[A]ctivists spent the annual celebration of International Workers’ Day staging a large rally in Montpelier to protest Gov. Peter Shumlin’s staunch resistance to new taxes.
About 500 activists from more than a dozen organizations marched from Montpelier City Hall to a demonstration that moved into the first floor of the Statehouse.
The group occupied the first-floor lobby and hallways for 30 minutes while observers came down the stairs to hear the rallying cry, “Tax the rich! They can spare the change!”
Lawmakers on the second floor could hear the group chanting and shouting. A few protesters went upstairs to the Senate gallery. When Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, said he could not hear his fellow senators, he tried to request a recess.
It was the second time this legislative session that protesters have disrupted lawmakers. In January, the Vermont Workers’ Center stormed the Statehouse during Gov. Peter Shumlin’s inaugural address. The protesters sang and chanted in the well of the House and put up banners during the ceremony. They were incensed that Gov. Peter Shumlin backed away from the promised implementation of a single payer health care plan.
The May Day rally on Friday was more tempered. The center, the Vermont State Employees’ Association and the Vermont Center for Independent Living were among the groups that led the demonstration.
Their message centered on Shumlin’s push for a $10.8 million cut in state labor costs.
Activists also decried the effects of budget cuts on essential services for disabled Vermonters, the dysfunction of Vermont Health Connect and Shumlin’s repeated dissatisfaction with ideas to raise the capital gains tax. They again took issue with the governor’s decision to shelve plans for a single-payer health care system after the election.
“Act 48 is being ignored, and Shumlin jumped into bed with the 1 percent after his election,” said Jess Fuller, a UVM student. “We have no one courageous enough to pick up the role of leadership he abandoned. We are tired of being patted on the head and told, ‘Good try, but it’s just not the right time.’”
Keith Brunner, an organizer for the Vermont Workers’ Center, said the rally was just a small part of the nonprofit’s activities.
“We don’t have the financial resources to have a lobbyist here all the time,” Brunner said. “There are some groups that might, but we can’t.”
Alaina Clements, an assistant technology specialist for VCIL, said many of the cuts the Legislature has approved would make it harder for disabled Vermonters to get wheelchairs, walkers, iPads and other technology they use to integrate into the community.
“I know people who have had to make this decision between basic needs and assistive technology,” Clements told the crowd. “When the governor talks about tough choices, he should be referring to these choices.”
John Howe, a VSEA member who works at the Community High School of Vermont, said in an interview that he has taken leave several days this year in order to attend events at the Statehouse and talk to legislators over coffee.
Howe repeated the VSEA’s proposals earlier this session to raise taxes on capital gains, limit personal deductions and implement an alternative minimum tax.
The Senate approved a $12,000 cap on mortgage deductions and a 3 percent alternative minimum tax. Increased taxes on capital gains have not gained traction.
“We live paycheck to paycheck,” Howe said. “I’m struggling under the debt of my daughter, who went to college. … Do we want people to choose between heat and food?”
Janet Miller, the Statehouse sergeant-at-arms since March 1, said the decorum of the protest was OK, but she wants to do better.
Miller said there were six officers from the Capitol Police, several state troopers and a bomb-sniffing dog at the scene.