 Good morning. You are with the Vermont House Government Operations Committee. We are beginning our work this Thursday morning on Prop 2, which is a proposal to amend the Constitution. What I would like to do is first invite Legislative Council Amaran Aperjaley to share with us the text of the proposed constitutional amendment, and then maybe remind the committee briefly. I think we're all somewhat familiar with this, but remind folks who might be following along outside for the first time what the process is of amending the Constitution of the state of Vermont. So welcome, Amaran. Morning, everyone. For the record, Amaran Aperjaley, Legislative Council. I'm looking at our post of materials today, and I'm realizing I do not have a copy of Proposition 2 on here. So just a moment with you. I think that could you describe where you might find it to put it up on our page? I will send a link to Andrea also, but there if you go into the document overview of proposal two, then you click into that document. You'll see at the very top, it says overview of proposal two as proposed by the Senate. If you click that link, it will take you directly to the document so we can walk through it from there. So you'll see I have a couple of materials that were actually prepared by my predecessor, Betsy and Rask, because this has been going on since the previous biennium. So a lot of those materials are carrying over and rather than reinvent the excellent wheel that Betsy had made, I am sharing those materials with you today. So looking at the proposed amendment to the Constitution of the State of Vermont proposal two. You have the first section. This proposal would amend the Constitution of the State of Vermont to clarify that slavery and indentured servitude in any form are prohibited. And then section two, article one of chapter one of the Vermont Constitution is amended to read. You'll see the added into the title of the article and indentured servitude as also prohibited in addition to slavery. And then the paragraph in article one will now read that all persons are born equally free and independent and have certain natural inherent and unalienable rights amongst which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. Therefore slavery and indentured servitude in any form are prohibited. Moving into section three on page two, effective date. The amendment set forth in section two shall become part of the Constitution of the State of Vermont on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November 2022 when ratified and adopted by the people of this state in accordance with the provisions of title 17, chapter 32. Excellent. Questions from committee members? All right. So I think next what I'd like to do is invite Peter Teachout, who is a professor at Vermont Law School and joined us when we moved this constitutional amendment in the previous biennium to share with us some context and history around this question of prohibiting slavery in the Vermont Constitution. So welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Can you hear me? OK. Yes, we can. OK. I prepared a very brief PowerPoint. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to pull it up. I see a little share screen thing down at the bottom of the screen. If I click that, would that allow me to bring up the PowerPoint for my presentation this morning? It would if we make you co-host. So we can certainly do that. And you are now co-host. And so you should be able to click that button and find the PowerPoint on your desktop to share with us. OK. Let's see if I can find the PowerPoint then. How about this one right here? OK. And now share. There we go. Can you see it? We can. Thank you. OK. Hold on just a second. There we go. OK. It's really a privilege to be able to meet with the committee this morning. My testimony is going to consist of two basic points. I'm not sure they will be welcome, but I am going to make them. The first point is running a little bit counter to I think this current right out there is that it's not necessary to amend Article 1 in order to make clear that under the Vermont Constitution, slavery has always been prohibited. Not just adult slavery, but slavery period. I'm going to make that point in my presentation this morning. The second point I would like to make, and it's a very simple one, which is if you want to amend the Constitution, you think it's important to do so, then I think the proposed language is the best way, the clearest and the cleanest way to do it. So if I could proceed with my PowerPoint presentation as a basis for my comments, there are just 11 slides I can elaborate on those points. Why don't we start then with the language of Article 1 of Chapter 1 as it appeared in the Vermont Constitution of 1777? The very first words are that all persons are born equally free and independent and have certain natural, inherent, and unalienable rights. And the question is, did that include people who had been brought into the state as slaves? I don't know of anyone who claims the framers did not intend to include those who had been brought into the state as slaves as persons within the meaning of this provision. We tend to somehow jump over that and go to the complicating language, but this language is absolutely key, that the framers of the Vermont Constitution wanted to include within the meaning of all persons, slaves, indentured servants, all persons. And the basic proposition is that all persons are born equally free and independent and have certain natural, inherent, and alienable rights. It doesn't make a distinction between minors and adults. It's all persons. Now, the second point, which is also important, is that in 1802, during this period when the Constitution had first been adopted, the Vermont Supreme Court held, our Constitution is express. No inhabitant of the state can hold a slave. Didn't say no inhabitant of the state can hold an adult slave. It said, no inhabitant of the state can hold a slave. And it went on to say that if anybody comes into the state and brings with him or her a bill of sale for a slave, whatever legal effect that bill might have in other states, quote, the bill of sale ceases to operate here. Now that had important implications, okay? How was it interpreted in practice? It is true that subsequent to the adoption of Article 1, some people brought slaves into the state and kept them in slaves here. And we are indebted to the research that Professor Whitfield has done to show us instances where that, in fact, happened. Some people brought into the state bills of sale, claiming to vest ownership in slaves. That's also true. But I will tell you, I have not been able to find a single court decision at any level in Vermont in which the court was asked to uphold and enforce a bill of sale for a slave and upheld and enforced a bill of sale for a slave. And that was true no matter what the age of the slave was. The courts just weren't gonna do it because those bills of sale were not legally operable in the state, as the Supreme Court had said. So we can arrive at, I think there are some conclusions. One, the Vermont State Constitution was the first state to ban slavery. Not just adult slavery, but slavery period. Two, the slaves brought into the state were considered persons within the meaning of article one. There's no indication that anybody ever thought otherwise. And three, whatever the actual practice on the part of a few Vermonters, no inhabitant of the state could legally hold a slave and any bill of sale cease to operate in Vermont the minute it entered the state. So I think this is sound. I don't know that there's any disagreement about that, although I may be surprised. So what's the source of confusion? Look, article one goes on to provide, therefore no person born in this country or brought from overseas ought to be holding by law to serve any person as a servant slave or apprentice after arriving to a certain age. For males, certain age for females unless bound by the person's own consent. What's that provision all about? It's primarily about the institution of involuntary servitude. What do we know about it? We know that indentured service, indentured, it's not involuntary servitude. I misspoke indentured servitude. Indentured servitude was widespread in the colonies and in the new states after the Declaration of Independence in some parts of the country, indentured servants made up more than half the workforce. Why did this happen? It happened. Why not ban involuntary servitude entirely? Because it had proved to be a mutually beneficial arrangement for both employers and workers. Workers, the indentured servants got free passage to this country, something they otherwise couldn't afford. Passage underwritten in many cases by the ship owner in return for committing to a period of labor, often taking the form but not always of an apprenticeship without formal compensation. The problem was, it was subject to abuse. In some cases, the contract of indentured servitude extended until a person was 30 or older. So something had to be done with it. But in general, it was an arrangement from which everyone benefited. How does article one seek to deal with potential abuse? Simple, it just put a limit on the number of years that a contract for indentured servitude could be legally enforced without the individual's own consent, a number set for when males reached 21, females reached 18. After that, they were free as a matter of state constitutional law to make their own arrangement. So that was the basic, that's what that language is all about. So then that raises this question, why include slaves in that second part of the article? I will tell you, we don't have a definitive answer to that and probably never will. Remember the first state constitution was hammered out over a weekend basically down in Windsor and then everybody rushed off to defend the state against the British. So, but it seems reasonable to conclude that if this provision had not been explicitly included within its protections, those who had been brought into the state of slaves, a slave owner might claim, this provision doesn't apply to me. I don't have to let my slaves go when they reach a certain age because this provision only applies to servants and apprentices. So the purpose of putting slavery in there, and we don't know exactly how it got in there, it was not to endorse child slavery, but to cut off the ability of anyone who may have, like Jacobs, who may have brought a slave into the state from using omission of slaves from this provision as an excuse for not complying with it. That's a sensible interpretation. I think it's probably the accurate one. So let's face this question squarely. Is there any evidence that in adopting article one, the framers wish to give constitutional sanction to child slavery? I'm gonna speak bluntly. The answer is no, period. And I will tell you that if anyone says the Vermont framers wish to give constitutional sanction to child slavery or even we're complacent with doing so, they are just blowing smoke. That is not reflected in the history of this provision. Such an interpretation would have run directly counter to the view expressed in Windsor versus Jacobs that no inhabitant of the state can hold a slave, that any bill of sale for a slave would not be legally enforceable in the courts of the state. So people kind of get all tied up about Windsor versus Jacobs because Jacobs happened to be a member of the Supreme Court at the time the court made that decision. So let's just spend just one minute with that. In ruling as the Vermont Supreme Court did in Windsor versus Jacobs were the two justices who joined that opinion, just trying to provide cover for Jacobs who at the time was also a member of the court. Well, I will tell you what the answer to that is. There's no evidence that the principles expressed by this decision were not genuinely held by the two justices who joined it, not a stroke of it. Every evidence that we have indicates that these are principles that they genuinely were committed to that they felt were embodied in the Vermont Constitution. There's no evidence that the view expressed in the justices opinion was not widely shared in the state, not uniformly shared, but not widely shared. There's in fact no evidence that the two justices who joined in the opinion liked or respected Jacobs. There's some suggestion that they didn't, that they thought he was a little bit of a reprehensible character. And for they had many other ways of nullifying the contract. Other than issuing an opinion that clearly wasn't intended as a condemnation of slavery and approach and a reproach to Jacobs for his conduct in bringing into the state and holding a slave. All of that is very clear from the history. I'll give you a simple way they could have done it. So what did Jacobs do? He brought a slave into the state, a young woman kept her, exploited her while he could and when she became sick and infirm as an older woman he dumped her out on the street and let the local select board take care of her under some provision dealing with taking care of the poor. That's what he did, okay? So what's another way the court have handled it? If they wanted to take care of their buddy Jacobs, protect him, let him off the hook. What happened was the board of selectmen brought the bill of sale in and say, hey, look, this is Jacobs slave. And the court said that contract is not enforceable. We're not gonna recognize it. Okay, what's another way the court could have ruled? If they'd wanted to protect Jacobs but they really didn't, they thought that slavery of minors was perfectly permissible. They could have said, hey, Jacobs, you had a legal right to bring a minor into the state as a slave, they didn't say that. But once she turned 18, any contract you had was no longer operable. It was non void because of this provision in article one. They didn't say that. Instead, they wrote an opinion that condemned the institution of slavery that made clear that the Vermont constitution banned slavery across the board and that reproached Jacob for having brought this woman into the state. And I think they found him something of a reprehensible character because of his conduct in treating this woman when she no longer was usable to him. So general conclusions, no need to amend article one of chapter one of the Vermont constitution to make clear that it's a constitutional matter. There's no place for slavery in the state. That has been true from the very beginning. It has been the consistent view of the Vermont Supreme Court and the consistent view of virtually anybody who has ever considered it. Two, if you amend article one in the way contemplated, not a big deal maybe, but you'll be losing not the history itself but the conscious awareness of that history and why we should be proud of that history. Why we should be proud of being the first state in the union ever to ban slavery across the board. You'd be losing not the history but the conscious awareness of it. Three, but if you feel you have to do it, the proposed language of the amendment is probably the best, the cleanest way to do so. And I have spoken with this committee before about a possible justification for doing it, which is that long as that language remains in the constitution, it will be kind of a little bit of a thorn in the side of the political life in the state because some people will continue to read it as somehow sanctioning the slavery of those who are not adults. It doesn't do that, but some people may read it that way. So if you feel that the political costs of keeping the language in a way that it is written outweigh the political benefits of doing so and the historical benefits of doing so, if you want to do it, proposed amendment probably the best and the cleanest way to do so. Thank you, Madam Chair. I've gotten that off my chest this morning. Thank you for being with us this morning. Let's go off-screen chair and I'll give committee members a moment to raise their hand if they have any questions for you. So if you can click stop-screen chair, that will allow us to come back to the virtual room here together. I would love to do that if you've got to help me find, what if I get, let me just, can I get rid of it? I can't find the little green thing at the bottom of my screen anymore, but maybe I can by watch, I'm gonna probably disappear now, hold on. We'll bring you back if you do. It's at the top of your screen now, Professor. You should be able to stop-screen at the top. Which one, resume share, new share, what? At the top of your screen, you should see stop-screen share. Stop, I wish I could stop-share. There we go. Now we're back in committee. Thank you so much. Committee members, any questions for Professor Teachout? Representative Anthony. Is this language whole cloth construction and with no connection to the Pennsylvania document from which a great deal of hours was lifted? That's interesting, Representative Anthony. We did lift a great deal of language, but this provision was unique. The framers who met in Windsor did make a handful of changes to the Pennsylvania model that they relied on. And this provision is unique in this respect. Pennsylvania constitution did not ban slavery. Thank you. I think it makes a difference to our interpretation that this particular article was whole cloth. Thanks. Representative Leclerc. Thank you, Madam Chair and good morning, Professor Teachout. Thank you for being here. I know you've weighed in on this topic several times. I'm just curious when you spoke to us the first time here a year or two ago, with this cold pandemic, I sort of lost track myself. Has this been your consistent position from the very beginning as to where you are today? Thank you, Representative Leclerc for catching me out. I have vacillated on this issue from the first time I testified to the second and then back again today. I'm just a human being. I don't think my own position about what's the right course ought to weigh that much on you. I can give you the history and that's where I, I hope you respect my expertise, but I really have vacillated. So I think the last time I testified, now back in 2019, I said, initially I was opposed to this amendment, but I'm coming around to the position that maybe we'll just clear the slate, get rid of all the noise and the flak. And so let's just go ahead and do it. And as you can see from my testimony today, that I've kind of gone back on the other side of the cheater chatter and now I'm feeling, God damn it, it would be such a shame to lose sight of that history because it is not necessary. So thank you for catching me. Well, that was absolutely not my intent, sir, but thanks for answering the question. Any other questions from committee members? All right, thank you, Professor Tuchat. I would welcome you to stick around. You'll hear some other viewpoints and other thoughts on this as well. So next I'd like to go to Reverend Mark Hughes. He's here with the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance and I believe he has a couple of colleagues with him. And so Mark, I would welcome you to introduce yourself and the folks you have with you and let us know who you would like to have speak first and we'll move through our next set of witnesses. Good morning. Absolutely, good morning to you, Madam Chair, for the record, I am Reverend Mark Hughes with the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance Justice for All. I have with me a few folks, some great folks. I have the executive director of the Vermont Intervated Action and a good friend of mine, Debbie Ingram. I would just add that it was Debbie, she was the original senator that put this proposal forward back a couple of years ago. That was just the year after you had age 25, HR 25 in your committee, HR 25 for those of you who are still here at that time in 2018 was a resolution that we were asking you to put forward to urge the 2019 Senate to take up this proposal that unfortunately never made it out of your committee. So the following year, that's what Senator Ingram did, she did put forward that proposal. I also have the Reverend Dr. Arnold I. Thomas with the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church of Jericho, who's also a board member of the foundation, he's with us. And I also have Max Parthes who is on the state coordinating committee amongst other things, which I don't have time to tell you all about. Oh, the state coordinating committee of our national partners, the Abolish Slavery National Network. So excited to be here with you and looking for my notebook, if you could just bear with me for about 30 seconds, looking for my notebook. Thank you, I found it. So this is the proposal too, Declaration of Rights clarifying the prohibitions on slavery and indentured servitude. Today is actually a pretty big deal, pretty big deal today. That's why we're my nice suit jacket, Madam Chair. This is a really big deal being at this place. This in fact may be one of the most consequential things that this committee ever takes up or is done at least to date. Because the work actually dates back to a national story, not just a state story, although the state predates the nation, which is relevant because when we talk about anything that the state is doing, it essentially inform the nation. The purpose of this proposal was originally, the original purpose of the proposal was to eliminate slavery. And it was to do so, I think what we started with is just eliminated reference to slavery, which was an interesting conversation to be having and it caused them, as you all recall, some interesting interactions, even amongst ourselves, we couldn't even agree on what that meant. And though our understanding of the need to amend the constitution, it has changed. We know now more than ever that Vermont must be clear in her position that slavery is prohibited, period. So the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution states neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except for the punishment for crime, whereof the parties shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Which means when the ink dried in 1865, we moved as a nation from a nation of settled slavery to a nation of prison slavery. And we've been that every since. That's what the 13th Amendment means. And it means the same thing to all 50 states to include Vermont. Now, the Vermont Constitution, as I said earlier, it predates the 13th Amendment as well as the United States Constitution, which permitted slavery without exception. And instead, our constitution, what it does, it offers, I used to say two, but I'm going to say three. So the professor is not the only one vacillating here. So I moved from two to three. These are exception clauses in this constitution for those under the age of 21 years. It used to be 18 for women and 21 for men, but someone found grace in 1924 and decided to make them all 21, because I guess that was better. The second point, the second exception clause is for a person's own consent. I would imagine there might be circumstances under which a person would give one's own consent for being a slave. I don't know when those would be, but it's yet an exception clause. And then the other one is if bound by law for payment, debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like, which translates after 1865 to the criminalization of poverty, but we'll come back to that. The Vermont Constitution, it also failed to negate the crime exception clause in the United States Constitution. It failed to negate that unlike a few other states that are starting to do that. So we're not the only states that are a policy slavery. There are those that are before us, and Max Parthas will come and tell you more about that happening on the national level. So the constitutional amendment purpose language approved by the Senate in 2019 is really simple. It just says this proposal would amend the constitution of the state of Vermont to clarify that slavery and invention servitude in any form are prohibited. With only one dissent of 180 legislators, this proposal arrives to you to complete the legislative process of this landmark constitutional amendment. This is it. The Senate has voted on this and has made a statement twice with one dissent. You voted on this previously, unanimously, no dissent. Now we're back. It is vitally important that we acknowledge that for nearly 245 years, slavery has been prohibited only after arriving at the age of 21 years, unless bound by the person's own consent, after arriving at such age, or bound by the law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like. It's the constitution. More importantly, during this process, now is the time for us to accept Vermont's role in laying the groundwork for the incorporation of slavery into the United States constitution and our silence on the matter of the exception clause of the 13th amendment for the last 157 years. Slavery and invention servitude in any form are prohibited. That is what we're asking you to do. In the Bellagio-Harvard guidelines on the legal parameters of slavery, the research network on legal parameters of slavery stated that slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all powers attacking to the right of ownership are exercised. Ownership. Ownership. Think about that. Do we wanna be a state that ascribes to owning people? Forget about what's in the constitution right now. Maybe the professor had some points. Who knows? Let's talk about the 13th amendment because the language that we're placing in this constitution completely negates the 13th amendment and says definitively that slavery under any circumstance is prohibited. That is all. End of conversation. United Nations, the Human Rights Council, there was a report of a working group of experts of people of African descent on its mission to the United States in 2016. You can read it. This is what they quoted. There was a profound need to acknowledge that the transatlantic trade in African enslavement, colonization, colonialism, were a crime against humanity. In our among major sources and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, Afrophobia, xenophobia, and related intolerance. It goes on to say that past injustices and crimes against African-Americans, quote, need to be addressed with reparatory justice. That's the United Nations. Now, I know H-478 hung on the wall last year for two years when we started to talk about reparations and we know that the 378 is on the wall in house right now and there's a preferred conversation that's more palatable that we'd rather discuss truth and reconciliation. We'll talk about that later. Despite substantial changes since the end of enforcement of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, a systemic ideology of racism ensuring the domination of one group over another continues to impact negatively civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights of African-Americans today. The same report from United Nations. In 2021, there was an annual report from the United Nations High Commissioner and she said this, what systemic racism often manifests itself in pervasive racial stereotypes, prejudice, and bias, and is frequently rooted in histories and legacies of enslavement and transatlantic trade of enslaved Africans and colonialism. She went on to say systemic racism persists in large part due to misconception that the abolition of slavery, the end of transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and colonialism and measures taken by states today have removed the racially discriminatory structures built by those practices and created equal societies. And finally, she goes on to say the dehumanization of people of African descent, a practice rooted in false social constructions of race historically created to justify enslavement, pervasive racial stereotypes and widely accepted harmful practices and traditions has sustained and cultivated a tolerance for racial discrimination, inequity, and violence. We stated in our original proposal, the purpose of this work was to quote, serve as a foundation for addressing systemic racism in our state's laws and institutions. In your R-133 last year, when you resolved that racism was a public health emergency, you said, this legislative body commits to the sustained and deep work of eradicating systemic racism through the state, actively fighting racist practices and participating in the creation of more just and equitable systems. This is the heart of that work. This is the heart of that work. In closing, I would say, it's unfortunate but true that in 2022, we are having a conversation in the state of Vermont about abolishing slavery. It's unfortunate but it's true. America is having a conversation about abolishing slavery and our friends from the national abolish slavery, that national network will tell you a little bit more about that. So yes, the language that quote, we hold these truths to be self-evident is still aspirational in the United States of America in 2022. We are yet a nation of slavery. The truth is that Vermont has served as the linchpin to the institution of slavery in the United States and the sustainment of systemic racism as it is perpetrated, as it is perpetuated. Because of its historical position, its historical position on slavery, its historical position that it did not take on slavery and chronologically where it lies in history. That is where Vermont is. So historically, when we memorialize this and our children will, when we look back on this, this is a moment where we can say that for the first time in 245 years that Vermont has finally and definitively said that racism, that slavery is prohibited, slavery and indentured servitude are prohibited under all circumstances, hard stop period. This will be our moment. This is our time. This is the beginning. This is not the end. This is where it starts. This is not where it stops. Because when we say dismantle systemic racism, that means we are making an earnest effort of starting and what we're doing is we are now shaking it at its very foundation. And yes, there will be some who oppose and no, it will not feel comfortable. But this is the work that we must do if we want to hold true to what it is that we've committed to do as a legislative body and what we know we must as people, as humans, as the United Nations tells us. Thank you for your time, Madam Chair. May God be with you all. Thank you for being with us this morning. Committee members, any questions before we go to our next witness? All right. So let's go next to Debbie Ingram, former Senator and thank you for coming back to help see this through and for your work in launching this in the last biennium. Welcome and please share your thoughts on the passage of this constitutional amendment. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. And it really is a great honor to be back among you and a pleasure. So many familiar faces. I appreciate the work that you're doing, especially during the pandemic and having to do everything on Zoom. So for the record, I am Debbie Ingram. I'm the Executive Director of Vermont Interfaith Action, which is a faith-based coalition of over 70 member and affiliated congregations throughout Vermont that work together on issues of social justice. And I'm really speaking on behalf of about 16,000 of Vermonters of faith today all across the state who strongly support the passage of Prop 2. And we urge you to vote to do that. I think it's really important with something an issue like this, even though historically there are nuances and there are reasons for the language that is in the constitution now, I think it's just very important to, in our modern times, make plain language that anybody can interpret simply. That's really what Prop 2 is all about. It's removing any doubt, any equivocation about how Vermonters today view the abominable institution of slavery, the idea of one person owning another person. And that came about because they didn't view other people as people, they viewed them and they dehumanized them. And that legacy of slavery is what is causing the pain and polarization in our country today. We are seeing the vestiges of it for the last several hundred years. And this is really an opportunity for you as a body and for all Vermonters later this year to take a firm and unequivocal stand that we believe slavery is wrong and we view all people as truly people, as humans who deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. And so, on the one hand, it's very, very simple. It's very, very straightforward. On the other hand, it begins to address the incredible complications of what has been caused by slavery. And as Mark was saying, we have the opportunity then to go forward and look at ways to dismantle the systemic racism that plagues us in so many areas in economics, in healthcare, in education, just on and on the systemic racism that has damaged not just people of color but has also harmed white people. A system of oppression harms both the oppressor and the oppressed. And all of this has helped to cause the polarization that we experience in our country. So the members of Vermont Interfaith Action look forward to getting the word out to other Vermonters after you pass this, if you do indeed pass it. And we look forward to continuing the amendment process to really call attention to the ways that we can take further action to really ensure that all people, regardless of their race, have opportunities to succeed in life, to thrive, to live the kind of life that our constitution promises, the Declaration of Independence promised, and that we believe God promises to every single person to pursue life, liberty, and happiness to have a good and decent life. You have a big responsibility, you have a big opportunity to usher that in and we couldn't support it more strongly. So I absolutely urge you to vote in favor of it. And thank you for your time. Thank you for being with us this morning. Committee, any questions? All right, I'm not sure who you are handing off to. We have Max Parthas with us as well. I'm sorry, Madam Chair, we're gonna go straight over to Reverend Dr. Arnold Thomas. Great, Reverend Thomas, thank you for being with us this morning and we would welcome you to share your perspective on Prop Two. Well, thank you for having me. And I'm honored to be here and also in the company of such distinguished guests such as Reverend Mark Hughes and Debbie Ingram and Professor Teachout. I feel the need to go back to the language of the constitution, of the Vermont Constitution, which says no male person born in this country or brought from overseas ought to be holding by law to serve any person as a servant, slave, or apprentice after he arrives to the age of 21, years for, nor female in the like manner after she arrives at the age of 18. As Reverend Hughes mentioned, that was amended later on unless they are bound by their own consent after they arrive to such age or bound by law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like. Personally, I discover that the loophole in this document enables those in control specifically white men to determine what constitutes legal fractures preventing human freedom. As a result, many prominent Vermonters were able to openly bend or abuse the law by holding slaves beyond the age they were to be emancipated. Professor Teachout mentioned Harvey Amani Whitfield, a former member of my congregation who now teaches at the University of Calvary in his book, The Problem of Slavery in Early Vermont. He reports that among those violating the abolition of slavery were Vermont Supreme Court judge, Supreme Stephen Jacobs, whom Teachout mentioned, but also Levi Allen, the brother of Ethan Allen and Ethan Allen's daughter who returned from Alabama with two enslaved members of her household and lived on the Allen homestead for several years before these enslaved individuals were emancipated. As long as the constitutional loophole remains, Vermont runs the risk, especially in this increasingly hostile national and state environment for people of color, of returning to a contemporary northern likeness of Jim Crow South after the abolishment of reconstruction, where those in power, mainly white men, determined what constituted legal fractures preventing human freedom, especially the freedom of African Americans, especially in our criminal justice system, and allowing laws to be established, suppressing voting rights as we see occurring in many states within our nation today. We need to remember that when the Constitution, when the U.S. Constitution was ratified on June 21st, 1788, only affluent, tax-paying, property-owning adult white men were legally allowed to vote, which by the way constituted only 6% of the entire U.S. population being allowed, being legally allowed to vote. Only 6% of the U.S. population, when the Constitution was ratified, was allowed to vote. And these individuals were white, affluent, property-owning, tax-paying white men. Universal suffrage for all white men did not occur until 1858 when South Carolina abolished property requirements for voting. I'm sorry, North Carolina abolished property requirements for voting. Don't assume one moment that voter suppression is a moral travesty that affects only one segment of the population. It is a sin deeply woven into the fiber of this nation by a privileged racial minority. This loophole in the Vermont Constitution that has to be rectified, it has to be rectified immediately. But it is only the first step in the process of creating a common national measure and legislation that assures the freedom and suffrage of all Americans. That is a large, steep hill that Americans have yet to fully conquer. I'm gonna close my remarks with that. Thank you, Reverend Thomas. Questions from committee members? All right, please hang around with us. We may yet have folks who'd like to ask questions of you. Max Parthas is with us and Max for the benefit of folks who are following along from outside of our virtual committee room. If you would, in your remarks, share the contents or at least the concepts of some of the stuff that you have put in the chat because the chat is not part of what gets streamed out live and we don't want any substantive exchange of information to go on there that we can't share with our friends who are following along. So welcome and please share your remarks on prop two. Greetings, Madam Chair, co-chair and esteemed committee. Thank you for allowing me to speak here today. My name is Max Parthas. I am the co-director for the state operations of the Abolish Slavery National Network. We are a group that are seeking to end constitutional slavery for all citizens under any circumstance. I wanna talk about past, present and future. So let's begin with the past. Vermont likes to say that they were the first ones to abolish slavery when the exact opposite is true. They were the ones who introduced the loophole which allowed for convict leasing. And it influenced the constitutions of 25 states across the union as well as the federal constitution. The first place that it reached was Britain in 1779 where parliament enacted the Penitentiary Act which introduced state prisons for the first time. The act was drafted by prison reformer John Howard and jurist William Blackstone and it recommended imprisonment as an alternative sentence to death or transportation. The American colonies had been used as the destination for transporting English criminals and England was building prisons in America to provide a colonized workforce of European indentured servants and only two were built in London. That exception clause that was created by Vermont was further taken up in 1787 by the Northwest Ordinance in another iteration. Then it showed up in 1806 in an Ohio state constitution. Following that it entered the Oregon state constitution in 1843 and then it went through the Corwin amendment in 61 and the Alabama state constitution in 61. And then in 62 it was included in an act for the release of certain persons held to service or labor in the District of Columbia which was sponsored by Abraham Lincoln. And finally we saw its last iteration in the US constitution in 1865 which says that neither slavery nor voluntary servitude except as a punishment for crime where the party shall have been duly convicted shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction. I wanna point out first of all that simply by having an exception to slavery within your state or federal constitution is a violation of international treaties and the international declaration of human rights article four that states that slavery should not be allowed under any circumstances. So that is how our past began with Vermont leading the way and it opened the door for what we knew after 1865 as convict leasing which became a big industry in the United States. Now I wanna move on to the present. Vermont is not as was mentioned the only state that is involved in this effort. This is an international, I mean a national effort with international implications. Since 2018, four states are listed as abolishing slavery with no exception. That's Rhode Island, Colorado and Nebraska and Utah have already done it. In 2022, there are eight states including yourself who are on the ballot or moving towards the ballot to do exactly the same thing with 13 that have legislation in play already. Oregon and Tennessee is already on the ballot as you're seeking to do yourself. Alabama, California, Ohio, Vermont and Florida will also be on the ballot. God willing that they make it to these committees in 2022. Then in addition to that, there's another 15 states that are organizing as we speak to do the same. As we talk right now, there is a joint federal resolution on the table to initiate a 28th amendment that will counter the exception clause of the 13th amendment. And these bills are getting wide support. I talked earlier in the chat room about convict leasing. It's the missing link that nobody seems to ever mention in regards to what's going on. In 1865, when slavery was allegedly abolished, what happened was they moved from the individual being able to own people to the state taking over that job and owning people through these exception clauses which were adopted by 25 states, one territory and one district. And we don't think that is a coincidence at all. Convict leasing went all the way up until 1928 in the United States when it was finally abolished due to a cave-in in Alabama that killed 128 black men, women and children who had been caught in this cave-in while mining and were there under convict leasing laws. We saw this thing escalate even more during the 1970s with the introduction of the war on drugs by defamed and disgraced president Richard Nixon. The war on drugs started exploding our prison population and up into the 80s and 90s with the Clinton crime bill. We saw huge explosions then where people were being incarcerated all over the country at rates we had never seen before. In the United States right now, we have more black men behind bars. In our prison systems, then the top five populated African nations do combine. And we're not a black nation and yet we have more black men behind bars than all five of them have combined at this point. And the systemic racism is clearly evident. Nowhere in the union is there a state where white people are incarcerated at a higher rate than blacks regardless of the population. In your own state, which has only a 1.2% black population, you have an incarceration rate per 100,000 of 14 to one, which is unacceptable. And in addition to this criminalization of entire communities and turning them into commodities that can be worked or sold, you're also involved in human trafficking where your inmates who committed no crime in other states are being shipped to other states simply because you don't have a prison there to put them in. And so they're being sent across state lines in human trafficking schemes to put them in other prisons. Now we know that for-profit private prisons are a bad thing. Senator, your senator there made a note of pointing that out throughout his campaign, Senator Sanders. But what we don't realize is that for-profit prisons are one of the largest privately owned corporations on the entire planet. The GEO group, for instance, is one and another is G4S. G4S is listed as the third largest privately owned corporation on earth. And they are the largest employer on the entire continent of Africa right now. So our model of prison for profit has been adopted globally and being used in nations that don't have protections that we have. And so the human rights violations are absolutely astounding in places like Ghana, for instance, where men sit in these cages, need to back because that's the only way they can fit. And a prison that was built to hold 600 and currently holds 6,000. The abolished slavery national network has been very successful and we're moving these exception clauses and we're gonna continue to move forward to do it because this is a complete national effort, probably the largest coalition of states working on a single constitutional issue in our nation's history. Now, as far as the future is concerned, it is our goal, as I said, to see these exception clauses removed from every state that has them and to also incorporate anti-slavery language in states that do not have any language whatsoever. We're doing that in places like Texas and New Jersey. And I'm here to give you this information and hopefully that it will open your eyes about the circumstances to which we're dealing with right now. There is absolutely no reason for us to have an exception to slavery for any reason in any state constitution. And as I mentioned earlier, just by doing so, we're in violation of international treaties and article four of the Declaration of Human Rights. So with that being said, I will close out and say that please support this bill. We look forward to PR2 passing so that we can add Vermont to the list of states that do not have slavery in their state constitution anymore. Thank you very much. Thank you for being with us this morning. Committee members, any questions for Max Parthas? All right, Representative Bihowski. Thank you so much. First, I want to thank all of the witnesses today for their work and for being here and for sharing parts of our Vermont and US history that at this point isn't widely taught in our schools. And for some of us, it may have been the first time we learned these things about slavery and our history. So thank you for this. I agree wholeheartedly that slavery and all its forms must be abolished. And as you've pointed out, there is an exception in our 13th amendment that has been widely exploited to routinely disenfranchise and take away rights from many people, largely people of color. And I'm wondering if in your view, this amendment would close that gap and help give us a path to paying people who are incarcerated at the very least a minimum wage for their work. Max, would you like to say that? That is something that we don't want to get into. We're not here to talk about wages for people who are being forced to work. A primary goal is to end the forcing you to work part. We don't want to say that we don't want inmates to be employed because there is a system in the prisons where they need money to be able to do the things that they need to do. But that is a very separate conversation from forcing someone to do something against their will. And that is what we're focusing on, not the aspect of salaries or who should be paid or how much, but whether or not you can turn someone through ownership into a forced labor person. Thank you. Madam Mayor, if I may. Go ahead, Reverend Hughes. Thank you. I would say for the representatives question in terms of what next, I know we do have a tendency to kind of want to get ahead of ourselves and I understand the representative's passion. I think that at the stage that we're at right now, I think just getting the ball over the line here in this state and making sure that we join the states across the nation who are one by one expressing the same sentiment that slavery under any circumstances prohibited. And I hope Vermont is actually one of the states that actually leads the effort in just really getting behind this national effort that's seeking to implement this 28th Amendment that Max was speaking about. But as far as all of the ramifications, there will be many. There are things that, because that's the definition of systemic racism. What we need to do is we need to unpack this thing. We're already planning on coming back to this committee next session, talking about what else in the constitution needs to be undone, namely the title of chapter 42 in the constitution that speaks about Freeman. And that's a whole nother conversation and I have a lot to share with you on that. But there's a lot to unpack here and we have to figure out in what order we unpack it. So thank you for that question, Madam Chair. And I think the representative is right to be thinking in that direction. Thank you. Any other questions from committee members? Representative Colston. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm numb with trauma from these powerful testimony. And as a black man, I'm so grateful for all of you shedding light to this truth. So thank you. Thank you, Representative Colston. Any other questions before we shift to the next witness? All right. Seeing none, I wanna welcome Amanda Garces who is with Vermont's Human Rights Commission and welcome Amanda. And we would love to hear your thoughts on Prop 2. Thank you so much, Chair and members of the community. My name is Amanda Garces and I am the Director of Policy Education Not Reach for the Vermont Human Rights Commission. The HRC has jurisdiction over claims of discrimination in housing, state government employment and places of public accommodation. The HRC achieves this mission by enforcing laws through investigation and litigation, conciliation disputes, educating the public, providing information and referrals and advance effective public policies on human rights. I am honored to be here and thank our legislators to consider this amendment. Thank you for your time, effort and deliberation on PR2. This amendment is long overdue and I appreciate all the community members who have brought this forth. And I want to appreciate Reverend Hughes testimony today and everybody else. What we need is very simple. As slavery, in indenture, servitude and any forms should be prohibited. The HRC strongly supports amendment of Vermont Constitution to eliminate all language relating to slavery. Slavery, gene growth loss and the continuous disregard for African Americans has and will have lasted ramifications for generations to come. In our state, we grapple with policies and actions that disproportionately impact black Vermonters. I would like for us to fill these statistics which have been mentioned before. Vermont has the highest rate in the country of adult black male incarceration and it has the third highest rate of incarceration for African Americans overall. The percentage of blacks in Vermont prisons is 10 times the percent of blacks in the Vermont population. One out of every 14 black men are in prison. The Office of Civil Rights found in 2016 that black preschoolers are 3.6 times as likely to be suspended as whites preschoolers. Black children represent 19% of preschoolers but 47% of suspensions. In Vermont, we found that black and African Americans were two to three times more likely than white students to be suspended in our schools. We grapple with all of this. African Americans continue to experience hate crimes, bias incidents, racial profiling and be discriminated against in employment, housing, schools, hospitals and other places of accommodation. Over 30 years of studies and implicit bias tell us that we continue to discriminate against African Americans in every aspect of our society. I want to turn our attention to a recent field called epigenetics. Scientists who study this find that trauma experienced by parents can impact generations to come. We need to support the healing process by acknowledging all the harms and removing this language from the constitution is the first step. Black room monitors want this. And if we want any healing process to begin, we need to make this overdue change. We know about our Vermont exceptionalism mentality where our data shows differently and that the injustices faced by African Americans today are still here. For healing and repair to begin, we need to honestly acknowledge and take measure on the steps towards building a restorative relationship with the descendants of slavery. Much has to be made about the historical significance of maintaining the current language of the constitution. But an amendment does not erase our history. Furthermore, if the majority of people who interpret the plain meaning of the constitution as maintaining slavery for children, even if it's wrong because they're without the historical context that scholars and historians have, the amendment serves the purpose of eliminating this confusion. I also, I am the chair of the Act One Working Group and we are working on continuing to push for histories to not be erased, leave it up to their education to keep that in the history. We don't need that in our constitution. There are values that belong in the constitution such as the right to free speech, Mary, vote, bear arms. These are fundamental rights. And I know our executive director in the last session spoke about the legality. So I can't, I'm just gonna bring up her testimony, read a couple of pages just to make sure that I'm covering all the grounds. And so she was encouraging the committee to eliminate all language after slavery in any form as prohibited. And specifically she talked about the language regarding the right to serve as an apprentice or be bound by law or payment of debts, damages, fine codes in the constitution. And we do not want to keep that language because retaining this language, you potentially give it greater weight than you originally had. In theory, a legal argument could be made that the right to serve as an apprentice or be bound by law or payment of debts, damages, fines, costs or the like was so important to law makers that this right should not be impeded by human trafficking laws, criminal statutes that define consent. Case law that will have render constructural terms, null and void because it requires service that will be unconscionable or against public policy and force. So generally speaking, courts are very reluctant to order specific performance in routine contractual disputes. And then so we suggest that the language regarding approaches and contractual obligations do not belong here. So that's just the legal piece. And if you have further legal questions, we can ask our executive director. But that is what I have today. I really hope that you kind of feel some of those statistics, some of the realities and that we see this as simple as it is to give our black remanders a little bit of justice with this words. Thank you. Thank you so much for being with us this morning. Committee members, any questions for Amanda Garza's? Excellent. So I think it would be helpful to just talk a little bit about the process going, Representative Merwicky has a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. And it's not a question, but just a statement that I just want to affirm to all those witnesses that have put their heart and souls into sharing today that the lack of questions is not a lack of interest in that this is a very important issue for us that we're looking to move forward expeditiously on. And your testimony is helping us continue to push on for that. So thank you so much to all of you. That's a really good point to make, Representative Merwicky. It is our role as a policy committee that we need to review a constitutional amendment and then be prepared to report it on the floor. And so having a good sense of the history as well as a sense of the compelling rationale why we should move this forward is gonna be important when we take this in front of the entire house body. And so the next step in our process is to hold a public hearing. And at this moment in time, it is unclear from a standpoint of house rules whether we will be resuming in-person legislating next week or whether we will continue remotely given the surge in COVID cases. And so in order to plan for a public hearing which we are currently planning for the evening of the 20th, which is next Thursday, in order to plan for that safely. And I think probably for the convenience of Vermonters who may wanna weigh in on this, we're gonna make sure that we have both in-person and remote options available when people register. And so there's a press release that I believe has already gone out but I will check with my committee assistant to remind me if it has or hasn't gone out yet. There will be a registration link and folks can specify whether they intend to join us remotely or in-person. And I'll just add a caveat that in the event that house or joint rules declare that we will continue to work remotely for the next week, we will then need to have people join us remotely for the public hearing because the state house would essentially be closed because of the pandemic. And yes, the public notice has gone out about the hearing next week and it's on the general assembly webpage. So if folks wanna see the registration link, they can go there. It's our intention to hear at the public hearing from anyone who wants to share their thoughts with us and in order to be sure that we make time for everyone who wants to share their thoughts. We're gonna ask folks to prepare remarks that fit into a three to five minute time slot. But we will certainly take in written form any testimony that people want to give that they are not able to in that timeframe. Reverend Hughes. Madam Chair, I'm sure that NEDGE console has already taken all things into consideration. However, I was wondering if during the course of a public hearing, if there was not a public space available, the legalities, the ramifications surrounding that, whether or not that is something that we could actually pull off or whether we would need to wait until such time as there can be a place and I see Amarine coming in to do so. And if I could just follow up with that answer if possible. Amarine, revision of house rules during the pandemic and how that impacts our ability to hold a public hearing. Since I'm returning, Amarine Avergillie Legislative Council, I will need to check with Legislative Council Anderson as he is our open doors meeting expert and possibly with the clerk of the house to see how those processes and legal requirements intersect as I am unfortunately not an expert on that aspect, but I will look into that. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just obviously at this stage and again being, I think Senator Ingram will appreciate this being in the fourth quarter of the ball game with this Go Georgia with this conversation on abolishing slavery. We're very concerned that procedurally we don't slip. Obviously inadvertently, but we wanna make sure procedurally we're going down the right path from this point even to the Secretary of State's office in terms of language and how this thing is framed. But definitely we know constitutionally that this process is required, the hearing, public hearing. If in any way that there's any room in which it could be negated our actual execution of that, if it could be negated procedurally then that would nullify all of the work that we've done in the last several years so we're deeply concerned about that. Also wanted to just ask that those who are on and those who are watching would consider attending. If you go to our Facebook page tonight, we will also have an informational community discussion on this subject. And although Max Parthas doesn't know it yet, he's gonna be there and we'll have some conversations about what's happening with this policy. Thank you. Thank you, Representative Murwicky. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'd like to put something forward for our committee to consider when we have this public hearing that there have been situations before where I believe the right thing for us to do is when testimony is offered that we allow for people of color to make the first testimonies in this hearing. And I would like our committee to think about this. This had come up before and I checked with a ledge council and there is nothing in our rules or in our law that would prohibit that from happening. And I think it would certainly provide the perception that we especially wanna hear from people of color on this if we allow them to testify first and we set up the lines for this. But just something for us to consider before we have this hearing. I really appreciate that sentiment and would agree that we certainly wanna prioritize people of color in being able to testify on this we did not in creating the form that folks can fill out to register for the public hearing. We did not put a field in that form that says do you identify as a person of color? And so if in the event that this goes forward in some sort of hybrid or virtual format it may be difficult to figure out who gets tapped to be first in line when we don't necessarily know how people identify. So we should chew on that a little bit and certainly want folks to know that we will hear from everyone who wants to testify on this constitutional amendment and we'll do the best that we can to make sure that we're centering voices. Of our BIPOC neighbors. Representative Anthony. Thank you Madam Chair and thank you very much to all of you who testified today. It was very moving and informative. I think we ought to plan to a go ahead with the 20th. I don't know that there's any reason not to but to plan also that that will not be our only event and that would allow us as my colleague from Putney has suggested to structure both the messaging and the execution of a subsequent hearing pending whether or not it can be in person or it has to be hybrid. I cannot believe that even allowing three minutes per person our time will be exhausted and there will be people who wish to testify who will be unable to testify on the 20th. I can't believe that that wouldn't be the case and I think we ought to just plan for a second event and space it out so that if we are permitted to meet in person, so be it. If not, we still will leave no one who wants to testify who is unable to present his or her testimony. Thank you. I appreciate the sentiment representative Anthony. We, I'm sort of under the request of the speaker to move prop two to the floor as expediently as possible and given the unpredictability of the virus and when it might be safe to hold an in-person public hearing. I guess I will defer back to her if she agrees that we should hold on to prop two long enough to have a second public hearing that might be in person, but that is above my pay grade and also probably really difficult to predict. So I appreciate the sentiment but may not be able to do that. If I may just an observation, my understanding is so long as we passed this out and it appears on the November ballot, that's the way to enact it. I don't want to second guess, as you say, people above my pay grade, but frankly, as long as it's passed out and it appears on the ballot, that's the process that's outlined. Thank you. Yes, Representative LeClaire. Thank you, Madam Chair and I apologize for popping in now and I've had some technical difficulties this morning myself, unfortunately. I just have to say that a prior comment about speaking priority, my feeling is that desire is more discussion, committee discussion. Okay, we can certainly make time for that. So I believe that that is all the witnesses that we have for Prop 2 this morning. And so I want to thank all of you for being with us this morning and for sharing a variety of different perspectives on both the history and sort of the current implications of our constitution as it's written and your thoughts on whether it ought to be changed. So thank you so much for being with us and please tune in for the public hearing next week.