This commentary is by Nicholas Boke of Chester. He is a freelance writer and international education consultant.
It’s been quite a while since many of us have felt so positive.
We — the very active members of the Chester Town Democratic Committee and others — have been busy ever since Trump took office. Trump’s inauguration got the half-dozen stalwarts who showed up for monthly CTDC meetings to jump to twenty-five virtually overnight.
In January, we created committees that dug into everything from educational reform to legislative activities to “In case of fire,” which met with regional nonprofits in case of floods, or if Trump’s activities made Vermont less safe. CTDC organized and publicized demonstrations: Hands Off!, then May Day Strong and No Kings.
But nothing has had quite the impact that the June 9 hour-and-a-half presentation by Vermont’s Attorney General Charity Clark had. When her mother, who lives in Chester, suggested that the AG might be willing to speak here, the CTDC speakers’ series committee got in touch with Clark’s people, reserved the town hall, told the police chief what was planned and spread the word.
Clark was to explain at some length what she’d been doing, and then respond to questions people had written and given to the moderator.
Some hoped that MAGA folks would come, while others feared they might disrupt things. A dozen or so waited on the green outside the town hall amid signs that read “AG Clark — Lawless and Reckless” and “AG Clark Defiles Her Oath of Office.” I asked if any were going to come hear what she had to say. “Some of us will,” I was told.
Charity Clark really knew what she was doing, and nobody tried to “disrupt” anything. After being introduced by select board member Arne Jonynas, she spoke to the 70-some people for 20 minutes, then opened for questions.
By my count, there were 25 questions. Some focused on details of the 14 lawsuits (as of this writing) that she and the 24 state Democratic AGs had set in motion. There were also questions about the nature of due process, what ICE could demand of local law enforcement members, and what Trump’s sending the National Guard into the LA demonstrations might mean.
By my count, six of the questions came from people who were trying to unsettle her. There was one about how many “illegals” there were in Vermont — Clark said she preferred the term “undocumented people” and that she didn’t know, because it wasn’t within her bailiwick.
Several people asked how much the lawsuits were costing. “Nothing,” she said each time, explaining that protecting the people of Vermont was her and her staff’s job, the lawsuits being designed to do just that. What about drugs and crime in Vermont? She responded that her office had sued large drug sellers and manufacturers, but didn’t take on the local problems.
And so on.
When she didn’t have an answer, she said so. She periodically reminded the audience that the midterm elections were coming up, that protests and letters-to-the-editor matter, that although Trump always pushes back he eventually complies with court orders.
I’ve been following Charity Clark’s activities — and those of the other attorneys general, along with groups like Common Cause and the ACLU — closely in recent months. Such people seem to be all that stands between our fragile, flawed democracy and a burgeoning oligarchy of the rich, an autocracy that would ignore the millions of people at the other end of the economic spectrum, to say nothing of protecting those desperate to escape an oligarchy elsewhere. To say nothing of protecting moderately “safe” folks like myself.
Mostly though, this brave woman who is on the firing line of what some are already calling a constitutional crisis is working hard to make sure the country does not slide fully into chaos and/or dictatorship.
Donald Trump, she began the evening by saying, “has an utter contempt for the rule of law.” But, she went on, “This is America. No man is king.” Her job, she explained, “is to protect Vermont and protect the Constitution.”
She believes, she told WCAX last week, that “President Trump … is testing the boundary of his power as president, and it’s up to the courts to lay the boundaries and say, here’s what the Constitution says you can do.”
I and lots of others left the Chester Town Hall comforted, more hopeful than we’ve been for a long time because this courageous woman is hard at work.
