 All right, good morning everybody. It is Thursday, February 25th, and this is General Housing and Military Affairs. And we are here this morning to hear further testimony on JRH2, which is the Apology for the Eugenics Survey. And as we know from our testimony, this has been a serious matter for us to consider. And we will continue to hear from affected communities today. This is, we heard on Tuesday, primarily from our indigenous population. And today we'll continue with, we'll hear from the Missuscoy Band a little bit later this morning, but also from folks from the disabled rights community and from the French-American community as well. I can't really under emphasize or overemphasize actually the importance of this testimony. And so committee, if we can be present and listen, and if we have questions, we can ask towards the end of our time. But this is an opportunity to hear what the real effects of the Eugenics Survey were on our fellow Vermonters. So with that, I'm going to start off with Susan Aronoff, who is the Senior Planner and Policy Analyst in the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council. And Susan, you testified last year. Thank you for coming in then. Thank you for coming in now and just pass the microphone over to you. Welcome. Thank you. Good morning committee. It's nice to see those of you who I know and I look forward to meeting you in person, those of you who I don't know. And I just, first of all, I want to start out with just a couple minutes to introduce the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council to you. We don't spend a lot of time in your committee. And so those of you who have received email from me probably noticed that I have a Vermont.gov email address. I am a state employee and the council is a part of state government or housed in the Agency of Human Services. I want you to know we are here to help. So year round, if you have constituent questions about developmental disabilities, services in Vermont, family members, issues, please reach out to us. Ordinarily, we do a sort of meet and greet at the state house and you would know who we are. And this year we know everything's different. So anyway, we're here to help. I want to tell you a little bit about our council and then I'm going to turn it over to one of our council members who's here today. So all 50 states and territories have a developmental disabilities council. Some are parts of state government like ours. Some are free standing nonprofits. We all have the same mission. We were all created by the same federal developmental disabilities act, the DD Act, which created a lot of like civil rights and other protections. And we have a main mission in life which is to provide access to the policymaking and policymaking lever for people with developmental disabilities and their family members. So that people with developmental disabilities and their family members can actually live by the motto, nothing about us without us. So if there are policies, it could be transportation, it could be housing, it could be education. If there are policies and services impacting the lives of people with disabilities in Vermont, then it's my job and the job of the council to connect the people with developmental disabilities with those policymakers. So our council is made up by a majority by law of people with disabilities and their family members. And then we have other people who have to serve on our council because they're part of state government or their service providers. And we have council members right now in every corner of the state, literally Derby Lyne to Bennington, Gilford to St. Albans. And I'm about to turn things over to Terry Holden who's a member from Jeffersonville or Cambridge, but that's a whole other story that she can tell you about. Before I do that, if it's possible for Ron to share Terry's story portrait, I would just like to tell you a little bit about Terry before she testifies. I sent that, I did send the story portrait to everyone. So if it's not possible, then we don't have to take the time right now. But I do just want you to know that we as a council are working on creating these story portraits for all of our members because they all have amazing stories to share. And so here's Terry's story portrait. And so there it went, there it was and there it went. Okay, I will, in the interest of time, just turn it over to Terry. And that's actually Terry's son right there on the cover. That's a different document that I sent you all, which was something that I hope you will read. And in that document, the Hello Neighbor Graham right there on the cover with the sunflowers. In that document, you'll find a lot of more information about the council and how to reach out to us. And with that, we'll turn it over to Terry. Thanks. Hi, good morning. My name is Terry Holden and I am from Cambridge Junction, which is nestled in Jeffersonville, which is part of the town of Cambridge. It's a Vermont thing. We're north, way north, central Vermont. When Sue reached out to me to speak about eugenics and how important this bill is to have a sincere apology about eugenics, I had to pause briefly and think of, how is this connected to disability rights, especially for my son, who is classically autistic and nonverbal. And the bottom line is, I think the eugenics policy in Vermont was pretty much underscored. It's the provocateur of something that we call the bigotry of low expectations. This is probably the single greatest barrier for my son is when people simply dismiss him and marginalize him because he can't speak, because he moves differently, because he processes things differently. It's as if eugenics gave people, gave society permission to discount and marginalize and even demonize people who are different. And it's been a big catalyst of this bigotry that holds back people who are trying to contribute, trying to find purpose, trying to contribute. And I think what is most important about this sincere apology for something that happened 80 and 90 years ago is this practice of marginalization and dismissive behavior and discounting people of different color, different gender, different intellect, different developmental progress. This practice has not stopped. It just goes under different names. And it's practiced differently, even in state policy. It's still the bottom line is if you're different, you're less. And this apology will be the first step in the direction of recognizing that how wrong that has been. You're discounting an enormous, creative, contributory part of our culture if you're discounting people who are different, regardless of their difference. And I would like to see it a really big deal made about this apology. I don't want it just a paragraph in a side column in a newspaper. I want it front and center. And I want people to understand how it's connected to the current behavior that is held against our children, our adults, our communities that just happen to be different from what they perceived as the better society, the better society is a diverse society. And we need to make that happen. And this apology is the first step. It's the first step to crack the door on that process of total inclusion, connection and purpose. So please, please approve it. Please take it forward. Please take it seriously because it is serious. It was the beginning of a long, narrow, dark road. And you've probably hearing my son singing in the shower when that timer goes off, I have to go. I have an 85 pound lab trying to jump in my lap right now. That's the problem with puppies. If you put them in their lap when you're a puppy, then they're 85 pounds. They still want to be in your lap. And that's a hardship. But please take this forward and pass it so we can continue to do the work and build the work of including our differently abled Romaners. Thanks a lot. I want to thank you all. I appreciate it. Bye from Cambridge Junction. And I'll take any questions. If I can't answer them here online, I'm happy to take them offline. If it's, if it would be all right, just in this little interlude, I do just want to let the committee know that one really good thing that you've done so far just by having this bill on your legislative agenda is you led us to make it part of our platform. I meant to say that at the start that the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council, as a result of you guys taking up this issue last year, we've had to take up this issue and talk about it and educate our own members about what is eugenics, what did happen in Vermont. And I will tell you, some of the people most impacted about this had absolutely no idea. And so I will share with you, we issued a statement this summer on the murder of George Floyd, but as a result of a conversation our policy committee had last week because this issue is back on our platform this year because of you, we're going to be trying to come up with a group statement on eugenics, something the council's never done before. So I just want to thank you, Terry, thank you. I really want to thank you for taking this up. Chip, I don't know if the chair is still with us. But Chip, I think you may be, Chair, are you here? Okay, Tom, doesn't sound like he's here. Okay, well, Terry, thanks very much for coming in. I really appreciate what you had to say to us. And Susan as well, it's good to see you again. We know each other way back when. So, you know, this is a very important piece of legislation to this committee and we have been focused on it now for the second year and spending many hours taking testimony and trying to do the best we can to accommodate all the folks that were impacted by this. And so thanks very much. No questions for Terry at this point. So I did again want to thank you for coming in and sharing your story with us. Everyone who has come in thus far and hopefully in the future will have an impact on the direction we go with this, with this apology. So thanks very much. Ron, can you tell me who we have next? Yes, sir. It's Max Barrows. Okay. Yes, I see Max here. Hi, Max, how are you? Welcome to the German Housing and Military Affairs Committee. And I see that you have a prepared statement. So the mic is yours as our chair always says. Well, thank you for that introduction. Yes, my name is Max Barrows. I live in Worcester, Vermont. I am a person with autism. I work for Green Mountain Self-Advocates. We support JRH2. My comments will focus on institutionalization. Sterilization was a horrific result of eugenics, but segregation into institutions was the final solution. The state of Vermont opened the Vermont State School for Feeble-Minded Children in 1913. Its name was later changed to the Brandon Training School. It is hard to believe that at one time over 600 people lived there. And over the years, a total of 2,324 people lived isolated and segregated lives at Brandon Training School until it closed in 1993. Green Mountain Self-Advocates was established in 1994 by former residents of Brandon Training School. They knew that just because the institution closed, the attitudes that built the institution still existed. GMSA is about supporting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to find their voice and live the life they choose like other Vermonters. We are a statewide disability rights organization and we support our peers through 20 plus self-advocacy groups meeting throughout the state. I want to quote a fellow Vermonter, Larry Bizonet. He is an internationally known disability rights activist and artist. Larry uses a tablet to type his words to communicate. Larry said, I quote, many years ago, most of my existence was spent behind the institutional walls of Brandon Training School. I am free of those walls now, but attitudinal walls are still very much placing large enveloped by ignorance, jackets of segregation around the lives of people with disabilities and especially those that don't speak. All of us self-advocates must make waves of change to pour over malls in places of leadership, leaders of government, moving mountains and clearing paths of acceptance, end quote. Larry is one of my mentors. I love his honesty and directness, so I had to quote him. Personally, I have never experienced living in an institution, but as a person with a disability, I am outraged that this happened and continues to happen across the country. Now I would like to introduce Susan Eichroth and she is a self-advocate and she will reflect on growing up in Brandon Training School. And after Susan speaks, I will add a few more comments. Okay, thank you very much, Max. That was well presented. We've all been assigned to read Building Better for Monters by Nancy Gallagher and the progression of this eugenics movement through the zoology and biology and embryology studies of these fairly cloistered intellectuals from numerous colleges around the country has really laid out a path for me at least, the path that this movement took and the separation of children from their families labeled feeble minded was shocking to me as well. So, you know, you laid out a great piece of this for us and it connects very well with what we're reading. Thanks very much, Max. Susan, is it you again? Oh, who would you like to turn the mic over to? It's Susan Eichroth, but she's on mute. So she just needs to be on mute herself. Oh, here, there you are. Okay, Susan, are you on mute? Susan, what a shocker. Two Susan's in the same meeting. I mean, none of her happened. Okay, Susan, now that you're on mute, the mic is yours. Okay, thanks. Like I said, my name is Susan Eichroth. I live in Shelburne, Vermont. Being in Brandon training school was like a prison, like when you go to jail. Like a criminal. Like a criminal, you know? My parents didn't want me, they saw I was a problem child. At Brandon, I spent all my time chasing other clients. The staff were not around every day. Um, what's basic? What? What's basically? Was basically going from workshop back to the dorm. That was my whole life. I didn't have any friends. I didn't know any better. I just felt like a criminal. And I knew other people felt that way too. I mean, everybody should be out in the community learning more things and getting different supports. Not many people had choices of what they did and how they did it. The staff would make the choice if they were around more, but they weren't. You weren't getting any education. They didn't care about us, that friends. We got away with more than we got punished. There was a man's cottage and a woman's cottage. I have been through a lot. I got molested. I got abused. I got thrown down on the floor in. Like I said. In what? Like I said. Like I said. Like I said. Like I said, my parents didn't want me because I had seizures and things nobody cared about me. And nobody looked out for me. I had to look out for myself. Now I live in Shelburne. I live in Shelburne. I live in Shelburne. Green Mountain self-advocates told me to be a self-advocate. As a self-advocate, I want to look out for other people with disabilities. I want people to look at reality. Reality means how things really are. I'm not afraid of myself being a self-advocate. How I've been shouldn't be shy. It was hard to learn how to speak up. I was afraid people would laugh at me. They would label me, label me and make fun of me. I got to speak at public meetings and conferences. Guess what? Nobody, no one made fun of me in facting, appreciate it and encourage me. People wanted to hear my voice, my message to other people with disabilities is to speak up, you can do it. Thank you. You're welcome. Well, thank you, Susan. So to continue with my comments, you may feel some relief knowing Susan and Larry's description of Brandon that it's in the past, but how often do you hear someone use the word retarded? It is a common insult that is usually ignored and rarely corrected. It is troubling that Vermont students with disabilities are nearly three times more likely than students without disabilities to be suspended. And the use of exclusionary discipline, restraint, seclusion, referral to law enforcement and school related arrest varies widely. And last year when COVID-19 hit, we were deeply disturbed to learn that people with disabilities were put at the back of the line when it came to getting treated. The United States Agency of Human Services, Office of Civil Rights and Disability Advocates sprang into action challenging hospitals in Tennessee, Alabama, Pennsylvania and Washington for discrimination against people with disabilities when rationing medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Vermont, we also work to change the wording of hospital policies to make sure that having a disability cannot be used as a criteria for restricting access to ventilators and other medical treatment. Today, people with disabilities have rights but people do not always respect our rights and choices. Our society is set up to make it hard for people with disabilities to use their rights. People with disabilities as a group are treated unfairly because of our disabilities. This is called ableism. Often people with disabilities are left out because the world is not built with us in mind. For example, a lot of buildings are built so wheelchair users can't get in. Newspapers are printed too small for people with low vision to read. It is so common for us to be left out that you might not even notice that it is happening. Just like sexism and racism, people with disabilities as a group experience discrimination. Ableism is part of the fabric of our society. People are more likely to hurt or abuse people with disabilities. Some people think our disabilities make it okay to hurt us. If someone hurts us, people might not do anything about it. People might think we cannot make our own choices. They might treat us like kids even when we are adults. They might try to control our lives. Ableism is not just about how one person treats another person. Being polite to people with disabilities will not eradicate ableism. Ableism affects decisions people make about our lives. These decisions add up. Sometimes they turn it into laws or programs that treat disabled people unfairly. For example, people with disabilities are often discriminated against in education, employment, healthcare and law enforcement. Disabled people don't have the same opportunities in life. They might be kept apart from other people. Ableism can make us feel bad about ourselves as disabled people. And this is called internalized ableism. Ableism can make us think we deserve to be treated badly and it gets more complicated. If you have more than one thing that makes you different as a person, you deal with more of the isms. As a black man with autism, when I'm doing anti-racism work, I need to have my disability experience understood. And when I'm working as a disability advocate, I need others to consider how being black impacts my world. Again, thanks for taking the time to hear our experiences and work on a formal apology. The resolution brings to light the horrific practices of eugenics. We cannot forget what has happened as you have demonstrated this week listening to those who have been left behind in the past is a vital step. We need to learn from our past mistakes. We need to amp up Vermont's efforts to get rid of racism and ableism in all parts of state government. We look forward to working with you to make it right to figure out what needs to happen to correct for this terrible mistake. My final comments are to remind us of the promise made by Governor Howard Dean when Brandon Training School closed in 1993. Governor Dean said, I quote, I'm proud to maintain the commitment of the state to the very kind of services that we still owe to the population that was once at Brandon and now and is now in the community. We will continue to assure that individuals receive supports and services. We will continue to assure that those services meet acceptable levels of quality. We will continue to assure that persons receiving the services are free from abuse and neglect or mistreatment to assure that the folks taking care of the people needing these services have adequate training and support. So our commitment does not end with the closing of this institution. Our commitment continues, end quote. Thank you for listening to our testimony. And I look forward to sharing your powerful apology with youth with disabilities when I teach them about the history of disability rights. And I will show Vermont's ongoing commitment to inclusion and serving and supporting people with developmental disabilities. So thank you for your time. Thank you, Max, really powerful thank you and very difficult to be reminded of Governor Dean's words and putting them into the context of what we have been able to accomplish and haven't been able to accomplish since 1993. Next up is AJ Rubin. And thank you, Susan, actually. Thank you, Susan, for your words as well. Sharing your experience is very, very courageous of you and I appreciate that. Thank you. AJ Rubin is the supervising attorney for disability rights, Vermont. Welcome, AJ. Thank you very much for inviting me here. And it's good to see everyone by Zoom. This is such an important topic. And I'm here today representing the Vermont Coalition for Disability Rights, which I'm quite honored to be here. I have to say I'm sort of emotionally overwhelmed by the whole topic today. And I can't say enough how important it is for you to be taking this up and I'm grateful for your time. The Vermont Coalition for Disability Rights is about two dozen organizations around Vermont, many of whom are represented here today, who band together to try and amplify the voice and the needs of people with disabilities around the state. I work at Disability Rights, Vermont. We are a federally authorized legal firm, a nonprofit legal firm, designated by the governor to enforce federal law to protect people with disabilities and to advocate for their rights. We were also the state's mental health ombudsman under state law. I wanna, you know, you can't have one of these discussions without giving thanks and acknowledgement to the land that we're here. This is sovereign Abinaki land. There's been wars and plagues and famines that have brought us to this point. But it's important to recognize that this is land that has been occupied for thousands and thousands of years by a people who are still here today. I will tell you my background that when I got out of law school here at Vermont Law School about almost 30 years ago, I worked first for the Mrs. Squoy Band of the Abinaki, the sovereign Mrs. Squoy Band under Homer St. Francis, who was the leader at the time of the movement to regain recognition and dignity and safety at that time. I worked with a family that had hidden out in a swamp land in the 1930s on Macquam Shore Road up in Swanton about 80 acres of land they had hidden out. The grandmother had taken her 10 or 11 kids there and hid for decades because of white hate and racism and eugenics. And that land eventually got bought by the state and made into a wildlife refuge because of the work from the Mrs. Squoy, a sovereign band of the Mrs. Squoy Indians. And so you can go visit it today. And it's a really good physical reminder of what the eugenics program and the philosophy did to not only the Abinaki, but of course people with disabilities. So also important to mention that while it is super terrific that all of you leaders of our state are bringing this up and been working on it for a couple of years, the people who brought it to your attention were the people with disabilities who suffered and the people, the indigenous people who suffered and kept fighting. And none of these ideas that Max Barrows and Sarah and Terry brought forward would be here today if it wasn't for people fighting and dying and struggling to make sure these voices were heard. The fight for indigenous rights, the fight for the rights of people with disabilities is an ongoing fight. And if we have learned anything over the last couple of years, it is that these rights are ephemeral. They could go away. You know, a majority of the US Supreme Court could do almost anything to the rights that we take for granted, like the right to control your body, the right not to be institutionalized, the right not to be sterilized. I can't say enough about how important it is to reiterate Max's statements that these things and Terry's statements, these things are still going on. We issued a statement in writing to the committee where we raised the specter of the Ashley X case that happened in Washington state about eight years ago where a woman with developmental disabilities had surgery committed against her to prevent her from having children because all the non-disabled people in the room thought it was the right thing to do, including the hospitals. And I think that's one of the most important things to bring up right now is that Professor Perkins was not known to be an evil person when he was at UVM. The third right, the Nazis, who took Professor Perkins' work and the religious people who backed the work here in Vermont and the religious people who backed the work of the third right to do the racial purity, these people did not think of themselves as evil. They thought they were doing the right thing because they thought they knew what was best. As someone mentioned, I think Terry, the better society. So what's important to realize is that that could still happen. The fear that people will think they know best for how other people should live and really the value of other people's lives is not something that is some other, some evil demon that you can look at and say, that's ugly, we will destroy it. In fact, it comes from within ourselves, it's implicit bias that we're all trying to work so hard, this fear of other. And it manifests itself in these horrific accounts from the 1920s and 30s and the apology is so important to recognize it. And the resolution to work to repair the damage is so important, important to do this work. And so the Vermont Coalition for Disability Rights and my own office, Disability Rights Vermont is incredibly supportive of this work. And we urge you to not only pass this resolution, but to do what Terry suggested and trumpet it from the ramparts, don't let it be a back page column somewhere. Use this as a way to ensure universal design going forward. Max said the world's not built for people with disabilities. It's also not built for women for a long time. But there's a concept called universal design that is a way to move forward and to build our society going forward in a way that is inclusive, that does provide alternatives and we can do that. I wanna refer the committee and I apologize for not having sent these earlier but hopefully Ron can help me with this. There are two documents I wish that you would review as you consider passing this important resolution to apologize and to begin the healing and to begin making a better society because we've acknowledged the harm that was done. The two documents are one, a document from our office, Disability Rights Vermont is a report called Wrongly Confined. We issued it in March of last year. It describes how the state of Vermont has failed and continues to fail to create the kind of community resources that Governor Dean talked about and that Max just reiterated to make it a safe, effective, welcoming place to live in our community for people who would have otherwise been institutionalized. I can tell you we are institutionalizing people right now in Vermont that do not need, should not be and are being harmed by being institutionalized. Our report Wrongly Confined not only details how it's obvious what the problems are and that our leaders of state government have failed to address them but we provide you with solutions so that we can fix this problem. The other report I would ask you to look at is the report from the statewide vulnerable adult fatality review team. This is a statutory body of which I am a member that is run by the Office of the Attorney General. The Vermont vulnerable adult fatality review team, they just issued a report this year, a couple last month to the legislature, you can find it. On page five of that report, this team of stakeholders including government officials blatantly says that Vermont has failed to provide care and safety for a specific portion of our population that has a specific disability kind of constellation and it results in death. So when we talk about apologizing for the harm that happened 20 years or 80 years ago, we have to do that because you can't make progress without acknowledging the harm. That's what adults do but it's also wrong to think the harm is in the past. We right now today have the ability to flood our community with accessible community supports with peer supports, with supported housing, support employment, mentors, vocational rehabilitation supports, non-coercive, accessible supports. We could increase employment, we could increase tax base, we could increase human capacity and decrease unnecessary suffering if we did that. So part of the promise of this resolution and apologizing for the harm that was done is recognizing how that harm occurred, why it occurred, who did it, it was us and how we have to work hard every day not to slip back into those bad patterns but in fact to move forward, to make our society really the better society which as Terry said again, a better society is an inclusive society that respects all people's abilities and amplifies and optimizes them. And so with a heart full of appreciation, I urge you to move this resolution forward and work together with all of us to realize the stream of a better society. Thank you. Thank you, AJ. Representative Triana. Thank you Chair Stevens. AJ, good to see you again, it's been a while. So I would have to agree with you that Perkins and his colleagues were not evil people but their lack of understanding and appreciation of what followed their research and their conclusions is inexcusable. So again, they weren't evil but as I keep reading into this book, a Nancy Gallagher's book, it just, the conclusions that are made, that are drawn that have proven to be erroneous over the years, the genetic connections that they made in their early research but the lack of understanding of how this could impact citizens of Vermont is in my opinion, unexcusable. I just can't get by it, it's really hard. So I just wanted to make that comment. I appreciate what you do and you're being here and we had a conversation with Chief Stevens yesterday that was telling us much of what you're saying is that moving forward and not letting this happen again and to cut this off in its process is where we hopefully will go and Representative Kalaki and I have agreed to get together and maybe put some language together to add to this resolution. So thanks, Ajay, thanks for coming in. All right, any further questions for the previous witnesses at this time? All right, seeing none, I am going to take- Oh, Susan had her hand up, I saw. Oh, okay, Susan. This isn't a question, Mr. Chair. I just in sort of closing out the disability portion of the test, when I again just want to kind of thank you and the committee, I think you were out of the room when I said that just you're holding these hearings as really generated discussion and action and movement in the disability rights world in Vermont and connection between our sphere and other spheres. So thank you very much for that. And I also just, I wanted to say I just sent another report following up on what Ajay's two reports. I just sent a report on the health of Vermonters with disabilities. And if you want to look at what the lasting impacts of eugenics and those policies were just look at the health disparities, any given condition, the rates are just so much higher, two to three times higher for chronic conditions for mental health conditions. So anyway, very sobering numbers and thank you again. Thank you, Susan. And Ron will post these reports and whatever has been sent in. And if anyone has electronic testimony or if their testimony is written down, please make sure you share it with us so that we can post it on our website as well. We're going to take a five minute break before we change gears to Kim and to Jeffrey Benet. So committee and witnesses feel I'll be right, we'll be right.