“The world might have learned about me because of some mittens I made,” she said, “but there's a whole intricate backstory that people don't know, that is interesting. And that has a theme of empowerment and generosity and kindness, and it has a path in the end to joy.”
Thirteen states have criminalized all abortion care. Over 500 bills have been proposed targeting LGBTQ+ care, including many that criminalize gender-affirming care.
“People think homeless people don't work, and it's not true. They work so hard,” said Brittany Plucas, 29, who spoke to the Vermont Conversation at the Hilltop Inn in Berlin.
Small said that anti-LGBTQ+ laws — from barring trans and nonbinary youth from participating in school sports, to book bans, to criminalizing gender-affirming health care — “are killing our youth. They are showing them that there is no hope for their future where they can be thriving trans adults.”
Desmond wants to inspire a new abolitionist movement. “Poverty abolitionists view poverty not as a minor social issue or an inevitability, but as an abomination,” he said
This Vermont Conversation with Ed Koren was recorded at his home in Brookfield in October 2022. Koren died on April 14, 2023, at the age of 87.
“The engine of every good story is human character,” says Tracy Kidder. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic, and the New York Times but he insists, “I'm a storyteller more than I am a journalist.”
Vermont’s system of care for people who are unhoused or in need of mental health services is in a perilous state. This fragile system will be further strained as pandemic funding for emergency housing is about to end for about 3,000 people who are currently living in motels.
Halpern has written about candidates for secretary of state who deny that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, attempts by election deniers to access electronic voting systems and the Republican war on voting.
The literacy gap is wide. Nationally and in Vermont, more than two-thirds of fourth graders read below grade level, according to the Literacy Network.
