Editor’s note: This story is by Jeff Potter, the editor of The Commons, a weekly nonprofit newspaper that covers Windham County.
BRATTLEBORO—A civil rights advocate has been ousted from the state advisory panel of the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) after a conservative majority objected to his commentary about the racial undertones of a political slogan in the November election.
The future of the USCCR’s Vermont State Advisory Committee (SAC) remains in political limbo after the commission voted Friday to renew the subcommittee’s charter, but without its chairman, Curtiss Reed Jr.
The Commission dismissed Reed for refusing to apologize for remarks he made in a commentary about Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie’s “Pure Vermont” campaign slogan in the November gubernatorial election and for statements he made in 2008 on Vermont Public Radio.
Reed, of Brattleboro, who had chaired the 17-member SAC since it resumed its operations in 2008, charged that the decision demonstrates the right-wing politicization of former President George W. Bush’s administration’s political appointments to the civil rights agency.
The unprecedented move, made hours before two of the commissioners’ terms expired, leaves the SAC without a chairman.
“I am really disappointed,” said Reed, the executive director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity. “I speak for all the members of the SAC,” whom he described collectively as a “well-rounded, workable group,” and he said the SAC “works well together to address issues in a particularly Vermont way.”
The SACs “advise the Commission of civil rights issues in their states that are within the Commission’s jurisdiction,” according to Vermont’s state website, www.vermont.gov.
Tara O’Brien: “How can they say they’re protecting the rights of Vermonters when they can’t even do that for a member of their own committee?”
The 16-member State Advisory Committee members wrote a letter asking the U.S. Commission to reappoint Reed. They lauded their chairman’s commitment to creating a comprehensive report on the effect of perceived racial profiling by state and local law enforcement officers on minority groups in Vermont. The report, which was published in 2009, has led to significant policy changes, including recommended anti-bias policing guidelines for law enforcement organizations in Vermont and the collection of racial data during routine traffic stops by the Vermont State Police and a number of Chittenden County police departments.
In the letter to the U.S. Commission, the Vermont committee argued that Reed was speaking as a private citizen in his commentary, and he didn’t identify himself as the chairman of SAC.
Read the Vermont State Advisory Committee letter
“It is our view that to deny an individual the right to speak out, without retribution, as a private citizen regarding a matter that he perceived to be harmful to civil rights seems not only ‘wrong’ but antithetical to the mission of the Commission,” the members wrote.
Tara O’Brien, a member from Brattleboro, was wary of speaking on the record out of fear of similar repercussions. She said last week’s actions create a crisis of confidence for board members and a credibility problem for the federal commission.
“How can they say they’re protecting the rights of Vermonters when they can’t even do that for a member of their own committee?” she asked. “It puts the whole committee in the position of being extra cautious about what we say.”
Objectionable remarks
After approving the SAC’s new charter and all members other than Reed, commissioners in a 5-0 vote rejected reappointing Reed, rebuking him for a political commentary that appeared prior to the November election.
Three other commissioners abstained.
The commentary, “‘Pure Vermont’ is pure invalidation,” appeared in the Brattleboro Reformer and on Vtdigger.org, a state government news and commentary website, as well as in other media prior to the state election.
In the piece, which described Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie’s campaign slogan, “Pure Vermont,” as an example of “cross-cultural blundering,” Reed wrote that “for many Vermonters, the words denote racial, religious, and cultural oppression.”
But it was 56 of the 498 words of the piece that drew the scrutiny of several commissioners.
In addition to raising connotations of racial purity and the history in Vermont of the Ku Klux Klan, Reed’s commentary invoked early-20th-century eugenics policies. “‘Pure Vermont’ raises the specter of Hitler’s Aryan Nation and the Khmer Rouge, where the purifying agent was genocide,” he wrote.
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Dubie characterized the slogan as a “positive message and a welcoming one.”
Reed also took heat for statements he made to Vermont Public Radio when the commission was rechartered in April 2008 after a hiatus of more than a year.
He told VPR reporter Neil Charnoff that “for reasons we don’t understand, the charters for Vermont and dozens of other states across the country were stalled.”
“I think there’s a history of the current [Bush] administration wanting to provide a more positive view of civil rights,” Reed told Charnoff. “You can claim to have fewer reports of harassment, fewer reports of incidents of civil rights issues, if the eyes and ears in the states detecting that have been rendered inoperable.”
A commission staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity said that staff members of two conservative commissioners found links to Reed’s commentary on several right-wing websites and listservs, resulting in a request to Reed that he apologize for intemperate remarks or step down from the state committee.
Reed did neither.
Later, the USCCR’s staff director, Martin Dannenfelser, wrote to say that “taken together, commissioners are concerned that you have used these public platforms to impugn the motives of Mr. Dubie and the Bush administration and, in the case of Mr. Dubie, to associate his views with those of avowed racists and mass murderers.”
Dannenfelser said that several commission members wanted Reed to respond before the USCCR considered rechartering the Vermont SAC.
“I remind you that Vermont and our country have a long and distinguished history protecting the rights of free speech,” Reed replied, calling any controversy over his piece an issue that “seems to be reverberating only in Washington.”
“The decision to replace me as chair or to remove me from the committee altogether [because of the op-ed piece] strikes at the heart of First Amendment rights,” he added.
“Neither my employer, the VT SAC, nor the USCCR were referenced in the piece,” Reed continued. “Our democracy cannot afford the double standard proposed by the suggestion that I, or any member of the VT SAC, step down because of our personal opinions and the act of expressing those opinions in the public square, while at the same time the USCCR purports to defend our civil rights.”
Ideology on the commission?
The eight commissioners of the USCCR, a bipartisan commission created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957, serve staggered six-year terms. The president and Congress appoint four members each, and “not more than four members shall at any one time be of the same political party,” according to the commission’s website, www.usccr.gov.
The terms of two members, Gerald A. Reynolds and Ashley L. Taylor Jr., both Republican presidential appointees, expired only hours after the vote.
Democrats have charged that the Bush administration circumvented these rules, appointing Republicans who have disingenuously declared their party affiliation as “independent” to qualify for the bipartisan commission.
One such member, Vice Chair Abigail Thernstrom, since reverted her affiliation to Republican. Commissioner Todd F. Gaziano, senior fellow in legal studies for the conservative thinktank The Heritage Foundation, is listed on the USCCR’s website as an independent.
The subcommittee’s two-year charter expired in April, which legally disbanded the group until the commission’s Friday vote.
The terms of two members, Gerald A. Reynolds and Ashley L. Taylor Jr., both Republican presidential appointees, expired only hours after the vote. Reynolds had served as the USCCR’s chairman.
The USCCR staff member said the commission has been increasingly infused with ideology during the Bush administration, speculating that the renewal of the Vermont charter was delayed because commissioners wanted to include “some of their people” in addition to the incumbent members.
Reed confirmed this account, noting that SAC members rebelled against adding several candidates he characterized as “right-wing, really narrow-issue-focused.
“We stuck to our guns, which is one of the reasons it took so long to get rechartered,” he added.
The USCCR staffer cited a similar story with the renewal of the New Hampshire SAC’s charter.
That group submitted its application, and the charter was reauthorized with an additional surprise member, Kevin Smith, executive director of Cornerstone Policy Research, a nonprofit research group that, among other conservative causes, opposes gay marriage equality issues.
When that happened, the USCCR “got flooded with letters and e-mails, saying, ‘How dare you put this man who’s the antithesis of everything civil rights is?’” the staffer recounted.
Support from the state SAC
SAC members sent a unanimous letter of support for both the charter reauthorization in general, and Reed in particular, to then-Chairman Reynolds.
“As you know, during the time that Mr. Reed served as chair, the SAC produced a comprehensive report addressing the effect of perceived racial profiling by state and local law enforcement officers,” the members wrote.
“To have developed and seen through to successful resolution a report on a topic as politically charged and sensitive as racial profiling requires tact; the ability to engender trust and encourage openness; dedication; and the skills to advance the pursuit of knowledge and understanding in a manner that yield results rather than resistance,” they continued.
The vote, according to the USCCR staffer, included “20 minutes — and someone timed it — of trashing Curtiss in a public meeting.”
“The leadership and tone set by Mr. Reed proved invaluable during this work and, we believe, earned the trust of those with whom we needed to interact, including members of the law enforcement officials across the state,” the members wrote.
David Carle, spokesman for U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), said the senator’s office was closely involved in the issue, first in trying to get the SAC reauthorized, and then in trying to figure out the “unsettling” aspects of Friday’s vote.
In the end, the commissioners decoupled the approval of the Vermont SAC’s charter from Reed’s reappointment to the group.
The vote, according to the USCCR staffer, included “20 minutes — and someone timed it — of trashing Curtiss in a public meeting.”
After reading the transcript on Tuesday, Reed described his reaction as one of disbelief.
“I don’t think any of them fully read the piece,” he said.
A staff member represented Leahy’s office at the proceedings. Two of the senator’s other staffers variously described the meeting as “not well run.”
The meeting transcript, released at press time, reveals a long stretch of commissioners interrupting one another and arguing over parliamentary procedure, in between a heated discussion about whether Reed’s reference to Hitler and the Khmer Rouge in his commentary crossed the line.
Several commissioners also misinterpreted Reed’s letter of explanation as insisting that he had a first-amendment constitutional right to be seated on the SAC.
Gaziano took exception to Reed’s refusal to disavow his commentary and his “own sort of defiant, crazy, legally flawed defense of his action.”
“I was willing to hold my nose and vote for him before I got the e-mails from him where he once again demonstrated a lack of judgment [by defending the commentary],” then-Chairman Reynolds said.
Commissioner Michael Yaki, a Democratic Congressional appointee, defended Reed’s VPR hypothesis that the state SACs’ charters were systematically allowed to expire.
“Everything he said on [VPR] I’ve said twice over, five times over, maybe 20 times over,” Yaki said, adding that he believes the state SACs “still are being manipulated, run over, and otherwise packed.”
Regarding Reed, Commissioner Gail Heriot said she looks “for two things that I am not finding with this candidate for the SAC.”
Those qualities, she said, are “a temperament that allows them to deal with complex and difficult issues, and two, I am looking for someone who actually has some expertise on civil rights.”
Carle said Leahy’s staff has been in contact with the Obama administration consistently about the Vermont SAC issue, urging White House staff to prepare appointments to the vacant slots on the commission.
The administration has also been free all along to replace Dannenfelser, a Bush appointee who had worked as a vice president of the Family Research Council, where he also served as the conservative Christian nonprofit thinktank’s chief government relations official.
Matthew Lehrich, a spokesman with the White House Press Office, when asked about a timetable for potential appointments, noted that “we generally don’t comment on nominations before the President has announced them.”
An uncertain future
By all accounts, Reed’s future with the SAC remains in limbo, dependent on subsequent appointees who might revisit the issue.
And even though the USCCR staff member described the mechanics of Friday’s vote as potentially in violation of agency regulations or other federal protocol, no one interviewed for this story could say whether those circumstances would render the outcome invalid.
Reached on Monday, Yaki described politicization on the commission as “not unusual.”
“In the end, we just didn’t have the votes,” said Yaki, who added that some on the commission have been concerned about the possibility that some or all of Reed’s colleagues on the SAC might resign.
By all accounts, Reed’s future with the SAC remains in limbo, dependent on subsequent appointees who might revisit the issue.
If the commission membership dips below 10, he said, the whole SAC must be reorganized from scratch.
But Yaki also pointed out that some of Reed’s support came from commission members like him who strongly disagreed with the principle of reprimanding a SAC member for expressing an unpopular or disagreeable view, without agreeing in full with what Reed actually wrote.
“I understand political hyperbole,” said Yaki, a former member of the San Franscisco Board of Supervisors. “I’ve run for office and managed campaigns in the political arena. But I want to point out how far out Curtiss’s rhetoric was.”
Yaki said Reed’s commentary had “a loaded connotation to it, in my own opinion,” with the result that even on a differently constituted commission, “there might still be some people who feel some queasiness about what he said.”
“I don’t know why he used that particular example,” he said. “It’s easy to toss around, but hard to take back.”
“The first amendment allows you to speak freely and disagree,” Yaki said. “While you have the freedom to do whatever you do and say whatever you say, some people will hold you accountable later on.”
Disclosure: Reed serves on the board of directors of Vermont Independent Media, the nonprofit that publishes The Commons.
