 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. On All Things LGBTQ, we have been reaching out to those members of our community who have chosen to serve in a public capacity, either in the Vermont Senate, the Vermont House, or in our local municipalities. And joining us today is a member of the Burlington City Council. Please welcome Joe McGee to our first All Things LGBTQ interview. Welcome, Joe. Thank you, Keith. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be with you. Okay, so let's start with a little bit about you. What is your connection to Vermont and to Burlington? And maybe a little bit about your involvement in politics or activism before you went on to the Burlington City Council? Sure, yeah. So I was born in Boston. My dad was from Boston. My mom was from Waterbury. And I lived there for about eight years before I moved to Weitzfield. I went to public school in the Madover Valley. I went to Harwood Union. I graduated there in 2013 and applied to several schools in Boston for college and applied to UVM with a bunch of my classmates. We all said we weren't going to stay in Vermont for college, but a sizable portion of us ended up staying and going to UVM. So I came to UVM in the fall of 2013 and studied business. And I ended up taking a gap year while I was at UVM and working on Bernie's first presidential campaign. I had not really been that involved politically before that. I didn't really see myself going into politics or working on campaigns. But there was something happening in Burlington and Bernie was headquartered the campaign and they were looking for interns. And I said, you know what? I need to see what this is about. The early days of that campaign ended up being 15 interns in a trench coat essentially running that headquarters, doing the mail and answering the phones. And it was really special to be a part of that. And so that was sort of my first look. I decided to take a year off and go all the way to the convention with Bernie in 2016. And I ended up going to Florida the night before the general election to do an event down there and flew home on election day. And I fell asleep before the final results were in. And so I woke up at, I think it was three in the morning and saw that Donald Trump had won the election. And you know, it was incredibly disheartening that the work that I'd put in for over a year, so many people would put in and the implications that it would have for the queer community, for people of color, it was just really disheartening. And so, you know, from then on, I knew that being involved politically wasn't just a career choice, but it was something that was going to be incredibly important going forward. You know, I grew up comfortable. I had roots in the working class and my grandfather was a Boston firefighter. My grandmother raised six kids after he died in the line of duty. She was an Irish immigrant and, you know, we never had a lot of money, but we also never really had to worry about money. So, you know, finding a root in political activism for me really became apparent in those months during the 2016 election. It was no longer something that was optional. It was something that all of a sudden became essential to your survival. So, how do you make the leap from working on Bernie's campaign to then deciding that you're going to, that you wanted to serve on the Burlington City Council? I, you know, I went back to school. I finished my degree at UVM in 2018. And, you know, during that time I had worked for a gay candidate in Boston to try and get them elected to the city council there. That campaign came up short. You know, I kind of saw the ways in which organizing can not get you to the finish line so often. And how we have to not agonize over those defeats, but see them as learning opportunities and a chance to do better in the future. And I ended up working for Karina Driscoll's campaign for mayor in 2018 here in Burlington, another campaign that came up short. And then just so happened that Bernie was running for reelection to the Senate in 2018. And I got a chance to really see the state of Vermont and get outside of Burlington and just, you know, I grew up in a rural area, but to really see how I think the things that, you know, the issues that a lot of people face in the state, whether it's access to healthcare or decent paying jobs or access to a quality education, they're roughly the same. And so, you know, after that, I ended up on Bernie's 2020 presidential campaign producing events across the country. And I did the campaign's last event in St. Louis on March 9th, 2020. It was right when the pandemic was starting. And we were asking ourselves if we even should really be doing an event in a fixed seat theater at that point. And, you know, I got sent home the next day and was in Burlington hunkered down for quarantine shortly after that. You know, I think the months that followed really put an emphasis on community and, you know, the importance of looking out for each other in a way that, you know, we can't really expect from our government, I think. And so, you know, I did some work for the rest of that election cycle and was sort of tired of electoral politics at that point. I didn't really see myself represented in our elected officials. I didn't see so many of the issues that I cared about being talked about. And, you know, I think it was actually a year ago that we were in the middle of my first campaign special election for the Ward 3 seat when Brian Pine was appointed as the director of the Community and Economic Development Office. Brian left big shoes to fill. He's got an encyclopedic knowledge of the city of Burlington, something that I am striving for, but have not yet achieved. You are still a work in progress. Yes, always will be. It's a practice, not a perfect. And, you know, I kind of was sitting around with some folks and was like, well, hey, I live in Ward 3 and it's sort of like a ha ha moment. And then as the days went on, it became much more real to the point of, you know, running in progressive caucus and ultimately winning that by a single vote. And then going on to win the special election as well. So, you know, I think what it comes down to for me is so many of those economic issues. I mean, right now, there's a palpable pain that we're all feeling, whether it's economically or from a mental health perspective. We've all just experienced a very significant collective trauma. And it's been very hard for me at times, you know, trying to figure out how to be the best public servant that I can be and represent the community well and figure out how to achieve some of those solutions on a municipal level that we're not quite seeing from the state or from the federal governments. So, representing Ward 3, that's part of the downtown and the old north end. And what are the issues that are specifically confronting that district of Burlington, that the Burlington City Council needs to respond to? And how are you trying to shape those decisions that are being made? Yeah, that's an excellent question. You know, I think Ward 3, we've got some of the most populous neighborhoods in the entire state. We have some of the most diverse neighborhoods in the entire state. So, really getting at questions of equity around racial equity, housing justice, economic justice, you know, Burlington as a whole with 60% renters and Ward 3 has as many of those. So, you know, I think a lot about the King Maple neighborhood, you know, we're dealing with questions around the Champlain Parkway right now. And if you drive those Pine Street intersections with King and Maple, you can see that it is not a pleasant place to be at rush hour. And so, you know, I and others have been clear that before we dump more traffic into that neighborhood that there's another project that needs to happen that would connect Battery Street to Pine Street and and deal with a lot of the traffic flow that would be dumped into the King Maple neighborhood if if that action wasn't taken. So, we've made support of the phase two of the Champlain Parkway project contingent on that real yard enterprise happening. And so that that's a key piece that we're working on. You know, I think some of the other stuff that has come up is, you know, certainly just cause eviction, passing here in Burlington overwhelmingly, but falling short in the State House. You know, the House representatives failed to override by a single vote. So, when we talk about a supermajority in the state legislature, I think, you know, it's important that when these important issues come up that we're going to have a true supermajority that's going to override those vetoes from the governor. Because, you know, we're in the middle of a housing crisis when people are struggling to make ends meet. We can't afford to lose these fights by a single vote. So, you know, I'm hopeful with a lot of turnover in the legislature, a lot of folks running who are speaking to the urgent need for not just more housing, but more tenant protections that will be able to get that through in the next legislative session. So, I think those are two really important aspects of what we're working on. You know, the overdose crisis is something that I have focused a lot of my energy on. It's personal for me. Substance use was something that my father struggled with before he passed away. And, you know, I, for us to not be doing everything that we can to support folks who are struggling with substance use disorder to offer. We just passed a resolution around overdose prevention sites. You know, I'm hopeful that we're going to get some clarity from the federal government legally that will allow those to move forward, not just here in Vermont, but around the country. You know, I think we have data that shows that they save lives. And for us to not pursue those would be a real shame. So, that's something that I've also spent a lot of time on. And we could certainly talk a lot about public safety transformation. I think that's, you know, it's on everybody's mind across the state. So, I was going to say that that was going to be my next in my follow up question, because looking at, you know, talking about overdose prevention and what are the programs and the services that could be put into place to have an effective and meaningful response. Part of it is looking at how do we currently use public safety and law enforcement and the public media's reporting of an increase in, you know, incidents occurring in and around Burlington. So, what has been your involvement with trying to redefine the Burlington Police Department into a public service that truly responds to community need? Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, I think this has been an important issue in both of my campaigns and you know, we recently took a couple of votes that funded the police department and a recruitment and retention plan and we just passed a union contract that gives raises to officers. The council voted last fall to raise the officer headcount. That is a, I voted no on that, but I voted yes on the others. You know, I'm hoping that we can get to a point where we can talk about the underlying solutions that get at the harm that's being caused by so many systemic injustices. You know, we need to make sure people's basic needs are met. There are more compassionate ways for us to address substance use disorder than simply throwing more money at the police department. I think that's, you know, no one lever is going to solve these problems for us and that is a hard conversation for us to have. You know, I think for decades we've thrown money at police departments. We've asked police officers to do far more than they're trained or equipped for. The things that we ask police officers to respond to don't need a law enforcement. They don't have a law enforcement answer. You know, we could, I think we've seen that with the war on drugs with mass incarceration. We haven't solved any of the problems that we've set out to solve with those massive investments. We have just created further divides and what we really need to look at now is how we can address mental health crises, how we can house all of our people, how we can make sure people are fed that their basic needs are being met. And so, you know, I think that is what we have to do going forward. Part of that is increasing accountability and transparency in the police department. So as chair of the public safety committee here on the city council, we're going to be looking at the recommendations that were made in the CNA report last fall, a really exhaustive assessment that was undertaken. And you know, there are tangible goals for us to be able to accomplish in that. And so that work will be going on over the next couple of weeks to sort of finalize and formalize a timeline for that. And then over the next several months working with the police department to accomplish those things. You're talking very much about a root cause analysis. What are the true bases for the difficulties that people are encountering and what is a true and meaningful solution? And I think that as an out candidate, you may have a unique perspective on that root cause analysis. But what I want to ask you in our remaining time is, would you encourage other out members of our community to run for public office? And what advice would you give them? Sure. Yeah, you know, I think I absolutely would encourage members of the community to run, you know, it's essential to have representation, to have our voices heard at the table, you know, being queer and being out that's part of my identity. But, you know, I certainly can't speak for all of our experiences. We're certainly not a monolith. So, you know, it's just one part of the puzzle for my election. And I hope that I can inspire others and be a resource to others who decide to run. We certainly need to elect more trans folks to office, you know, Taylor Small being the first trans woman elected to the Vermont state legislature is a massive step forward. You know, I think we still see so much vitriol and hate for trans candidates, especially in trans officials. You know, we have to be as present and out and vocal as ever in the face of that. And it's scary, it really is. And so we need to be together in that. We need to build community. And, you know, that is how we we build power and make the change that we need to make. And so I look forward to being part of that movement and helping other out folks make that decision to run for office. You know, it's it's hard. There are so many barriers to serving in elected office. You know, it's not getting rich doing this. That's for sure. And so we need to really have a serious talk about why what we can do to make it so that marginalized folks are able to serve an elected office and make it economically feasible for people. And, you know, I'm a renter here in Ward three, it's not an easy place to find an apartment. So if I were ever to have to leave this apartment, I there's a decent chance I wouldn't be able to continue to serve our community. So that is always something that's top of mind for me. All right. So with that, I need to say thank you for spending this time with us. I look forward to inviting you back to talk about the continued work of the Burlington City Council. And maybe to interview as a candidate for a higher office. Thank you, Keith. Hopefully not not too soon. I with two campaigns in less than a year. I'm content where I am at the moment. A little rest would be nice. Yeah. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. Thank you, Keith. Hi. Hi. This is Linda from Lynn from all things LGBTQ. And we're interviewing interviewing Ruth Farmer today. She's a poet, fiction writer and essayist. She is a regular contributor to the Ways of Seeing column in the Addison Independent. Ruth's prose and poetry appears in many journals and anthologies. Her most recent publication is a poetry collection called Snapshots of the Wind. Welcome, Ruth. How are you doing today? I'm doing well. Good. Well, I guess for the audience, maybe we could talk a little bit about where you're from and how you ended up in Vermont. I was born and raised in Wilson. Wilson is about 45 miles from Morale. I graduated high school there and then I moved to Brooklyn, where I lived for quite some time. And because I had a couple of friends in Vermont whom I visited periodically throughout the time, I decided to move to Vermont and I've been here for 30 years. I used to, I lived in Chalotte for much of that time in the last nine years or so. I have lived in Bristol. That's a great city. Yeah, it's good. I like it. Couple of good restaurants. I can't remember now, but I've driven over the hill, down the hill, and gotten to Bristol. So I see in addition to your poetry, you write essays and you're writing a column for the Addison Independent newspaper. I was wondering, is this a weekly or do you just do it when you feel inspired? How does that work? Well, I specifically write for ways of seeing. Addison Independent has a whole bunch of different kinds of columns. That's the one I write for. And there's a group of us. So I might write maybe three to four columns a year, because there are like 10 to 12 of us, depending on the year. So we write in rotation. Yeah. And what exactly is ways of seeing? I mean, I get the idea that it's probably the ways of seeing the world or all kinds of inner... Well, it's really about each column this has a really has their own niche. So I write about stuff I see out of my window a lot of times, or I write about books I've read, or because I've been a teacher for so many years, I write a lot about what my students think and things that I've learned by being a teacher. The last column that I have, if I can recall it, it was about productivity. And in a sense, what I was really getting at was really the whole notion that we must be producing stuff all the time, and how oppressive that is basically. But I've written a column, one of my favorite columns that I wrote, or the two that are favorite for me. One was I wrote about women's things. I don't know if you've ever heard of them, but this group of women got together and they've been singing for years. And I happened to go to a couple of their workshops and how moved I was by it. And the other one was about the series that Louise Penny writes among Gamajah's series. And the advice that he got from his mentor, like, say you don't know, apologize, say I don't know, I'm sorry, I need help, those kinds of, that kind of advice. So that's the kind of thing that I write about. Well, you probably know that Bexman Allen, who's running for Congress, put together her collection of essays that she wrote for the Brattleboro Reform newspaper. I was wondering, are you thinking about putting these together maybe as an individual or as a group for publication? Sounds like it would be really a very interesting thing to do. I am writing, I am thinking of writing a collection of essays, and I will probably use some of those pieces. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that anyone has even thought about having ways of seeing anthology. That's a great idea. Hers is called, I think it's a woman in a yellow jacket, I think, or something to that effect. But it's all poems that she wrote. It's really well done, very kind, very you're talking about everyday life. And it sounds like it's similar to maybe what you all are doing there. And I would be great to put it together as an anthology. Yeah. I will suggest that. And I would say that it was your idea. Actually, it was Rebecca Bell, but you know, I liked her as a lot. It was really a good read. So you do poetry and prose. What do you what do you think is the difference? I mean, do you have a different feeling when you're doing both or does it come from the same source? They both come from the same source. I would say I have more of a poetic sensibility, but prose is really what I enjoy writing mostly. So I write, I do write fiction, although one of the things that I like about writing fiction is that I don't feel as invested in it in the sense of like it's not my soul. You know what I mean? I have more fun when I write fiction. Let's put it that way. Poetry and prose, you know, that's a really good question. From a structural point of view, they are shaped by different things. Poetry is shaped by lines, whereas prose is usually shaped by sentences, unless of course you're doing the prose point, which I'm not going to even get into. Okay, so. Yeah, we won't go there. Not going there. But yeah, so the integrity of the piece of poetry is often in the lines, in the lines of imagery. There's there's sort of this, these moments that oftentimes seem disconnected, although sometimes people write narrative poems and they tell them a story and, you know, I do that sometimes. But yeah, it's a really good question because sometimes you sort of say people are like, well, is that poetry? And sometimes it's not. I mean, sometimes it's just prose written in lines, which is a totally different thing. But yeah, it's a it's a very good question. And I wonder, you know, have you asked that question for a lot of poets? What do they say? You know, they I'm a poet also. And but I don't write essays. I stick with this particular genre. But they have all different kinds of answers, like, you know, I'm inspired by one thing to express it one way or another. If you want to get a different point across, you would use an essay, but if you want to get a different maybe feeling, not that you couldn't do it in both, but poetry sort of has a structure in which it gets a feeling across differently. And in a different kind of a way. So there are lots of different answers to that. Yeah, it's a hard question to answer, I think it really is. It's sort of like the one I'm going to ask you now, which is over your lifetime, who's inspired you? Who have you felt like you really liked and and, you know, maybe mentored you? As far as poetry is concerned, I like a lot of poets actually. For different reasons. I like Lucille Clifton, June Jordan, Billy Collins, W. H. Auden, Karen Miriam Goldberg. I like Laura Wisniewski, I don't know if you know she's a local poet. Let me see. I like a lot of poets. And then I would say so, for example, if I mentioned Auden, and it's because he was so invested in the craft of it. I would say he was a really good craftsman and he would probably think it was an insult, but I think it's really great. I like Billy Collins because he has a sense of humor. I like June Jordan because her poetry was so immediate and fierce in that she wrote about what she saw in the world and she always took chances about the politics in her poems. And Lucille Clifton, I would say she used to write poems that I wish I had written. Let's just put it that way. Because they seem so simple, but they are very complex. I know that's a real art, isn't it? Do you have something so profound in simple words and simple ideas? Yeah. I like Joy Harjo. Her poems are mystical, but sometimes when she's talking about poetry, it feels very mystical. It's almost like I feel like this lightning bolt comes down and investors in her and then the poem comes out. But she's also someone like Collins and Jordan and Auden who spent her life writing poetry. She is a poet. Some of us write poems. She is a poet. Yeah. Where do you get your inspiration? Do you write on schedule or are you in the elevator or someplace and it comes to you something you may want to write about or do you have a schedule? You sit down every day. I write most days. Sometimes I go through periods of writing a poem a day because when I was a student at Bennington College, one of my professors said it doesn't have to be good. It just has to be done. I would just write these poems and that's what I do every now and then I write a poem a day. Sometimes they become poems and sometimes they're just stuff that I write. Other times I write journal entries and I reread them and see which would become a poem and which would become an essay. Which I would just keep to myself. So yeah, I write just about every day. Yeah. And would you be so kind to read a few poems from your question for us? Okay. Let's see. The first poem is what's seen and not seen. Unlike an oak tree, a paper birch does not have a reputation to uphold. It pops up in the middle of wherever because it can. Maybe it ran away from home. Relocated after being squeezed out by maples and pines. God lost wondering if it could touch a passing cloud. Its lone white barked presence is normal among brown-trunked tree families. Nearly invisible until it chooses to show its rebel self. And is this something you saw from your window? The thing about birches is that it is true that you're sort of walking around and suddenly there it is. So I happen to be on my property and I saw this birch and I realized it's been there all along and I hadn't even seen it. You know what I'm saying? Like it's been there. Just hanging out. You know what I'm saying? Very nice. Go ahead. I noticed that with green too. I lived in Boston most of my life. In the winter it's bleak. But up here there's all that white as you were talking about the birch. But also the green. The evergreen to everywhere. So there's even some color I think in the winter which is kind of different and nice and I really enjoy that. Yeah. Yeah. And you have another probably. Sure. I can read another one. Scribe. Dappled sunlight cast the trees. Happy dance on my living room floor. Orange is my heart. Green is my love. Yellow is the energy that beams my smile inside and out. My purple wisdom shifts up and down. I'm an involuntary scribe compelled to shudder my rational mind and release my wildly hopeful, joyful ring. Glad to be alive. My solitary journey yields and connects with the black capped chickadee. The chubby groundhog. The persistent wind. Families of trees. Translucent dragonflies and multi-appendaged spiders. Every living thing is co-author of the story of this home called Earth. The narrative fills our minds as we dream a world where inside and outside are one boundless place. Wow. Thank you. That's great. Do you have any readings coming up in the near future and where can people buy your collection? Well, I've done a whole series of readings in the libraries around in near Addison County. So I was in Bristol, Lawrence Memorial Library. I did a reading at Ilsey in Middlebury and the very fabulous Bixby in Virginia. That is a beautiful library. I love that library. Yeah. Yeah. The next reading I have will be at Telly's House at Middlebury College. It's a lunchtime reading next Tuesday. Okay. Yeah. And where could people buy your book? I have a webpage at which they could go to or? Yeah. I have a webpage RuthFarmer.com. You can buy it there. You can buy it at Amazon or at lulu.com. Great. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was great. And do you have any last words for the audience? No. Thank you for inviting me. And yeah, I'm just very grateful that so many people have really loved my books and have been buying them and buying them for gifts, which I really, for me, that's what it is. It's a gift. And the holidays are coming. Perfect. So it's done what I wanted it to do, which is to share my words with others. So I'm very grateful for it. And thank you so much for inviting me. Well, thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate it. The audience will be thrilled. Okay. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Thank you for joining us. And until next time, remember, resist.