SOUTH NEWFANE — I was shocked. Boy, am I naive. When I read Randolph T. Holhut's report about former Bennington State Rep. Kiah Morris, I could not believe it.
What? So we know who the threats against Morris came from - they were not anonymous? And we allow this avowed racist to come right into the “safe space” (one would think) of the attorney general's news conference and threaten Ms. Morris with a racist T-shirt and a gun in his belt?
Is this Mississippi in 1965, or Vermont today?
Oh, it's “legal.” Well, then, we need to change that law. Try denying the Nazi Holocaust in France and see how fast you end up in jail. Hate and threats cannot be legal.
You are telling me that if a woman's estranged husband shows up at her job with a threat and a pistol that nothing will happen, that it's his right? B.S.! If it were a black man with a gun threatening a white legislator, believe me, something would go down - fast.
I cannot believe our Legislature did not walk out as a body, in solidarity with one of their own being hounded out of office like this.
Somebody tell me what I am missing. Are we going to let this go down? If so, then that is the end of any civil, decent politics in Vermont. If they can do this to Morris, they can do it to any of us.
I, for one, will go to the next Lost River Racial Justice meeting at The Root, and I plan to inform myself from those who have been in the struggle for a long time.