BRATTLEBORO — As a Vermonter of color, local resident Steffen Gillom reads state news coverage of racial prejudice and discrimination with a critical eye.
“People look at counties like Bennington, Addison and Rutland, and I think, ‘Wait a minute — I feel like Windham gets left out,’” he said recently. “There’s this vision of us as a liberal bastion, but we have the worst policing statistics in the state.”
Although Brattleboro votes more progressively than most communities, it’s among the most problematic for disproportionately policing minorities, according to a recent study by the University of Vermont and Cornell University. Black drivers are nine times more likely to be searched than white drivers, for example, even though contraband was found in only 0.1% of all stops.
To promote racial awareness and action, Gillom founded a Windham County branch of the NAACP, the largest civil rights organization in the country. Its inaugural public program, a 2019 Freedom Fund Dinner, drew a capacity crowd of 225 people. One long pandemic year later, the branch is set for an online sequel Friday, April 23.
“I’m confident we will raise some money for good projects,” Cliff Wood, one of its organizers, said at the branch’s most recent meeting. “But the real goal is to attract more members.”
Windham County may be out of mind for many in Vermont’s northern population hubs, but it holds the fourth-largest percentage of nonwhite residents after Chittenden, Addison and Grand Isle counties, census figures show. The county’s largest town, Brattleboro, has the most diversity per capita of any community in the southern half of the state.
The area NAACP is working on projects ranging from investigating local complaints of racism to collaborating with the Vermont Department of Health on Covid-19 vaccine clinics for Black, Indigenous and people of color.
“I think discrimination in general is underreported, and people don’t really have a lot of avenues to voice it,” Gillom said. “I know we have freedom of speech and laws that protect people with all beliefs, but we have to ask ourselves, ‘How are we protecting our Black and brown community, and how are we policing those using their privilege and hate to intimidate others?’”
The Windham County NAACP’s public online program on Friday will run from 7 to 8:30 p.m., with more information available on its website.
The Rev. Shannon MacVean-Brown, Vermont’s first Black female Episcopal bishop, will open the event with an invocation.
Chittenden County state Sen. Kesha Ram, the first woman of color to serve in her chamber, will follow with a keynote address.
Other presenters will include Westminster poet Wylene Branton Wood, reading her work “The African American Challenge,” and St. Louis vocalist Olivia Neal.
Although this year’s Freedom Fund Dinner won’t serve food, a portion of the proceeds will support Brattleboro’s Loaves and Fishes soup kitchen.
Organizers hope the online availability of the event will attract a statewide audience.
“I’ve heard from a couple of folks who’ve asked how they can start new branches in their own areas,” Gillom said. “We have to find ways to address racism, or we’re going to push Black and brown people right out of Vermont, which is exactly the opposite of what we want to do.”
