The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman is a VTDigger podcast that features in-depth interviews on local and national issues. Listen below and subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts.
Thousands of Vermonters from nearly every county took to the streets to voice their outrage at the Trump administration on Saturday, March 28, in the third No Kings protest. About 50 rallies were held around the state. Nationally, 8 million to 9 million people turned out to over 3,000 demonstrations in what organizers say was the largest day of protest in American history.
The Vermont Conversation spoke with a number of people at the Statehouse in Montpelier, where thousands of protesters came to rally and listen to speakers. Many expressed their opposition with clever signs, like one with tennis balls attached to it that said, “Free Balls 4 Congress.” Another read, “Sorry for Being Weird. This is My First Dictatorship.”
Barre resident Guy Rock was attending his first protest. He was wearing the military fatigues of his brother, a 16-year service veteran. Asked why he came to the rally, Rock replied, “Donald Trump’s a criminal. He’s guilty of treason. … He’s the greatest threat I’ve ever seen to our way of life. ICE is an extension of him.”
Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., fired up the crowd from the steps of the Statehouse, but he was a little bleary-eyed when I caught up with him. He had debated funding for the Department of Homeland Security into the wee hours of the previous night.
The Senate ultimately voted to fund the department except for ICE. The House later voted down the Senate’s funding bill, leaving DHS partly shut down. I asked Welch what the midnight debate was about.
“It’s all about the outrage of what happened in Minneapolis, where we saw an incredible rampage of violence by ICE. They literally murdered two people,” he told me after addressing the crowd. “They should be required to abide by the same rules, the same training as any other law enforcement agency in our country, like in Burlington or in Montpelier.”
The war in Iran “is a disaster,” Welch said. “This could be another forever war. It’s $2 billion a day. He’s going to be asking for $200 billion. That’s $1,400 a household. We should be funding an extension of the health care tax credits. We should be providing workforce training for kids.”
Welch added that he feels the No Kings protests are important. “The rallies allow all of us to come together and share our hope that if we stick together, we keep marching forward, despite a lot of setbacks and despite the odds being against us in many cases, that we can prevail.”
Rep. Anne Donahue, I-Washington-1, was outside on the Statehouse lawn. She has represented Northfield and Berlin for 24 years. Once a Republican, she is the lone member of the Statehouse who left the Vermont GOP because of Donald Trump. She said there wasn’t just one issue that pushed her to leave the Republican Party and become an independent, but “you wake up every day and there’s something worse happening.”
“I really fear for our democracy,” said Donahue. “It’s at tremendous risk right now, and a big part of that is people not speaking up and not putting that stake in the ground.”
James Lyall, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, said: “There are more of us than there are of them, and as long as people continue to show up for one another, creatively, nonviolently and consistently, there’s absolutely no question in my mind that we will overcome what we are facing.”
Two young men wearing red “Make America Great Again” caps stood out in the crowd. Seth Fewer, 15, is a freshman at Spaulding High School in Barre. He has tried to launch a chapter of Turning Point USA, the conservative student organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk, but he was unable to find faculty sponsors in his school.
I asked him how he felt about the war in Iran. “I don’t support war, but considering this is a country that’s been preaching ‘death to America’ since like the ’80s, people have to realize that this is a country that we really have to deal with strongly,” he said.
Fewer, who was sporting a Charlie Kirk T-shirt, conceded that starting a war “is not what (Trump) promised us … but most of (his) policies are good, and that’s what we need for America.”
Dr. Dan Goodyear, a family practice physician in Richmond, was in the crowd, holding an American flag. “This country’s democracy is at risk right now, and I think that has a direct effect on people’s overall health in the long run, the stress that it causes, the risk with people getting improper health care or subpar health care. We need to stand up and rebuild the democracy back to what it was.”
“It enriches my soul to see people who care, who are believers in truth and democracy and solidarity to come together and have a shared experience like this. It’s nothing but empowering,” Goodyear said.
