonters will gather in St. Albans to say “No More!” to ICE’s inhumane and unconstitutional actions. Hosted by ICE Out Vermont Alliance, the day’s demonstration will have two parts. First, we’ll convene at noon at Taylor Park in downtown St. Albans for a large, legal, and peaceful demonstration with speakers (including Lincoln’s beloved pastor Co’Relous Bryant), Bread & Puppet, and 1,000 singers. Next, there will be a non-violent sit-in at the nearby Customs and Border Patrol offices (participation limited to affinity groups that have attended the required training).

Singers from all over Vermont are converging to take part in the demonstration at Taylor Park, and we hope you’ll come, too—to sing or cheer or listen. With our crooning ancestors at our backs, we’ll be raising our chorus of voices to:

1) Put pressure on ICE to change their practices of arresting and detaining immigrants; and 2) Raise public awareness about ICE’s illegal practices in Vermont and nationwide.

If you are interested in joining us in song, we would love to have you. Please know that:

1. You don’t need to “be a singer”! (I’ve never thought of myself as a singer, but have been singing with abandon at protests this past year.)

2. The song leaders will teach the songs as we go.

3. Please arrive at Taylor Park at 11:30.

4. All are welcome.

When I asked Anaïs Mitchell, who will take part in the singing on May 8th, why she’s going to St. Albans, she talked about the courage of Minnesota. “I was so inspired by the brave resistance to ICE in Minneapolis, especially the clips I saw of folks singing together. I want to be part of this beautiful, creative, communal expression of resistance in my home state of Vermont!”

And these (soon to be) Green Mountains are still home to Mohsen Mahdawi, too. He was released that day last spring, into the singing crowd that was waiting for him outside the courthouse. He said he could, indeed, hear the songs drifting in—perhaps someone had opened a window to let in the April air. Free at last, he requested one of his favorites, “We Shall Overcome,” and lifted his voice along with ours.

Let’s sing together this spring, too, dear Vermonters. We hope to see you in St. Albans.

Braver Together ♡

Liza and Lorni

New here? Welcome! You can read more about what we’re up to in this post. As Calvin Coolidge once said, “If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”

A short post today to remind you that May Day action is coming up in just a couple of days. If you’re looking for an opportunity to once again refuse to be silent in these turbulent times, here’s your chance.

This Friday, May 1st, May Day Strong events are being planned across the US, with organizers calling for “no school, no work, no shopping.” Workers, students, and families across America will rally to demand that our country put workers’ needs above billionaires’. By disrupting business as usual, work stoppages, school walkouts, and economic shutdowns are powerful ways to demand change—and that’s what May Day this year is all about. Let’s join this tradition of non-violent resistance!

1. Find a rally in your neighborhood here >> You can view the map of existing actions here <<

2. Stay home from work and school and avoid shopping on Friday to support the labor unions, democratic organizations and community groups who are organizing this economic blackout.

3. If you are an essential worker, you can lift up this day with your voice—talk about it with your colleagues, customers, clients, patients, friends, family members, neighbors, and acquaintances. Lend your voice instead of your silence.

4. Vermonters: Join Rights and Democracy Vermont as they stand with Migrant Justice for a rally and march in Williston from 3pm - 5pm on Friday.

Braver Together ♡

Liza and Lorni

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New here? Welcome! You can read more about what we’re up to in this post. As Calvin Coolidge once said, “If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”

A few months ago, the poet Jane Hirshfield wrote an essay on humility. She observed how Qing-dynasty paintings often depict a very small person walking amongst the largeness of a landscape. “Almost always, their figures are low, diminutive, off to the side,” she wrote. “In robes the same color as the mountains they travel, they seem often almost transparent, and must be searched for.”

Can you spot the human here?

“The person is present,” Hirshfield wrote, “but not what is most important. The paintings’ protagonists are mountain, river, rock-face, tree. The painting then can become—in part, this is not its meaning’s entirety—an invitation to one form of humility: the experience of one’s own smallness as part of and continuous with existence’s vastness.”

Back in the late 1800’s, John Muir noted in his journal a similar sentiment of vastness, inspired by a similar doorway. “The clearest way into the Universe,” he wrote, “is through a forest wilderness.”

The forest gives us the gift of our smallness.

Within a tapestry so much larger than ourselves, we find relief in our own insignificance. The pressure deflates. “For the viewer entering the painting,” Hirshfield writes, “ego and self-importance step back. Individual, transient human life joins the assembly of rocks and trees, heights and gullies, racing waters, all infused with their own aliveness, and the heart-mind unclenches.”

In Hirshfield’s musings, the message isn’t that we are lost amongst the giants, but a part of something larger; to be in a forest offers a sense of belonging. “The mountains’ steepness isn’t threat, hardship, or danger,” she writes. “The traveler’s recognized vulnerability and transience aren’t reasons to fear or grieve. This is simply the world as it is: an immensity we are part of; a limitlessness we are able, for one quick lifetime, to see, to walk.”

Ecologists talk about the state of flux of a forest as “successional”—the continual process of regrowth as sections of forest fall due to disturbances like wind or fire or chainsaws. In the newly sun-filled space, grasses and wildflowers prosper, followed by shrubs a few years later, next small trees, and eventually a mature forest. In her new book, The Beginning Comes After the End, Rebecca Solnit describes it like this: “The generative and entropic energies of forests and the inseparability of the two—or three: birth, death, and reincarnation into other life—are present in every forest.”

To be in a forest is to understand ourselves as successional, too: our lives giving way not to death, but to more life.

A few weeks ago, the Trump Administration announced that it would soon dismantle the Forest Service as we know it. This word—dismantling—has lost its power for me over the last year. From USAID to SNAP to healthcare to democracy itself, I have become almost inured to the brutality this term evokes. This description from Jim and Will Pattiz’s newsletter renders this destruction more vividly:

“They’re ripping the headquarters out of Washington and shipping it to Salt Lake City, Utah — the beating heart of the anti-public-lands movement in America. They’re shuttering every single one of the nine regional offices that have governed this agency since Gifford Pinchot built the system over a century ago — and with them, the career professionals who spent entire lifetimes earning the expertise and the authority to push back when politicians came calling with bad ideas and worse motives. They’re destroying more than fifty research facilities across thirty-one states, labs that house decades of irreplaceable long-term science, the kind you literally cannot restart once it’s gone. And they’re replacing all of it — the offices, the scientists, the institutional knowledge, the professional independence — with fifteen political appointees called “state directors,” embedded in state capitals alongside the very governors, legislators, and industry lobbyists who have spent their careers demanding that the Forest Service log more, protect less, and get out of the way.

“One hundred and ninety-three million acres of your national forests. An area larger than Texas. The largest public land agency in the country. Just handed, on a silver platter, to the people who’ve spent their entire careers trying to destroy it.”

Fucking hell.

While the Forest Service has, from its earliest days, managed land with an eye toward resource extraction (Bill McKibben’s excellent essay in The New Yorker details some of this history), it has also, from its earliest days, had an eye toward future generations. Like so many of Trump’s acts of violence, the gutting of this agency is far ranging not only in scope, but in future impact. With this “reorganization,” Trump is setting aflame the climate my young daughters will live in half a century from now, and quite literally axing the ethos of succession that I most want them to live by—an experience of the forest not as an “escape” for us humans so much as a restoration of scale.

And yet, like so many of Trump’s acts of violence, this one has been pushed off most of our radars by the day’s devastating news. Like the dismantling of the Clean Air Act, this destruction is more abstract than fighter jets ripping across the skies of Iran. This kind of dismantling entails a special kind of forward-leaning. The privatization of the air and water, the forests and bedrock, will irrevocably change the lives of our children’s children. The bruises from Trump’s blows today won’t appear for decades.

Because Trump is not only dismantling the forest (our largest and most effective water and air purification system and CO2 sink ), he is dismantling science. As McKibben explains, the ‘reorganization’ involves “the ceasing of most of the experimental-forest research and closure of the research stations in the U.S.F.S. network. These are the sites of experiments that can reach back for decades; since trees, by definition, take a fairly long time to grow, that span allows scientists to understand how forests develop and to look for the changes that a warming climate is producing.” When I asked a dear friend the other day why she has dedicated her career to working for the Forest Service, she explained that she wants to do the “incremental, gritty, and often unflashy science that grounds stewardship of our public land.” Her research is part of ensuring that the forests are “being managed for the future as well as the needs of the public today.”

This winter the Western U.S. experienced the hottest temperatures and the smallest snowpacks ever recorded. Under normal circumstances it would be hard to imagine a federal government deciding to undermine the very agency monitoring something so unprecedented. (Significantly, this winter’s historic warming took place in the part of the country that has, by far, the most lands under U.S. Forest Service jurisdiction.) But these are not “normal circumstances.” As we know only too well, the Trump administration’s and the Republican Party’s lies about climate change include denying that wildfire danger has been unequivocally linked to record temperature and prolonged drought. As a result, the administration is plowing ahead with a federal plan that, at its very heart, is designed to threaten the science that looks at how wildfires, droughts, pests, and warming are affecting our forests.

What we can do

Let’s call Congress and let them know that Trump’s dismantling of the Forest Service is unacceptable. Find your Senators’ numbers here. Vermonters: Senator Peter Welch: 802-863-2525; Senator Bernie Sanders: 802-862-0697. Find your Representatives in Congress numbers here. Vermonters, call Representative Becca Balint at 802-652-2450.

Here’s a sample script:

Hi, my name is [NAME] and I’m a constituent from [town].

I’m calling to express my concern about the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle the Forest Service. The massive “reorganization” of the agency calls for closing and consolidating offices and research facilities, ceasing experimental research forests decades in the making, moving the agency’s headquarters, and requiring hundreds of employees to upend careers or move to other states. I am concerned that these changes will weaken the agency’s capacity to monitor and address the impact of climate change on our forests.

Also, I would like to know if the restructuring is actually legal. It’s my understanding that the fiscal year 2026 budget stipulates that funding for an agency cannot be put towards reprogramming that “relocates an office or employees” or “reorganizes or renames offices, programs, or activities.” Has the Senator/Representative looked into this?

Our representatives in Congress have a responsibility to act as stewards for our public lands—now and for the future. With this in mind, I ask that Senator [NAME] / Representative [NAME] speak up loudly in opposition to the administration’s plans to reorganize the U.S. Forest Service.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

IF LEAVING VOICEMAIL: Please leave your full street address to ensure your call is tallied.

Braver Together ♡

Liza and Lorni

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New here? Welcome! You can read more about what we’re up to in this post. As Calvin Coolidge once said, “If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”

Nearly a month ago, in a case of mistaken identity, ICE agents chased an innocent man through the residential streets of South Burlington, Vermont. They followed him to a nearby home, which soon became encircled by concerned neighbors, and paced the property for close to 10 hours while awaiting a federal warrant to break down the door. Throughout the day, hundreds of Vermonters gathered in the cold rain to bear witness to what they sensed was an illegal operation. They knew that the people in the house (three adults, a teenager, and a child) were not the man the agents sought.

As evening fell, ICE returned with their warrant. Aided by dozens of Vermont state troopers in tactical gear, the agents pushed through protestors, rammed the door in, and detained the three adults inside.

Here in Vermont, it is clear that this raid was a massive fuck-up by ICE. What remains unresolved is the state’s involvement. Did VT law enforcement violate the Fair and Impartial Policing policy? Did they use excessive force? Witnesses to the raid say, overwhelmingly, YES. And yet in the month since, the State’s public safety leadership has discounted the experiences of protesters, while privileging the accounts given by law enforcement.

Below is my open letter to Governor Phil Scott, published today in our local paper, The Addison Independent.

Dear Governor Scott,

By now I’m sure you’ve heard about the two and a half hours of testimony given at the State House last Tuesday night. How Vermonters packed the House Chamber to convey their concerns about the March 11th ICE raid in South Burlington. How Jess Shapiro, who works on Dorset Street, recounted being choked by a Vermont state police officer to the point of unconsciousness. How Pearl Benjamin, a farm worker from Burlington, recalled being thrown down the house’s front steps by another trooper. How Cora Honigford, a certified EMT, volunteered as a medic to help injured protesters after police left the scene. And how countless witnesses described the brutality used by Vermont’s law enforcement and the astonishing dearth of de-escalation tools. “If the only thing that you have is a hammer,” testified Cynthia Cook, a professional mediator who was at the protest, “everything looks like a nail… the troopers arrived with lots of hammers.”

The stakes of the botched federal raid are abundantly clear. As Burlington resident Lee Morgan put it, “When the government gets it wrong like this—when they kick in the wrong door and they take the wrong people, it sends a message to every immigrant and every person of color in Vermont that you are not safe, that your rights are conditional, that your humanity is negotiable.”

But there’s another misstep that has compounded the damage from this disturbing event: the State’s public safety leadership has discounted the experiences of protesters and witnesses, while privileging the accounts given by law enforcement.

As a lifelong Vermonter, I gave testimony on Tuesday night, too. Not as a witness to the raid—I wasn’t on Dorset Street that day—but as a witness to the failure of our leaders to respond with care and probity in the aftermath.

I appreciate your clear assertion that ICE is to blame for this event. As you stated in your press release on March 12th: “The actions of federal law enforcement, from outside the state yesterday, further demonstrates a lack of training, coordination, leadership, and outdated tactics which put both peaceful protesters and Vermont law enforcement in a difficult situation.”

But you then drew a hasty conclusion—less than 24 hours after the raid—about the cause of the chaos. “I want to be clear,” you wrote, “how the events concluded, and the tactics deployed by federal officials, as well as actions of those there to agitate, further escalated a situation that was avoidable from the start.”

…those there to agitate.

Neither of us was there that day, Governor. But from the footage I watched—showing law enforcement charging through protestors to reach the house and firing tear gas and flash-bang grenades to clear a path for vehicles—it was impossible to tell who had agitated whom. And in my mind, it was imprudent to say otherwise. That’s what investigations are for.

And then there’s this: The choice of the word “agitate” implies far more than disorderly conduct. Since the Civil Rights Movement, the term has been used to disempower protesters, sow division, and misrepresent the actions of countless Americans practicing nonviolent protest and civil disobedience. As Aldon Morris, professor emeritus of sociology at Northwestern University, explains, throughout US history the label “agitator” has been wielded “by the powerful to delegitimate real grievances of the marginalized and oppressed seeking change.”

In the days following the Dorset Street raid, your use of this trope—which could have been rationalized as an innocent mistake—sharpened into clear bias.

At your March 18th press conference and the March 19th State House hearing, you and Public Safety Commissioner Jennifer Morrison thanked local and State law enforcement for their restraint and professionalism. In response to questions regarding accountability, you both urged patience, telling reporters and lawmakers that it would be premature to remark on the conduct of police, that internal reviews were underway, and that once body camera footage was evaluated, an After Action Review would provide a clear picture. “We tend to operate from a place of fact,” Commissioner Morisson explained, “not feelings, and not pre-assumptions about peoples’ motives.” It was too soon to say more.

But evidently it was not too soon to malign protesters as agitators, and to jump straight to poorly supported conclusions. “We’ll see when the body camera footage comes back, if there were agitators, as we expect there were,” you said at the press conference.

And at the March 19th hearing, the Commissioner referred to a “small cross-section” of “rioters or agitators,” while police chiefs referred to “rioters,” “violent protesters,” and “the violent agitators who cloak themselves as activists.” Chief Burke went so far as to say that “the peaceful activists were joined by agitators—a Trojan horse, of sorts, leading the way to an escalation instigated by the crowd.”

I acknowledge the difficult position law enforcement is in. But this partiality only divides us further at a time when future confrontations between citizens and federal agents and local police are likely, and a time when the stakes of this mishandling go beyond state borders. To zoom out beyond Dorset St, beyond South Burlington, beyond these Green Mountains, is to realize that portraying protesters as agitators has national consequences.

Trump used this very term after Renee Good’s murder in Minnesota, calling anti-ICE protestors “professional agitators.” He accused Good and her wife Becca of being a part of a “mob of agitators”—all grounds, he suggested, for invoking the Insurrection Act, and its license to deploy active soldiers on American soil.

The onus is on you, Governor Scott, and the state’s public safety leadership, to take into account the historical context of the term “agitator,” as well as the future stakes of its misuse. And until unbiased, public analysis of March 11^th is complete, it is our collective duty to refrain from making, in the Commissioner’s words, “pre-assumptions about peoples’ motives.”

Imagine for a moment, Governor, that the crowd’s outrage was not part of a premeditated agenda to “agitate,” but simply what happens in the human body, the human heart—our bodies and hearts—when we witness violence before us. When we witness the deep injustice of a small girl under a blanket, taken from her mother, or women choked and thrown to the ground, it is natural—deeply human, even—to become agitated. I assume you felt the same horror I did at seeing a family unjustly torn apart. But you haven’t expressed as much to the hundreds of Vermonters who are coming forward with concern about our state’s response.

In his testimony to lawmakers on March 19th, Chief Burke cited the critical importance of restoring trust. “Vermonters deserve strong leadership at every level,” he said.

I agree. We all deserve something stronger than what was on display the day after Tuesday’s hearing, when a reporter asked for your response to the testimony, and you said: “I look forward to some of the body camera footage… and to the After Action Review, which I thought we’d have by now,” and then you passed the mic to Commissioner Morrison.

What Vermonters are waiting for, Governor, is for you to simply say, “I see you; I hear you.” This statement of empathy requires no Review to be completed.

As our legislators consider a resolution for an independent investigation (rather than each agency investigating itself), I hope you, Governor Scott, will also support this resolution—a vital step toward repairing our trust.

(Vermonters, you can encourage your Senators to support this effort here.)

Thank you,

Liza Cochran

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New here? Welcome! You can read more about what we’re up to in this post. As Calvin Coolidge once said, “If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”

As we all have heard by now, our president has issued a deadline of 8 p.m. tonight for a deal to be reached to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. If Iran doesn’t comply, then “a whole civilization will die tonight,” Trump wrote, “never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

Yesterday, Trump outlined the plan to destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran by midnight, CNN reported. “I mean complete demolition by 12 o’clock.” Striking civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime under international law. “We’re seeing basically a direct threat to something that we know is going to be catastrophic to civilians,” Margaret Donovan, a former lawyer in the US Army’s JAG Corps, told CNN.

In response to Trump’s threats, the NYT reported that Iran’s leaders have stopped engaging in diplomatic talks and vowed revenge. Meanwhile, civilians are creating human chains across bridges and around power plants:

Meanwhile, Iranians are questioning what happened to the values that the US was founded on. The Times interviewed Mohsen Borhani, a law professor at Tehran University, who said that he “thought about the global order established after World War II, centered around the United Nations and shaped under Roosevelt’s leadership. And I wondered, how it is possible for a U.S. president to undermine and discredit all American values and 250 years of human legacy?” Furthermore, he said, there’s the “false assumption” that enough military might will pressure Iran’s rulers to surrender. “Based on my understanding of Iranian society and governance,” Borhani said, “I can state clearly that even several nuclear bombs would not achieve such an outcome.”

Meanwhile, the resentment and vitriol amongst Iranians is building, even in those who long opposed their authoritarian government. As US warplanes bomb schools, universities, and civilian infrastructure, loyalties have shifted. As one former activist sympathizer told the Times, “So now, we are supporting Iran and whatever government is running it.”

Meanwhile, here in Vermont, I am about to go to the food co-op, run up a snowy trail in search of some endorphins, and then meet my sweet girls at home for “huggles” (our new word for hugs + snuggles) in front of the fire.

As Paul Krugman wrote this morning:

“Damned if I know what’s going to happen. I mean, at some level, I think that the civilization that may be destroyed tonight is our own. I mean, are we civilized if we do this kind of thing? If America as a nation doesn’t stand up against this, what are we?

“So, God help us. Normal life will continue. It’s going to be a really weird thing to be out there, you know, grocery shopping and taking the subway and all of those things. But this is, in a way, the defining moment. The fate of the whole American idea is on the line.”

What We Can Do Today:

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries says that House Democrats will force another vote on a war resolution: “We only need one or two additional Republicans, and I think we’re on track to securing that.”

Let’s call our Reps and Senators and ask them to “return from recess and use every tool possible to stop Trump from committing war crimes and unilaterally launching us into a nuclear war.” Find find numbers and follow the 5 Calls Script here.

Braver Together ♡

Liza and Lorni

New here? Welcome! You can read more about what we’re up to in this post. As Calvin Coolidge once said, “If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”

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Saturday was the biggest day of mass protest in the country’s history. With over 8 million people taking to the streets in 3,300+ demonstrations, No Kings 3 was, in the words of USA Today, “a show of political force.”

As Erica Chenoweth said in a conversation with Third Act last night, these protests aren’t just “performative,” and they “aren’t happening all by themselves.” The 8 million+ people who showed up are reflective of all the work that’s happening community by community, neighbor by neighbor, all over the country—behind-the-scenes work of resisting autocracy and laying the groundwork for a more just and sustainable society for all.

And what’s more, Chenoweth reminded us, “authoritarianism can’t fully consolidate when there are visible acts of protest.” Our protests matter. As Tim Hjersted wrote in a piece called “How To View Protests Like an Organizer ”:

“Protests rarely achieve their maximalist demands on their own. But they do things nothing else can: they shift public discourse (Occupy didn’t break up the banks, but the language of the “99%” permanently changed how Americans talk about inequality), they energize waves of downstream organizing (the Women’s March fed directly into the candidate recruitment and voter mobilization that flipped the House in 2018), they build relationships between people and groups who might never have connected otherwise, and they make visible the scale of opposition in a way that no online petition or social media post ever will.”

Now it is time to convert that energy into on-going power.

TONIGHT the No Kings coalition will hold a mass call at 8PM ET to talk about where we go from here, including a nationwide shut-down on May 1; how to welcome new protesters into political organizing; and info on ICE monitoring, election protection, noncooperation, and more.

Let’s join the call! Sign up here.

If for no other reason, join because it feels good to be in community, and to have the sense that we’re in this fight with thousands of others.

Braver Together ♡

Liza and Lorni

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New here? Welcome! You can read more about what we’re up to in this post. As Calvin Coolidge once said, “If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”

No Kings Day is Saturday!

We know you know this, but we’re going to say it again: Protests play an essential role in our pushback against this regime. On any given day, we are waging this battle on a thousand fronts, but on No Kings Day, we are one body. We are unifying our voices and sending a resounding message that we are many and they are few.

These protests are are not only buoying, symbolic events, but they mobilize political action. No Kings 3 is expected to be the biggest day of protest in US history, and has the power to:

• give lawmakers a backbone and prompt new legislation

• turn out voters for this year’s midterms

• move us closer to a general strike

For the movement to have enough engagement for a general strike to work, we need 3.5% of the national population to be involved. That’s 11-12 million people. Let’s use No Kings as our growing yardstick!

• No Kings 1 = five million people

• No Kings 2 = seven million people

• No Kings 3 = ???

Finally, as the Trump regime weaponizes surveillance, sheer numbers are a source of safety. We must protect those most vulnerable by showing up en masse. We must make it impossible for any one individual to be plucked out of the sea of us: If you come for one of us, you come for us all.

Make Your Plan!

• Find a No Kings event near you

• Invite three friends to join you, or reach out to three friends/family in other places around the country and ask if they’re planning to go. Let’s normalize participation! This isn’t just radical activists showing up, it’s all of us “normal” people, too.

Photo Credit: Saad Ahmad

Braver Together ♡

Liza and Lorni

New here? Welcome! You can read more about what we’re up to in this post. As Calvin Coolidge once said, “If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”

On a lark, my mom and I started Brave Little Voices one year ago. Trump had been in office for less than three months and had already made clear his bull-in-a-china-shop proclivities. Mom was channeling her rage and grief into emails to friends and family, urging them to make calls and write letters. In essence: to speak up. And also: to feel our collective agency.

“Mom, how about we use Substack to send out your calls to action,” I suggested. “We’ll do it together and it will save time!” (Famous last words.)

*

A year in, one of the questions I’ve been grappling with is how to keep showing up in a way that is meaningful. I have always taught my students that their most powerful tool is a pen. But what does this mean for me in this moment? What is the value of this writing, I’ve been wondering, and what does this second year call on us each to do? Stay the course or change tack?

While I am someone who writes, I am primarily a teacher. I used to teach in the classroom, then for a nonprofit, and now for the international collective I cofounded, which focuses on writing at the intersection of personal experience and the eco crisis.

What I thought I would be doing this year was working on a book about raising my daughters with open hearts in a time of mass extinction—a book I’ve been working on for as long as I’ve been a mother. And I thought I would be teaching more as we grow Understory Writers. And while I am still pecking away at all of this, I am also spending the majority of my “working” hours writing about a different crisis that has come to define this moment: that bull in the china shop and our slide into authoritarianism. (Of course, the hubris behind this crisis is also responsible for the warming climate, but that’s a topic for a different post.)

Image Credit: Yulya Bortulyova

Brave Little Voices started—and has continued—because of you. We would not still be doing this if we didn’t sense that our writing was force multiplied by your voices! Over the past year, this effort has gown beyond state borders, and has also expanded beyond weekly actions into somewhat regular reflections on who we are as a resistance movement, and the more emotional realm of what it’s like to live through a time of democratic backsliding: essays written in response to Renee Good, Minneapolis’s neighborism, No Kings, our collective longing, even the shared path of a fox.

Yet I question almost daily if this is how I should be spending my time. In part because inherent in writing is not knowing with much tangibility how our words are impacting readers or making a difference to the world outside of our own head. But also because, these days, there is very little financial support available to writers. And while that is a deterrent in itself (I do need to make a living wage, after all), it goes hand-in-hand with a message from society that this isn’t “real” work. As much as I try, it is difficult to shield myself from the lack of validation this inflicts. Sometimes I even feel a sense of shame to be dedicating my time to something so undervalued—which I realize is a sign of how much I’ve internalized capitalism’s creed.

I am coming to understand that the swirl of questions will always be there. (“Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue,” Rilke wrote. “The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.”) But beneath the questions is an abiding conviction about that role of witness, and that fierce tool: the pen. As James Baldwin wrote: “What can we really do for each other except—just love each other and be each other’s witness?” Perhaps that is what we are really doing here as this collective pool of voices—brave little voices: bearing witness to each other through all that is unraveling, and all that is taking root as we make the radical choice to find a new path forward.

So, dear readers, with great humility I’m writing to ask you—if you are able, and if BLV is something you read regularly—to consider backing this work:

1. If you would like to become a paid subscriber, you can do so here.

2. If you’re a paid subscriber and can chip in a little more, you can do so here.

3. If you’re feeling the tightening economy and need to reduce/cancel your paid subscription, you can do so here. (We get it.)

4. If you’d like to financially support this work without subscribing, you can always send me an email at hello@bravelittlevoices.org

5. Finally, zero pressure! We are committed to keeping our posts free and available to everyone. We hope you’ll keep reading… and force multiplying!

Photo Credit: Patrick Fore

Thank you, dear readers,

Liza

New here? Welcome! You can read more about what we’re up to in this post. As Calvin Coolidge once said, “If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”