 Hi, welcome to the All Things LGBTQ Interview Show where we interview LGBTQ guests who are making important contributions to our communities. All Things LGBTQ is taped at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which we recognize as being unceded Indigenous land. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show. Hi everybody. I'm here with Lydia Strike, who is making a return visit with more accomplishments to Harold. You may recall that Lydia came a year ago and a lot has changed in a year and you have been very busy. I see that you've been at the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival doing workshops. You were promoting your novel last year at the teacher's room. Are you still promoting it or do books have kind of a finite life where you go around and talk about them? Well, I think that they can have a finite life, but I think that my hope is that when I get back to the States, I'm out of the country now that I will talk about the book with groups and organizations that were closed because of the pandemic when my book came out. It was a very odd time to have something come out because really so many institutions that might be interested in it were not functioning and much longer than I thought it would, especially in America for things to come back to life. So yeah, I'm still doing things with it here and there over here and I'm talking to a translator about the book in Germany soon. So all kinds of that's good. That is good. And you're right that books never stop. I mean, it's in circulation now. People are going to read it four years from now. For better or worse. Well, I enjoyed it. But now we'd like to move to a totally different subject. But before we do that, I'd like to remind viewers, I'd like to read a little of your biography if you don't mind, although most of you probably already know it. Lydia Stryke was born in DeKalb, Illinois, birthplace of barbed wire and flying ears of corn. She grew up between DeKalb in London, England, and as a child also lived in Japan, where she studied Kabuki and performed on the stage and in Iran. So you really are a citizen of the world. After high school, she trained to be an actress at the Drama Center London, a career she pursued in New York for exactly one year before going back to school to study history, education and later journalism. She is a PhD in theater from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Dr. Stryke. Her dissertation, Acting Hysteria and Analysis of the Actress and Her Part, was in part an attempt to understand why her own short-lived experience acting the women's part on stage felt pathological. I love that part of your bio. She's the author of over a dozen full-length plays and a few short ones, which have been produced all across the United States and also in Germany and Canada. Your plays have been produced in many places, including the English Theater Berlin, where you're an artistic associate. What is an artistic associate? Don't ask me. You've kind of been a cadre of writers and you're full of abuse. I don't know. Okay. Scenes and novelers. I'm sorry. I think it just means that they've done several of my plays and so I'm someone they work with. I saw an interview about the novel, I think. Yeah. Yeah. That was very informative. Your plays have also been anthologized in collections by Heinemann, Applause, and Smith and Krause. And one of your plays appears in Acts of War, A Rock in Afghanistan, in Seven Plays. And also another play appeared in the anthology, Here Comes the Brides from Seal Press. I love Seal Press. That was fun. Yeah. Go ahead. They'd, I saw somewhere that they were looking for material and I think they had no intention of putting any plays in the anthology, but I had this little play that I dedicated to a couple that I know and loved in New York, both the past. And they felt it would fit that collection. Nice. They was really happy about that. And the play's called The End of Civilization as we know it. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Sounds great. Yeah, it's about two women in their 70s waiting to attend their grandson's wedding. And kind of, they look back on their lives. They had both been married to other people, to men, and how they fell in love. And their regret that they couldn't marry because they'd been friends since their youth. And it was just before marriage passed. So it was a moment where things hadn't quite turned in our favor. Sounds great. So we can get some of these plays by going to Broadway play publishing and dramatist play service. Yeah. And they're on my website. There's information about the plays. Yes, and your website will appear periodically throughout this interview, directing viewers to your work, because you really are kind of a renaissance person. You, besides plays and novels, you write essays and give presentations and do workshops. And I enjoyed your essays when I was preparing for the last interview, the essay about the Frankfurt Book Fair on Love, because I was wondering what that was like. It's really such a famous event. I enjoyed that. It's tongue-in-cheek, but it's also deadly serious about this poor writer who shows up and nobody wants to talk to her, of course, the humiliation of being there. And I thought I'd get my revenge that way. It was a great essay. I like writing essays. I really like that form. I only came to it pretty late, you know? But it's when I feel compelled to say something, I think it's the perfect film. When we last talked, I asked you about your plans and you said you were kind of involved in the novelistic enterprise that you thought you might continue writing novels, but now we have a play. So you've changed genres, not that anyone's committed to one exclusively. So how did you happen to return to theater? Let me explain that. Like all writers, we all have work that we have drafts of that we've written and put aside for various reasons. And so Safe House, the play we're going to be talking about today that has just been published by Broadway Play Publishing. Let's put a picture on the screen of the cover of the play. I don't see it, but that doesn't matter. Yeah, so it was a play that I wrote at a moment. I felt compelled to write it because I got kind of fascinated by the world of espionage and these moles that were uncovered. What were their names? I wrote them down. Robert Hansen. And Aldrich Ains. But and people, there was interest in it and I did several things with it. But then other events took over and that happens in an artist's life. So for a writer's life or whatever. And I wrote another play about the Iraq War. And then I, the one that's in this anthology about a military family living through the Iraq War called American Tet. And then I got run over and I eventually wrote a play about my accident where I learned to walk again and so on, which I did. And I also learned that recovery doesn't always mean walking again, which was an important lesson that I learned. But as it happened, walk again. And you know, so then this play was sitting there and then we came into this horrific moment with Russia invading Ukraine and the world kind of out of kilter again in a way it really hadn't been for a very long time. And I thought, my God, this is really the moment for which I wrote this play, Safe House. And I took it to my publisher, one of my publishers and Broadway play publishing. And luckily he felt the same. So it's, of course, I went back into it as one does. And, you know, looked again at it and felt that this was the moment for this play. So that's how it evolved and why it's published now, why it's being published now. Can you remind us a little about Robert Hansen and Aldrich Ames in there? Well, they were two high level intelligence officers. Robert Hansen was in the FBI, Aldrich Ames was in the CIA. And for years and years, decades and decades, they were providing information to the Russians. And they were eventually, I think Hansen was discovered first and then that led to uncovering of Aldrich Ames. And I was interested in their personal lives and their wives, they both had wives. And that's what always triggers my imagination, the women in these stories. So it was really the wife who inspired my play Safe House. And so as I imagined it, there is this high level intelligence officer and his wife and they welcome into their home a cultural attaché from another country. And I don't identify the country because I like to leave things open when possible because this third character, this cultural attaché, this woman from somewhere else, she could be from many, many places. So in other words, many, many female actors, actresses could play that role. And I like that, that it's open to and depending on where she comes from, colors in many ways, how the audience responds to the story. And then their relationship, it becomes a kind of a triangle of dependence and a kind of passion. And ultimately, I believe a kind of a love story between these two women. Don't you think? I mean, it's not explicit, but it's there. Really compelling that part of it, the scenes between them. You insist also that it's contemporary. I seem to recall that direction in your notes. Well, yeah. I mean, it continues. I mean, espionage and secrets and betrayals and nations trying to get information about what other countries are doing or other organizations are up to will never end. It's continually there. And at times it rises to the surface and we hear about it and other times it's under the surface. And in crisis moments and times of extreme war, I think, God knows we may be on the brink or we're in the early stages of world catastrophe or maybe we'll pull back from it. But certainly this is a time when knowledge about what is happening in other parts of the world is central to trying to provide security or not as we can see in different parts of the world right now. It's a 90 minute play. Why a short play? Yeah. Most of my plays are short. I don't think much needs more to be said than needs to be said. I don't particularly, and my plays tend to be very compressed and concentrated. And so in that case, there doesn't need to be a lot of extraneous information or scenes. I think I can get a lot into scenes. I have kind of a skill, I think, to do that, that you can learn a lot in a very short time. And a lot of the scenes in this play are silent. Yes. I have a quotation I'd like to share with you and ask you to respond to. It's from your notes in the beginning of the play. Intelligence exists through facade and charade, a deadly form of theater, related as the role of art, which we have in quotation marks, in the state apparatus embodied in the figure of the cultural attaché. I love the figure of the cultural attaché. That's great. I've met one. I've gotten to know one in Berlin who, in fact, you said you listened to that reading at the English theater. The woman who introduced that was the newly appointed cultural attaché in Berlin. And I think that because I've always wondered what really is the role of the cultural attaché? Who is this person? And what might they be? Why are they here? What are they doing? And I have a scene in the play where Mary, their first scene alone together, she asks, or what does a cultural attaché do exactly? And the character answers. I could read that if you'd like. But of course, when I say that it's a form of theater, of course, we're all performing all the time, as we know from sociologist Irving Goffman, I think his name was. But of course, this is a very deadly form of theater, espionage. So these people who work in intelligence, of course, and the popular culture is now full of examples of these kind of characters. But they have to have strong nerves and be very, very talented at performing. So that's why I call it a deadly form of theater. And of course, theater reads to this idea of the cultural attaché and the arts. You know, we know that when nations and powers want to show some kind of warming of relations, they'll send dancers or some form of entertainment or a can, you know, or something. The art is used. Art has always been used and manipulated by those in power. And I think there's something of that in this play, too. Whether artists know it or not. You also talk about humor in the play and the importance of that. And the character Henry could be humorous, you suggest. I want to ask you about his whistling, which is whenever he has secret communications, he whistles after he wraps it all up. Can you talk a little about that? Is that to stick around him in the popular culture or? Well, I think that a play is a it's a performance. So there are many levels. And there's a visual level. There's an intellectual level. But there's also a sound. So it's part of the soundscape of the play. It's music. So I leave that choice to the actor or the director. But it's a kind of a theme sound that moves throughout the play. Whatever choice of whatever tune he chooses to hum becomes part of the total art of the play. It's musical. Yeah. And it could be very funny because it depends on what kind of music he chooses. I don't know if we should say for your audience, give them a little sense of what the play is about. For sure. Let's do it. I have a little 3C I could read. Yeah, go ahead. High level intelligence officer and his wife welcome a cultural attaché from a foreign country into their home and into their lives. The result is a triangle of danger and passion a play about secrets and what they do to those who possess them. Yeah. And of course, the title of the play is heavily ironic, I would say. Safe House because nobody in this play is safe. And that becomes clear and clear as the play goes on. Yeah. And I read further and by extension, nobody is safe, period, but maybe I'm departing too much from it. No, no. One thing that is special for me about this play is that the two main characters, well, all of them actually, the three, tell stories about other people. So, and as you say, this idea that nobody is safe, because it comes into it because they describe the lives of other people. And many of these stories describe people who are not safe either and whose lives are deeply affected by the state apparatus in this world of secretive secretive secrets, secret exchanges and so on. And I should mention perhaps that Mary, the wife had been in her comes from a family of intelligence officers and worked as a young woman as a secretary in the counterintelligence. And that's where she met Henry. And she has stories that I think are quite chilling and quite fun about the secrets, the kind of secrets that these lovely young women, these all American young women are sitting there typing. Things we can't even imagine that they are exposed to in terms of the secrets that we don't know about the dangers. Well, I'd like to switch gears if you don't mind and ask, you know, like I know how it works in fiction pretty much with book launches, but how do you market a play? Market a play. Well, you don't really, you know, what what happens is, you know, in this case, the publisher has the play, he will send off blurbs about it, people will find it on the website. And then an agent perhaps, you know, will send the play out to theaters and hope for a production, something like that. There's no kind of general marketing of a play doesn't doesn't work in the same way as the publishing business general. But playwright agents often, you're saying, yeah, yeah, I've had a number of theater agents. And so that's, but you know, everything's changing, you know, the whole, the whole structure of the arts is in a completely transformative moment. So, you know, just like in publishing, many people are turning to self publishing. And there are other ways that people are presenting their work, and getting it read and responded to and I, I believe that that is also happening in the theater. You know, especially with what happened with the necessity of using zoom to, to reach other people with theater. So there's a wider audience, and there are other methods of reaching people. And so those old structures where you needed an agent and a littering manager, and even a theater are kind of dissipating. And it may very well be for the best in many cases, there will be other ways to perform. You know, people might find work and get together and perform plays together, it could work in many different ways, because things are much more accessible now. So in a way that's kind of exciting. So I hope that my work can be a part of that now that it's available. I've always wanted to ask a playwright this question. And so this is my opportunity. There was a high school production of Lilian Hellman's play, The Children's Hour, which I personally think was a terrible choice. But they changed the ending. Can you do that? Can you just change the ending of somebody's play? I mean, we're just we're in. Well, generally you can't. Yeah, that's what was my thinking. And I have to say that, you know, that that play has a long history. It was also they changed the ending in the Hollywood film version to, you know, they, they, they was based on a story that a Scottish school teachers that Lilian Faderman wrote a wonderful book about. And that was the basis of this story. These two women who were lovers, who started the school together, but by the time Hollywood got ahold of it, it was a very different story. And one of the teachers was secretly and tormentedly in love with the other, the other had a fiancé. So, you know, it was, and, and it ended differently. So I think, but generally the rule is in America, that, or perhaps I would say, even in the English speaking world that you cannot change the work of an author without asking them. In Germany, it's a whole other thing. You can do whatever you want with the work. Really? Yeah. Nothing to protect. Wow. Well, what's your next project? And then you'll do something entirely different when we talk again. And that's wonderful. But what are your thoughts? Oh, I, I've been thinking a lot about my time as an actress, a young actress, training to be an actress, and that part of my life. So it may be that if I am, I think I may write a, try to write a piece of fiction about that, you know, so in some way it does relate to this place safe house, because again, you know, the concerns are about identity and who, who we are and how we perform. You know, I don't know. I just, it just felt like an interesting thing to write about and something I know very well. I know the theater very well, and I know what it was like to try and be an actress, which is a very odd thing to be. Yeah. So have you decided on the genre novel play? Oh, I, I expect it would be a form of fiction, but you never know. Maybe I'm some kind of memoir. Oh, that's another idea. Next thing, I guess, on tap territory. Yeah. Yeah. So now we're drawing to a close. Let me ask you if you have any final words for the audience? Did you put a picture of the, the, were you, do you have a copy of that, of the play? I put the picture up when we mentioned it, and then after we close, like we did last, I'm going to put the picture up again. No, like, like I say, my interest now, and you were asking about marketing and so on, I think it's a really interesting experiment to talk about theater in a larger context to say maybe a play is something that, you know, you can purchase, you can, you can read and think about its content and, and that it's something in itself. And I, I have an essay about dialogue and fiction writing, as you may have seen, it's called a playwright crosses the border into fiction. And there I talk about the, what I believe the beauties and power of dialogue is, and that maybe fiction writers have not really understood what dialogue can do. And so I think that I think there's a kind of an argument to be made that, that people just pick up plays and read them and enjoy this other way of telling stories and that dialogue isn't frightening, you know, and it's easy to read. And there's so much that goes so much that playwrights do with dialogue and you can create a whole world, develop characters, tell a story, and communicate ideas through, through a play. And that's what I hope. And that's what I'd like to say to readers. And yeah. So I agree with you entirely. And I would one, sometimes frustrating aspect of being a playwright is that in the old days anyway, you're kind of dependent on productions and it was a laboratory of necessity. But now, you know, things are changing. They are. They are. Okay. Thank you, Lydia. I hope you come again with when you have actually come here, you're moving fast in all your very various projects. Thank you. Thank you, Anne. Good to see you again. Good to see you too. Bye. Hi, everybody. It's my great pleasure to welcome Emma Mulvaney-Stanak back to the show. You've been on three or four times, I think, and you've been interviewed by both Keith and me. And it's always a pleasure to see you. Thanks for having me. I'd like to start by focusing a little on the personal, if we could. I know it kind of, you're here, you're a high-powered politician, but you also have a very important act of personal life. And I'd like to read from your website by way of introduction about your family. You say about yourself, I am a mom to two small kids, a small business owner, the wife of a city employee, a former Burlington city counselor, and a Vermont state representative. Congratulations on the first meeting of the Vermont state representatives today. I have spent years as a labor and community organizer working to make our world more equitable while ensuring that everyone is safe and everyone else feels a sense of belonging. And now I'd like to show you a picture, if you don't mind, of you and your family. It's a great picture. However, we need to move on to your current project, which is very exciting. You've decided to run for mayor of Burlington. And this is really an important race. It's the first open seat in 12 years. I'd like to say when you win, you'll be the first woman and the first lesbian mayor of Burlington. And you're going to be debating around the city in the next few weeks. The election is what? March? March 5th. And it's a town hall? It's a town meeting. It's town meeting, local election, March 5th, 2024 will be the big day. Yeah. Well, tell me, why did you decide to run for mayor? You're already a representative in the house. Yes, it's a great question. And honestly, I've always wanted to run for mayor of Burlington. I've lived in Burlington nearly 20 years now at this point. I grew up in central Vermont, but the big city, once I moved back to Vermont after college, the big city always attracted me. The beautiful lake, the vibrant neighborhoods, the different little economic centers throughout town between North Street and the New North End, Pine Street, and of course, downtown. There was just so much vibrancy in life and it was always the town I would gravitate to growing up in a berry at the time. And so when I came back to Vermont, it just felt like home. And I have a deep love for this community. I've chosen to raise my kids here. I've put my roots really deeply into this community. And the reason why I'm running, frankly, is this deep love. Burlington is experiencing a lot of suffering on our streets. As a mom of two small kids, as you mentioned in my bio, I have a deep commitment to making sure this community is a healthy place where everyone can thrive, where we see each other as neighbors, where we come up with solutions in a collaborative way. And as I've served in the state legislature, and I come home at night, I've been really concerned around how divisive politics has become on a local level. It's sort of like all of the things that really are pulling our democracy apart on a national level have found their way into our local community. And the blaming and the inability to work together, it just became intolerable for me. And I wanted to make sure we had a different leadership option. And I had decided actually to run regardless of whether the current mayor was going to run again, because I felt so passionately that we needed to have different leadership. What we've been doing in the city is not working. It's actually further pulling our community apart. So I rolled up my sleeves. I had a good, honest conversation with my wife, and we figured out how to do this because it takes a team effort. Becca Ballant talks a lot. Congressman Ballant talks a lot about Congresswoman, excuse me. Ballant, around how it's a team, it's basically a team sport to run for office, especially in this big level. And as Vermont viewers will know, running for Burlington mayor is a big deal. It's bigger than state rep. And I felt like I could also have more impact on the local level with the need that we're facing here if I turn my attention to running for mayor. And your right spouses need to be on board. Yep. And kids. Absolutely. So what differentiates you, right now you have one opponent who's endorsed by the Democratic Party. What differentiates your candidacy from hers? And while you're talking if you wanted to spell any myths that may be circulating about you. Sure. Yeah, that's very helpful. So there is one other opponent in the race at the time, one other candidate. And my opponent and I served together on city council about 10 plus years ago when I served from 2009 to 2012. And at the time, and she's been pretty consistent, she's actually quite a moderate Democrat when you look at the values and the positions she's had on issues. I like to mostly talk about like what I'm standing for my vision. But I'll tell you the big core differences so far is that my opponent really is focused very narrowly on public safety and not even a broader understanding of larger community safety, but very hyper focused on policing and using overusing, in my opinion, criminal justice system to solve all of our problems. And frankly, I wish it were that easy, but the big distinction I would say is that I have an analysis on what our community needs that views safety as a community safety issue where multiple complexities can actually be understood at the same time, knowing that no one entity will solve the challenges of Burlington. So it is not how many police officers we have that will solve all the challenges we have with unhoused folks, people openly using drugs in the streets, people's felt sense of safety or lack thereof. It's really, it's sort of like a false setup that policing is the one single solution. And this has been a national trend in many cities across the country, left candidates, Democrats in most places are getting attacked around trying to reimagine policing and opening up this conversation of community safety in a broader way that's more holistic and identifies the fact that we need a working mental health system, we need social workers, we need frontline workers who are equipped with the professional background to help people in a medical crisis or a mental health crisis, or frankly just there to connect people to services. And that actually has to be coupled with partnerships with the state, which is I think another big distinction point is the fact that I bring state policy making experience to this race that my opponent does not. I have those relationships, I have an understanding of how state government works. And the biggest thing is that Burlington has long had this culture of being separate from Vermont in the state house. There's this weird culture where Burlington is not seen as needing state support. We see, we're seen as coming in and like telling everyone what needs to happen. And I would, as a former labor organizer, I will tell you it's fundamentally about collaboration that makes our democracy and community stronger. And I would have a much different approach that is open handed and one that really connects common cause between Burlington and other communities in the state that we know that collectively these are Vermont challenges showing up on the streets of Burlington, the housing emergency, the substance use emergency, the mental health crisis. This is a Vermont challenge and this is the time to work collaboratively together and not in isolation. And that last thing I would say is housing is probably the other big difference between myself and my opponent. I have a long track record of supporting affordable housing and from an economic justice lens where we need to be densifying housing in village centers. In this case in Burlington, we need to remove barriers that have long been in place that have led to this housing emergency that include rezoning or up zoning, I should say is kind of the term these days where you change single family zoned units to allow more denser housing. So two units or three units to be built in that lot in that place. And my opponent has long opposed up zoning and prefers single family units. And that has just prevented Burlington from growing as it needed to grow to make sure we have enough actual physical places for people to live. And now we're living in that reality where the structural failure has led to compounded, I would say, the problem that we're experiencing in the streets of Burlington. As you've been campaigning for this job and talking to people, what do people seem most concerned about? Well, I've been door knocking for a good month now and I love door knocking. It's I think the most, it's a very important thing for candidates to do even on this level, because you go right to the person, you first we'll see how they're living, you see how they're experiencing Burlington and you get to have a real honest conversation with people at their home around what they think the priorities are for Burlington. I've heard, obviously, community safety, but I've heard two different kind of interpretations of community safety. I hear the stories of people who, and mostly people who have this underlying compassion for people, that they don't want to just simply consider people other and push them out of Burlington and make them out of sight out of mind. They really want to find a compassionate solution that can get people the services they need. I've been encouraged by people's response around the drug and substance use disorder problem we're facing with one, again, of compassion where we need to have as many open doors for people as possible. And that includes overdose prevention centers. If we talk six months ago, I would say there's a mixed reviews on that at this point. I think most people know that's a life saving tool that we must consider at this point. And then in terms of the other groupings of people, I think some people are hesitant, folks who have lived in Vermont most of their lives, perhaps not lived in a bigger city, who've not seen people camping on streets or openly using drugs and streets or seeing needles on the ground. There is this fear that people have, which is legitimate. And I think it's important for us to really break down what does safety mean. People should feel and be safe in Burlington. But I'm also concerned about how unsafe people physically are right now who are at the point where they're suffering so badly that they're openly using drugs on the streets and they're living intense in the middle of winter in Vermont. Like to me, that's the priority safety need. And while we work to build a safer community for everyone to thrive, where everyone truly is safe. Well, that corresponds with the three focuses of your platform, which are community safety affordability and livability. Could you talk a little about livability? I mean, it all ties in together. Absolutely. Well, I think that's important. It's important to look at policy, not in a siloed fashion, but really about how things are interdependent and either help each other when you think about it holistically or you can create harmful policy when you're too siloed and you're thinking. So for livability, that actually that piece of my platform started with just a focus on climate. And I actually expanded it to include people and safe communities after talking with over 100 plus people when I was in the listening portion of my campaign as a good organizer. It's about you have two ears in one mouth. It's important to listen to people to help inform what is really needed in the city because the people have that wisdom. I truly believe that. And I expanded it because it's one thing to have a healthier environment and working towards really with some urgency, our climate emergency and another piece of that is livable for the actual people as well. And there's nothing that so starkly tells us that we have to work on that than the shootings of the three Palestinian students not too long ago at this hateful violence. It's again right here as I mentioned before about the divisiveness hate is also here in Vermont. It's here in Burlington and we have to be conscious in our attempts to build an inclusive community where people feel they belong and they safely can live here regardless of their identities, whether it be racial identity, gender identity or sexual identity. This is truly about consciously bringing that to mind. And frankly, the fact that we've never elected a female mayor or an LGBTQ mayor before that matters because when people don't have that lived experience and they're sitting at decision tables, they move with either less or more urgency because they know exactly what that's like to experience racism. We've never elected a person of color for that matter either experience racism or homophobia or transphobia. It matters. It matters to have those people in decision making places. I agree entirely. I have a question about the lake. As I told you before we tape, we started taping I have a friend who's an expert who says that this is a little long that the big problem at the lake that concerns Burlington is the Sino bacteria bloom. So you know about that I'm sure they cause so many beach closures. Part of this is caused by warming climate. So that's a larger issue that the mayor can't address directly but reducing carbon emissions can help. The more immediate thing would be for Burlington to expand its wastewater capacity so that the heavy rainstorms you know all this problem. It was news to me but I thought I'd ask you about it. So we're getting these heavy rainstorms due to the warming climate and they overflow into untreated they overflow untreated sewage into the lake which raises the nutrient levels which directly feeds those Sino bacteria blooms. Beyond that anything a mayor can do to reduce runoff into the lake would help reduce the pollution getting into the lake and causing these problems. So as mayor how would you respond to that how would you reduce the pollution getting into the lake? Well it's again it's Burlington has to play its role but it's also about upstream communities right so it's about making sure that there is a again collective understanding that the lake is multiple communities responsibilities not just Burlington we are the biggest city on the lake we play our role but it's bigger than us and we do have a combined sewer system which means that both rainwater from storms goes into the same pipes as our sewer and it overloads the system with a sewage treatment plant or we have three of them technically in Burlington they do get overwhelmed when there's that high flow of these hundred-year storms that are happening way more frequently than a hundred years and so moving stormwater off of that system as much as possible is critical and also acknowledging though that as we hold this other other priority of needing to build more housing urgently that continues to put more pressure on our infrastructure so our sewer treatment sewer treatment plants were built to support a city much smaller than the one we're trying to grow into so we're we really have to grapple and pace this reality of doing investments and upgrades to our sewer treatment plant to handle the increased demand on it while realizing that that takes investment that takes significant investment which we have to sequence with all the other needs of Burlington the other piece of course is that it's not just what gets pushed out in a storm a storm which is is notable but also it is it is gets just for the record so folks know it gets pushed way out into the middle lake in terms of where it actually gets discharged which is there's a lot of dilution there the other major contributor frankly though is phosphorus that's coming in and all of the feeding rivers and streams into the lake and this is again why I really want to emphasize yes Burlington has a role on it but there's a lot of sewer treatment plants that that sit on rivers upstream of Lake Champlain there's farmlands that have lots of lots of phosphorus that wash into these rivers that wash into the lake and then when we have big storm events like the flooding this last summer though that really spikes the amount of phosphorus that gets pushed into the lake which frankly contributes even more to these to these blooms and it's you know for the first time because also climate change is happening the lake a lot of people are actually cold dipping now in the lake and whatnot so this is a year-long challenge now because the lake doesn't freeze anymore and people are accessing the lake throughout the year so quality of life is dramatically impacted as well as just frankly the the actual ecosystems when we when we don't handle this with the kind of urgency that's needed so there's there's a lot to do but it's bigger than Burlington while Burlington also needs to do its part. Oh interesting I learned a lot from that answer thank you. I have one more question that falls for a little reflection you've been I think you started your involvement with electoral politics in 2006 when you worked for Scott or Parker's campaign and you were community organizer before that so you've been involved and you made your own political science at Smith so you you've been involved in politics for much of your adult life and things have changed as your think as you reflect on your years as a politician how has your thinking changed and more broadly how have things changed in the political climate that's a huge question. I love it though it's a great question and actually I would probably say my political career started when I was age three because my dad ran at the time for Washington State Senate and we lived in Marshfield at the time I have somehow Marshfield was in that district I think I have the district right anyway I remember handing out flyers as three at the Marshfield general store so that's really when I got started so just so we can update and your grandmother was a real active Democrat is that right yes in Long Island of all places which you know in the 50s and 60s holy moly taken on that role yeah she was a stiff fire I literally get all of my that energy from her I'm she was a strong Sicilian woman I love her she was she was great and also about like four foot eight I think she was very short but lots of lots of firepower it's a really great reflection question because I think great leaders or good leaders at least have this have the ability to reflect about how things are not linear and one should have a practice in reflection to know how I went to adjust and one one thing I've really learned over the years because first served in my elected capacity at least in 2009 as a city counselor is that most of the of the elected roles in Vermont are so part-time that you have to be a generalist and you have to really understand how to be effective with that really tricky setup structurally right like you're very part-time and most people have to hold another job in order to do even do public service so I've learned a lot about capacity I've learned how to try to narrow my focus to really hone in on things that I can really specialize in so I can be effective in that work rather than trying to be perfect and an expert on all policy areas it's really it's really not possible which is really fed my understanding and my deep commitment to working for collaboration and working towards compromise because you have to rely on your colleagues that's actually the best of democracy is when you have that trust to be able to really rely on each other to develop things together because at least in legislature there's multiple committees there's also committees on city council of course to do that work and to do some of the vetting and then be able to build upon that initial thinking so I've learned collaboration I've learned around narrowing my focus I've also learned you can't die on every hill I mean I come from an activist background and then in my early years I was like everything has to be like for the if I have a worker background right like workers justice background everything has to be for workers and everything has to have this high level of labor standard or something and I've learned that you cannot do that on every single issue because you become ineffective that way because that is not a headspace of bringing true collaboration to the table if you are certain on your on how right you are and it must be this absolute perfect perfect version in my head at least of policy otherwise nothing else is acceptable I learned that pretty quickly that you can't be effective that way and that's actually not how best policy is made because it it that skews towards you know just my way of thinking and there's we have to really broadly represent our neighborhoods our districts our city so it's been it's been wonderful though I have to say it's the best job I've ever held I've always I've always considered my day jobs the way I can do my political work over the years I wish that Vermont can get to a day where I see a day where we can make these jobs a little bit more livable for folks so that it could be more accessible I've been a long time advocate of legislator compensation and changing that system in the statehouse so that working people that demographic of like 20 to 50 can actually be better represented in that building because it's not especially people who have young children who are working parents we as I said before representation matters same thing for this demographic we the policy makers set an agenda and a set of priorities often based on like how they see the world and when there's a whole big swath of our population missing those priorities get skewed to really off of what I think working families in particular needs so my hope is that this this lovely and amazing democracy that loves so much in Vermont and in the city of Burlington becomes even more accessible for folks those who choose to be elected but the last thing I'll just say is I've also seen a lot around how community engagement is a vital part of this democratic experiment that we're we're living in and another reason why I'm running for mayor frankly is that that the community engagement has become very opaque and challenged here in the city if people watch city council meetings they are harmful they're aggressive they're very transactional they're everything that like frankly would turn any feeling or thinking person off of local local politics and government and I would want a real sea change there in in that approach to how people get engaged in the city how they can give input how they can even receive and understand what the city is working on because I think we've truly let that become a failing system now and I want people to walk into city hall and feel like they belong there that their ideas and input matter and that there's multiple places along the process that they could provide input and not have it be the night of the big decision where you're tying for two minutes and you're packed in like sardines and the tensions are high that should be rare if ever and that's another piece that I've learned over the years that the best policy doesn't come out of those conditions the best policy comes out of a place where the community feels they belong and they know what they how they're avoid how to use their voice in the process well I applaud you for jumping into the fray because people are leaving yes yeah and you think that we're sort of in a cycle of negativity or um could you and could you repeat that question sure do you think the country is in a cycle of negativity or even in the world or is it just um you know something that we can work through it's not apocalyptic you say that one more time sorry my technology failed me for a hot second oh that's okay um you think that this uh we can work with the current negativity and um emerge triumphant or at least working with each other and your experience working on the commerce committee the house commerce committee where you collaborated with a lot of people some of whom had different um political views demonstrates that you're able to do that yeah the only way I'm a um I'm a progressive those values um align most of my politics but in the state house I'm one of five progressives in a body of 150 so that has deeply taught me how you really have to rely on your relationship building skills you have to rely on collaboration because again if you die on every hill and you're not willing to kind of work towards understanding um you'll never get people to consider um your take on things and sort of like a a progressive minded piece of policy and so the commerce committee has taught me a lot it's it is the most moderate committee it's chaired by a northeast kingdom republican um who's lovely but it's it's a very different working space than um even I was used to for coming out of the burlington political scene so I I've learned to be effective I've learned how to get policy and new ideas into bills where I don't think it would have been considered before but the only reason that's been the case is because I have strong relationships I've built with my colleagues um and shown my process for how I um developed that idea or asked a series of questions that led to helping most impacted people like BIPOC owned businesses for example um be able to tell their stories in the legislative space where they have often not been asked or not been invited in so um that is I think it's very much possible and um and I think it's it's not going to be overnight uh because culture takes time to shift um but I think this is a huge opportunity for burlington to set a different tone um and I hope that's that happens with my election thank you for joining us thanks so much and I appreciate the time thank you for joining us and until next time remember resist