A group of activists in St. Albans City says local leaders need to do more to address systemic racism after its members found and published years-old pictures of the city’s recreation program manager wearing blackface for a Halloween costume.
Andrew Gratton apologized for the pictures in a letter last week to two members of the group, Neighbors for a Safer St. Albans. He told them the photos were nearly a decade old and that he now finds them “disturbing.”
Recent debate over the pictures has happened largely out of public view, members of the group told VTDigger. Over the past year, its members have advocated for racial, gender, and socioeconomic justice and been vocal in conversations about policing in the city.
Angie Sturm, a member of Neighbors for a Safer St. Albans, worked with Gratton while she was on the city’s parks commission. Gratton joined the department in early 2017, according to a report in the St. Albans Messenger that year.
Sturm was “very disappointed” when she saw the blackface photos, she told VTDigger, adding that city government needed to include more diverse voices when making many decisions.
“He’s somebody who a lot of people look up to in the community,” Sturm said. “And it was the most unbecoming way that he could present himself.”
‘Unacceptable’ photos
Reier Erickson, a member of Neighbors for a Safer St. Albans, told VTDigger he sent the blackface photos to City Manager Dominic Cloud last September. Erickson shared with Cloud the activist group’s concerns that the images were “unacceptable,” he told VTDigger.
In the photos, screenshots of which were provided to VTDigger, Gratton and several other people are pictured in blackface. They appear to be wearing Halloween costumes depicting the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team.
Cloud addressed the matter with Gratton at the time, the city manager told VTDigger. The city then held a racial consciousness training for all its employees early this year, Cloud said, during which the photos were discussed.
After that, Cloud said, he felt the situation had been resolved.
“It was something that I felt like we had dealt with — both with the employee and with the advocacy group,” he said. “It was sort of settled.”
Neighbors for a Safer St. Albans, though, thought Cloud had not done enough to address the situation, according to Erickson. He said that Gratton made a post on social media after the training took place that group members found transphobic.
In the post, Gratton used quotation marks to refer to the celebrity athlete Caitlyn Jenner, who is a transgender woman, as a woman. “Now Caitlyn can go win the decathalon as a ‘woman,’” he wrote, according to a screenshot provided to VTDigger.
After the group made note of the post, Cloud addressed it last week in another meeting with Gratton. In Gratton’s apology — which was sent to Sturm and Erickson — he wrote that the post was “tasteless and unnecessary to say the least.”
Gratton added he “did not have any malicious or harmful intent” in wearing a costume with blackface, and that he would be participating in anti-bias training over the next month.
“I realize that I come from a position of privilege and need to do what I can to be able to understand how my actions, past and present, may make people feel,” Gratton wrote.
VTDigger’s attempts to reach Gratton for comment were unsuccessful.
A public forum
Members of Neighbors for a Safer St. Albans planned to share concerns about Gratton with the St. Albans City Council at its monthly meeting Monday night, Erickson said, but when the meeting agenda was released, it stated that public comment could not touch on personnel matters.
“The city council will receive comments on matters that do not concern personnel; personnel matters are handled by the city manager,” the agenda read.
In St. Albans City, the city manager is appointed by, and reports to, the city council. The city manager has administrative control over much of the government, including personnel policies, according to the city charter.
Cloud told VTDigger that the council has a “longstanding practice” of taking public comments only on issues that are under its control. That does not include personnel, he said, with the exception of the city managers it selects.
“We chose to emphasize that at the beginning of the meeting because it became evident that the advocacy group was intending to have a crowd of folks storm the meeting, with the intent of weighing in on something that wasn’t within the board’s jurisdiction,” Cloud said, referring to the council. “We were trying to signal to them that that’s not what this meeting is about.”
At the meeting, Erickson read a letter, signed by a number of members of Neighbors for a Safer St. Albans, asking local leaders to form a community-led “Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Committee” to help “foster an environment where people aren’t just welcomed, but also given a voice.”
“It’s become apparent that the city needs help in navigating issues of identity, representation and belonging,” Erickson said. “This group could help in that endeavor.”
St. Albans City Mayor Tim Smith signed two proclamations at the meeting Monday night — one recognizing June as Pride Month and the other recognizing Juneteenth as “an important day of remembrance and ongoing work toward racial equity.”
Applause broke out in the audience after Smith read each proclamation.
This week, the city also updated its logo to include a pride flag and hung a banner on North Main Street, reminding residents to celebrate Juneteenth.
At the meeting Monday, Cloud told councilors that the city’s personnel policies have not been reviewed in 10 years, and therefore do not reflect current values. He said the city would benefit from an updated social media policy, something he would work on.
“There’s more that we need to do to create tools, to set the expectations for employees,” Cloud said. “Specifically about how they conduct themselves, and what is the type of behavior that we expect both at the workplace and in that nebulous area on the internet.”
A more inclusive city
Cloud told VTDigger there’s no evidence that Gratton displayed racist or unwelcoming behavior in the recreation programs he runs, and he considers it important that Gratton sent an apology to members of Neighbors for a Safer St. Albans.
“When employees take responsibility for their actions — and seek to move forward in an improved fashion and repair the harm to those that have been harmed — I can’t ask for much more than that,” Cloud said.
He added, though, that he thinks the situation affects the city’s ability to serve its residents who identify with one or more marginalized communities.
“This is part of living and working in community, where neighbors have the opportunity to come forward and say: ‘That’s hurtful. I would like you to think about, reflect and do this differently,’” Cloud said. “And we’ve done that.”
Activists have said local officials need to do a better job addressing material the white nationalist group Patriot Front has put up around the city. Similar materials have been displayed in other communities, VTDigger has reported.
Erickson said St. Albans City has a culture that is not inclusive of people from marginalized backgrounds. Since moving to the city a year and a half ago, he said, he’s been called the n-word more times than in the previous four decades of his life.
“I feel like they point to these individual things — ‘we’ll make that better,’ ‘we’ll make that better,” Erickson said, referring to the city government. “But at some point, that culture and that sickness really has to be addressed.”
Sturm has not been willing to serve on any city bodies since her time on the parks commission, because the lack of progress she sees — especially toward racial justice — has been frustrating, she said. Conversations about the Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Committee that Neighbors for a Safer St. Albans asked for, she said, are a step in the right direction.
“I’m surprised, and relieved, and interested in what’s growing out of this process already,” Sturm said. “They need our help — just from the very, very beginning — to have a truly inclusive process.”
