The state’s three-person congressional delegation issued a statement Friday afternoon denouncing a recent incident at an LGBTQ+ poetry event in which a queer person of color was harassed by protesters.
“Hate should have no place in Vermont,” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., and U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt. said in the statement. “It’s disturbing to see homophobia and racism loud and present here in Vermont.”
Toussaint St. Negritude, a 63-year-old Black poet, composer and jazz bass clarinetist who lives in Newark, hosted a poetry reading at the Cobleigh Library in nearby Lyndonville last Saturday morning titled “All our queer voices.”
A small group of people protested the event by chanting the poet’s name and holding signs with religious slogans such as “Prepare to meet thy God.” St. Negritude and library staffers decided to end the event as a result.
“I don’t know these people, but they were literally publicly condemning me,” he told VTDigger earlier this week. “It was horrifying.”
St. Negritude said he was particularly frightened by a confrontation with one of the protesters on his way out the back door. An older woman held her hand in a paper bag while approaching him, saying she wanted to give him something.
He described the interaction as “absolutely terrifying.”
The same woman confronted him again in the same way when he stopped at a local thrift store on his way to Burlington to attend Jazz Fest.
In their statement, Sanders, Welch and Balint said the incident was a reminder that the state “is not immune from the challenges of our time.”
“Extremism and hate must be answered,” Sanders, Welch and Balint said in the statement. “We cannot allow it to take root in darkness or hope it will disappear if we ignore it. We affirm, loudly and with pride, our commitment to an equitable, welcoming, inclusive Vermont.”
