BURLINGTON — After Mayor Miro Weinberger prematurely left a City Council meeting Tuesday night, missing hours of public comments on his proposed cuts to the Burlington Police Department budget, hundreds of protesters Wednesday showed up at Weinberger’s house to demand that the mayor hear them out.
Weinberger said before the Zoom meeting Tuesday that he had family commitments, and would listen for as long as he could, but many activists were still outraged at his decision to leave the call.
More than 1,000 residents signed up for a public comment period during Monday’s City Council meeting, and the meeting was carried over several additional nights. On Wednesday, during the third night of public comment, speakers addressed the council from 5:30 p.m. until after midnight.
The majority of public comments have been in support of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance’s demands for a 30% reduction in uniformed officers at the Burlington Police Department, the removal of officers from schools and the firing of Officers Jason Bellavance, Cory Campbell and Joe Corrow, all of whom are named in police brutality lawsuits filed by black men.
As the public comment period began Wednesday, more than 200 protesters showed up outside Weinberger’s house in Burlington’s Hill Section. When demonstrators learned the mayor was at City Hall, they marched down Main Street to target the mayor, who was inside listening to public comments during the Zoom City Council meeting.
About an hour into the meeting, Councilor Joan Shannon said she had just heard about the protest outside Weinberger’s house, which she said was “completely inappropriate.” Shannon then proceeded to leave the call in outrage.
“The mayor has young children,” Shannon said. “They should not be terrorized. That is not what our political process is about. And knowing that, I am going to get off this call, but this is getting to a place that I am not comfortable with, and it’s no longer an appropriate discussion.”
Weinberger did not comment about the protesters, and remained on the call for the entirety of Wednesday’s meeting.
Once the protesters arrived at City Hall, they chanted and marched up and down Church Street, before disbanding, agreeing to reconvene outside the building at 11 p.m, where they planned to remain until midnight, when the public comment period was set to end for the night, and Weinberger would leave the building.
At 11 p.m., when several hundred protesters returned to City Hall, organizers announced that the protest would be briefer than originally planned. The Racial Justice Alliance asked that protesters allow Weinberger to leave the building in peace, and after a few minutes of chants, organizers tried to disband the protest for the night.
A number of protesters, however, had a different idea, eventually leading the crowd though the streets to the Burlington Police Department, where protesters, who were overwhelmingly young and white, stayed for nearly an hour, as some gave brief speeches, and many chanted, with calls like “White silence is white violence,” and “How do you spell racist? B-P-D.”
One protester, Gabby Snook, said she found out about the protest less than an hour before it began. But she said she was happy when people followed her to BPD for the latter half of the night.
“As much as we fucking hate the cops, we’re not going to riot,” Snook told the crowd. “We’re not going to fucking riot. Our pain is valid, and we’re going to make them feel our pain.”
After about 90 minutes of peaceful protest, the crowd disbanded and protesters went home. Around the same time, the City Council meeting heard its final public comment, after three nights and hundreds of speakers.
“We’ve gotten through everybody on the list,” said Council President Max Tracy. “We did it, we got through hundreds of speakers over several nights. Thank you everyone from the public, I really appreciate your patience through all of that, in a historic public forum, I really appreciate that, and hopefully we can take to heart what we’ve heard.”
