[H]adiel Mohamed and four of her classmates drove two hours from Brattleboro to be at the Statehouse Friday for Black Lives Matter Day.
“I think the best way for me to show my support is by physically being here,” the student at SIT Graduate Institute said.
Mohamed said she came to the Statehouse to see government in action first hand. And she said she appreciated that Vermont’s political climate is different from that of her home state of Idaho, she said.
“It’s not like this,” Mohamed said. “I don’t think people are even talking about Black Lives Matter.”
Mohamed and her classmates were among the dozens of Vermonters who rallied in the capitol building for a daylong event organized around the Black Lives Matter movement.
The event marks the first anniversary of Gov. Peter Shumlin’s proclamation of Black Lives Matter Day in Vermont.
The Vermont Black Lives Matter group formed last year in solidarity with the movement that emerged across the nation in response to police brutality cases targeting blacks in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore.
Ebony Nyoni, of Winooski, said that the group identifies with the movement across the country. But she also said that there is work to be done in Vermont to address racial inequity.
“It’s a movement of solidarity and peace and change, and that’s our overriding message,” Nyoni said. “We would like to move forward together with all Vermonters to affect change.”
At a rally in the Cedar Creek Room Friday, Nyoni said she is concerned about systemic bias that permeates Vermont’s correctional, educational and child protection systems.
The group is pushing for more diversity among school administrators and teachers. Nyoni said that teachers in Vermont are sometimes pushed out of their careers in Vermont because of racial bias.
She also pointed to issues of race in the child protection system. The group would like to see more families of color licensed to be foster parents or adoptive parents.
“The state of Vermont should acknowledge the lack of diversity as a detriment and not an asset,” Nyoni told the crowd.
Nyoni said that racism in Vermont is not always obvious. Instead, it comes out in structural biases that keep certain groups in positions of privilege, she said.
“So we need to begin to recognize those points and systems so that we can eradicate that,” Nyoni said.
Rep. Kiah Morris, D-Bennington, urged her colleagues to adopt a resolution acknowledging the significance of the Black Lives Matter movement across the United States and in Vermont.
“This is for all of Vermont as this conversation goes far beyond our encounters with law enforcement and touches on each of our everyday lives and how we wrestle with discrimination and bias against race gender class disability and more in our communities,” Morris said.
“This is for each of us. This movement brought those conversations to our kitchen table,” Morris said.
