The Trump administration has committed to targeting and criminalizing groups of people here in Vermont. A vast network of Vermont organizations has come together to reject this and commit instead to building a society that has space for all of us. The world we want is inclusive – one that gives everyone the right to be here and to live without fear.

The administration is already attacking many in our communities: immigrants, the queer and trans community, organized workers, people speaking out for Palestine, and more. Already, people are losing their jobs, housing, and health care. The workforce is under assault. ICE is showing up in public places and workplaces to take people away, and the administration has threatened the sanctuary cities, towns, and schools that have kept some people safe. These patterns are poised to continue and expand. History teaches us that if we allow the authorities to come for some of us, they will eventually come for all of us.

The effort to divide us from one another is strategic. It prevents us from coming together to address the real roots of our common problems. For many years, corporate leaders and the administrations they lobby have been diverting our country’s resources to meet the interests of a few, at the community’s expense. They have grown the industries of war, fossil fuels, and prisons, while driving our schools, healthcare, housing, and infrastructure, and the affordability of daily life, to the point of crisis. These trends are worsening under this administration, entrenching the power of the super-rich. Scapegoating the vulnerable is a tactic. It distracts us from the growing failures of our leaders to meet our basic needs. 

In times of crisis, Vermonters stand up for one another. During the floods, our community did the hard work of caring, mucking, feeding, and rebuilding. In this moment, we call upon each other to do this again: to defend and protect each other when the administration tries to take away our rights. In loving solidarity with each other – and in recognition that what we allow to be done to others may later be done to us – we commit to standing in protection together. When called, our organization will mobilize its members to respond.

Alone, we may have little power to reverse this fascist tide. But together, we are immensely powerful. When we act to defend whom and what we love, we have already begun to build the kind of society we deserve.

 By signing onto this letter, we ask you to pledge to... (check boxes below)

• receive notices for rapid response if and when some in our community are being targeted and need our support.

• forward these notices to our members/supporters and to encourage them to show up at a specified location to protect those in need from harassment, according to the abilities of each to do so.