Editor’s note: This commentary is by Bethany Armstrong Breitland, who moved to Charlotte with her family from Atlanta, Georgia, where she was an educator and activist. She is poet with an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
I admit I have painted Vermont with broad strokes of Bernie Sanders, farmers’ rights, and environmental policies. Vermont, it’s the place people think of for making good policy by progressive-minded people. But I’m white. Things looked differently at the Black Lives Matter protest in Burlington last night.
My family and I, masked, stood in the back listening to the speakers and poets voice their pain and frustration at the systematic white supremacy that killed George Floyd. We all spoke the names of victims. We held silence. And then something happened. The lead organizer, Harmony Edosomwan, was verbally attacked off-stage by a group of unmasked white anti-protesters. Back on the stage, Edosomwan turned to the crowd and told us what happened and what didn’t. Not one of the white bystanders stopped the harassers. It came down to the black community nearby to protect her. She was very clear, “White people ain’t here for us!”
There were multiple reports of the protests for George Floyd in Vermont. Not one to date has mentioned this incident. Reporters are focusing on Edosomwan’s confrontation at Burlington police department. There she asked Police Chief Jen Morrison about the series of accusations against Burlington police for brutality against people of color. And I get it. I get why the focus is on the police, since it was the police in Minneapolis who killed George Floyd. I also get this is the coverage we are handed because it is a simple story: Protesters vs. Police.
But inside the protest, it wasn’t that simple. There were those who were there for their own experience, not the betterment and safety of the most vulnerable. And let me be explicit: Those most vulnerable to Covid19 and systematic racism is the black community. The white liberal Vermonters standing by — holding up George Floyd posters while Harmony Edosomwan was berated by aggressive unmasked strangers — they are complicit and culpable. It’s not George Floyd over there. It’s happening, and happened right here.
The white liberal Vermonter wants to stay safe while feeling good. They want to protest the death of George Floyd but not the white supremacy literally within reach. They want to attend a protest but stand idly by when an opportunity to become an ally arises. It’s not Black Lives Matter but perhaps more truthfully White Experience Matters. Sadly, Edosomwan’s message to the people of color in the crowd, that white people, white liberals of Vermont are not here for them, feels very true. They were there to protest for peace. That kind of peace that makes white folks feel less guilty.
After the speakers at Battery Park, protesters carried on to the police station. My family and I walked back to the car. Walking silently, it was easy for us to hear the group of white college students behind us. A young, unmasked man, touting his privilege of health, not considering those around him, complained about the speeches at Battery Park. “To be honest, I’m disappointed by the speakers. They didn’t even really prepare. I mean, the poems were good, but I was looking for something better. I wish I could have heard someone like Martin Luther King speak tonight. And why was she so mad at us, saying white people weren’t there for black people? Why did she have to attack us?”
Edosomwan was right. Some white people weren’t there for her. They were there to, yet again, commodify the black experience so they could feel something. So distanced and protected from their pain and culpability of being a part of a divisive system, they came for relief, not to hold space. Not to support or lift the black community of Burlington or of minorities in greater Vermont. It also feels like the media would rather brush the divide at Battery Park under the rug too.
Vermont, here’s the deal: People vote in police commissioners.
People are police.
People are police chiefs.
People call police on innocent black people.
And as we saw last night, people, white liberal people, stand by while black activists are verbally assaulted.
Vermont, we’ve got a problem, and it’s not just the police.
