Editor’s note: Luca Kolba is a reporter with Community News Service, a collaboration with the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.
Last weekend, communities across Vermont held their first-ever Juneteenth celebrations, some sponsored by local governments.
Things looked different in St. Albans City.
The city held no public events for the new national holiday, and a recent spread in white nationalist stickers, a blackface incident and a reckoning with the need for systemic change around race in St. Albans have also affected the tone of the holiday, according to interviews with organizers and city officials.
Reier Erickson, a prominent member of the group Neighbors for Safer St. Albans, held a barbeque for friends and family of the group at his home. The event was not completely open to the public.
In a conversation at Monday’s City Council meeting, Erickson explained why.
“Every year my wife and I threw a Juneteenth party when we lived in Bristol. Every year we threw one. And we’re throwing one this year as well, but this year we can’t invite the entire community because there’s white nationalists putting up stickers around town, and I don’t want to put my address out to the public,” Erickson said.
The white nationalist stickers he’s referring to are from the hate group Patriot Front. The group has put stickers in several Vermont communities in recent years, and similar stickers have recently been posted in Winooski, according to posts on Front Porch Forum. Addressing the stickers was a talking point at the council meeting.
Neighbors for Safer St. Albans was formed on Juneteenth of last year, so it also marks the group’s anniversary. Most of their work so far has focused on police reform, but they’re expanding into other areas, Erickson said. The group has about 160 members on Facebook, as of June 21.
In reference to whether St. Albans should be sponsoring a Juneteenth event like other municipalities are this year, Erickson said, “I’m not asking for funds to throw a Juneteenth party. I’m just asking for a community where I feel safe enough to invite the community to my house to have a Juneteenth party.”
Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day and Black Independence Day, was established as a federal holiday on June 17. It marks June 19, 1865, when enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, were finally informed by Union soldiers that they were free. This came more than two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued in 1863.
At Monday’s City Council meeting, Mayor Tim Smith signed two proclamations — one acknowledging Juneteenth and the other Pride Month.
“It’s a great first step,” Erickson said in a phone call. “Juneteenth is important for Black people because it’s a time when we mourn our past, we reflect on our present and we celebrate our future.”
However, Erickson and other members of Neighbors for Safer St. Albans feel the city has a lot further to go.
Another item on the agenda for the council meeting was the need to update policies on social media usage for city officials.
As reported June 18 by VTDigger, images were found in September of St. Albans Recreation Program Manager Andrew Gratton in blackface at a Halloween party about a decade ago. More recently, Gratton posted a tweet referring to Caitlyn Jenner, a transgender woman, as a “woman” in quotation marks.
Gratton expressed remorse for the postings and pictures, according to the article.
City Council member Michael McCarthy said this was a sign that real change is needed.
“We did have, you know, issues around a staff person and the social media posts that were really unacceptable. We need to talk about how do we communicate to staff what our values are, and how do they show up. We need to have that be an inclusive authentic community conversation,” McCarthy said.
Concerns like these are why Erickson and Neighbors for Safer St. Albans called on the City Council to create a new equity, inclusion and belonging committee, they said.
Reese Kelly, another member of the group, said that while acknowledging Juneteenth and Pride Month for the first time was important, “The need for a council or committee is to make sure that actions around policies and practices and business operations across the city actually align with the same spirit that went into the proclamations of Juneteenth and Pride Month.”
The idea of the equity committee has received positive feedback from the community and city officials. Erickson said that when he put the proposal on the Neighbors for Safer St. Albans Facebook page, they quickly got 50 to 60 signatures supporting the idea.
Michael McCarthy and Chad Spooner, two council members, both expressed support for the committee. In phone calls they each said the idea of an equity committee had come up months ago while the council was working on forming a police advisory board. The consensus at the time was to focus their limited time and resources on the advisory board, but now they can turn to the equity committee.
”I made it pretty clear at the council meeting. I want that on the agenda,” McCarthy said, adding that he will be working with the city manager to make sure there’s a proposal for how the equity committee will function ready for their July council meeting.
“And then I think the community should have a chance to weigh in on that initial draft proposal, and we’ll probably actually get the committee put together on like an August, September timeline,” McCarthy said.
Erickson said he has been happy with the council’s response to the call for a committee and trusts they will implement it but has some concerns on how that will be done.
“I think the concern that we as a group might have is that they don’t consult with the people who would sit on that committee and, you know, make sure that it actually makes sense,” Erickson said.
He said that in addition to the obvious input on policy the committee could provide, he wants to see it have a say in many other city boards and decisions.
As an example, Erickson pointed out that the summer concert series held in St. Albans consists of all white performers when there are plenty of musicians of color in the area to showcase. Erickson thinks the committee would be “the kind of thing that could really put its tentacles in a lot of different areas and help the city in general.”
When asked about next year, McCarthy said he hopes that the city will “celebrate Juneteenth and Pride in a more official way,” with city facilitation and possibly city funding.
However, he wants to be careful that “what it is and how we show up is really driven by the people from the community we’re celebrating — rather than us, who are, you know, white people sort of doing it on our own,” McCarthy said.
Spooner, another council member, said he hopes to see the city take more initiative around organizing next year.
“I personally feel we really messed up this year. I think we had a great opportunity and we missed it. There’s no excuse, really. We’re going to learn. We’ll be better about it next year,” Spooner said.
Spooner has plans to start focusing the council on making plans for the city’s approach to Juneteenth and Pride in January of next year, when budgets are discussed.
“We should be celebrating Black History Month — I also think Women’s History Month. So we really have to start in January, and it’s gonna roll through,” Spooner said. “So we have failed if we’ve waited this long next year to do anything.”
For now, Erickson, Kelly and others from Neighbors for Safer St. Albans say they’re taking the opportunity to celebrate their way — with a focus on intersectionality. That means they’re recognizing the ways racial and LGBTQ issues are linked.
“Reier and I are being really intentional around having the Juneteenth celebration also be a Pride celebration, knowing that, because we don’t have either of them in St Albans, we actually have the unique opportunity to create them from the intersectional framework that we hold dearly,” Kelly said.
“And that feels like a really positive and unique thing that we’re bringing about,” Kelly said.
Clarification: References to St. Albans City have been clarified.