 Welcome, welcome on this beautiful October afternoon, thank you all for coming and not being out looking at leaves. You can do that later. I just want to mention cell phones, please take them off, turn them off and also I want to thank the volunteers that provide us with coffee, tea and goodies on the first Friday of every month. It's very, very welcome to have such a nice social gathering before we learn something. And now Sandy Baird will introduce our speaker. It's a great pleasure to introduce a friend of mine and a friend of all of the people here and around the world and that's Robin Lloyd. Robin Lloyd received her BA from Brandeis University in I guess art history, is that correct Robin? We weren't talking about that this afternoon, she has an MA from Columbia. But more than all her official titles Robin has always been a citizen diplomat in my mind and in the mind of many people in the world. She's an editor of Toward Freedom, are you still the editor of Toward Freedom? No, but she was and it's a journal that was founded by her family. And it is a journal devoted to politics and culture. She is also a filmmaker and Robin made one of the best films probably that I've ever seen about Haiti in the Haitian revolution. It's called Black Dawn, an animated film in which she used Haitian artists as the people who painted the animated figures and so forth for that film. She is also, she also did a film called The Beijing Peace Train where she went to Beijing a number of years ago to speak at the big women's conference in which women's rights were declared to be human rights, which is a subject that we're all thinking a lot about these days. Above all, Robin has brought an incredible perspective to bringing peace to the world. She has traveled all around the world and made international contacts, bringing a sort of a citizen's diplomatic view of the world that we all as citizens should be making peace in the world and not leave it up to our politicians. We all should be making peace. Anyway, it's a great pleasure to introduce Robin. And one more thing that I want to say about Robin, I'm an attorney. She was a client of mine. She's the only client that I've ever had, as I said in seven days, who wanted to go to jail. She served, I think, three months, right, and in a peace action that she was involved in at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. So she spent three, not terribly difficult, but it's always difficult to be in jail. Okay, thank you. It's a great pleasure to introduce Robin. Oh, by the way, she wanted me to mention that this is her design. Robin is also an artist. The Love Affair of the Century was done for the 100th anniversary of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. So, wow, it's wonderful to be here. Thank you. Thank you for, is this word for, oops, thank you for inviting me. Now will I be able to see my notes? I don't know. Okay, I give the signal and we see the next image. Yeah. So four years ago, at the beginning of the 100th anniversary of World War I, I created what I call a performance piece, oh, look at that, related to my grandmother, my grandmother, who with many other women tried to stop World War I and helped to form the organization that endures to this day, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. I had this fine bust of Lola that I carried with me to the Hague in 2015, where a century earlier, she had gone with Jane Adams and others to try to talk sense into the worrying leaders. I would ask her questions and she would answer and then I would interpret her answers to the audience. So she was a live presence during this, these presentations. And I got most of the information from her letters in her archives that I called from this Schwimmer-Lloyd collection, next picture, in the New York Public Library. I carried her to Colorado and even to Budapest, where a teacher at the George Soros Central European University wanted me to speak about Wilf and Lola's friend and fellow activist in Wilf, Hungarian pacifist, Rosika Schwimmer. So researching for that piece, I learned so much about women's lives before suffrage and how they made things happen. I was astonished that in that day, before and during World War I, women were able to launch a political party, the Women's Peace Party, and organize boats to Europe across an ocean already rift with submarines, all this before obtaining the right to vote. What's, what Hootspah? In the process, oops, all right, I'll put that over there. In the process, I became aware of the split in the burgeoning feminist movement at that time between the pacifists and the suffragettes. So today I'd like to, I'd like to trace those threads as they weave through the last century. This actually is an image from, from England, who, who are women were going through the same trials and tribulations as we were. These threads, as they weave through the last century, usually working together, but sometimes at odds. I'd like to start back before the Civil War, move quickly up to World War I, leading to the gaining of suffrage in 1920, whose anniversary, I want to point out, is less than two years away, and then touch on a few of the amazing developments in the last 100 years. So historians agree that in the 18, oops, the one, one back, well, that's okay, but yeah, there they are. That in the 1800s, Elizabeth Kate Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were the two dynamic forces of the American suffrage movement. That's Stanton on the right. She's, she's short and plump and, and, and Susan B. Anthony is tall and thin and they just, they really made a great pair for a number of decades in the suffrage movement. A galvanizing moment in the struggle took place at the world's anti-slavery convention in the, in London in 1840. Stanton attended that conference with her husband and with Lucretia Mott, a powerful anti-slavery speaker. They were upset that women, including women who were official delegates, were sidelined to an upstairs gallery and not allowed to speak. Stanton later wrote how thoroughly humiliating it was to us. It reminded her of her childhood, where she felt discriminated against in church and school. I am so tired of that everlasting no, no, no. Eight years later, she and a group of Quaker women, mainly, called the first women's gathering for suffrage, the Seneca Falls Convention in Upstate New York, to discuss the rights of women. One of the major outcomes of that convention was a simple but brilliant recap of the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal. They turned this revolutionary document into a truly feminist statement. It included a number of resolutions. The ninth was resolved, it is the duty of the women in this country, to secure to themselves their sacred right to elective franchise. This was, at that time, a new thought to many men and to women. One newspaper called the convention the most shocking and unnatural cartoon, excuse me, the most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history of women tree. Cartoonist, as you can see, had a field day. But Elizabeth Cady Stanton knew what she was doing. Depend upon it, she said. This is the point of attack. For the next decade, the Declaration of Sentiments, as they called it, made ripples, even waves across America. But as the Civil War approached, reformers, including even women, felt that all efforts must be devoted to abolition, to freeing the slaves. And so in 1861, the women canceled their women's rights convention, which had become an annual event by that time. This was the first of many occasions where the demand for women's equality was shunted aside for more important issues. The same thing happened during World War I and in the 1960s when male leaders of the anti-war movement would not make place for women in leadership, starting a whole decade of consciousness raising and women's separate activism. At the end of the Civil War, Stanton and Anthony hoped for a resurgence of activism for suffrage. The 13th Amendment had just abolished slavery. And when the 15th Amendment was considered, women thought that this was their chance, an opportunity for universal suffrage for African-Americans and women alike. When Stanton saw the wording of the document, she became outraged at the way African-American males were given priority over women. This is where racism in the women's movement began. Two disenfranchised groups were set against each other for recognition by the powerful white males who controlled the reigns of power. Stanton wrote, as the celestial gate to civil rights is slowly moving on its hinges, it was unfair that women were supposed to stand aside and see Sambo walk into the kingdom first. So that was the way things were talked about in those days. Unfortunately, post-Civil War politics over the 15th Amendment caused the women's movement to split apart. And I just want to say I obtained this wonderful book, Rosies and Radicals, which tells the whole story from Stanton and Anthony all the way up to suffrage. And it's available at Phoenix Books. It's for young feminists. It's advertised, so it's a wonderful read. Where was I? Celestial Gates, yes. Unfortunately, post-Civil War politics over the 15th Amendment caused the women's movement to split apart. The irreconcilables simply opposed it because it did not also grant women the vote. They also split on strategy, one working on the state level that was considered realistic and the other directing all its activity towards a national constitutional amendment. Nothing much happened on the national level on the next few decades, but women organized on the grassroots. This is an image from the Women's Christian Temperance Union. You know, alcoholism was rampant at that time. And basically what it meant for women was domestic abuse. The guys getting drunk and coming home and beating up the women and children. Also the YWCA was formed and the American Association of University Women all got their start during this decade. Is there anyone here who's a member of that organization? Yes, okay. I see one or two hands there. In the early decades of the 20th century, next, it was Alice Paul who brought renewed energy into the suffrage struggle. She was a scholar and activist who learned and suffered with the radical Parkhurst sisters in England. Next, in prison in England, she refused to eat and experienced forced feeding two or three times a day, which was extremely painful. Here a British cartoon quotes satirically, the force feeder in chief, the jingle printed below reads, observe how we treat every case with the chivalrous tack of our race. How before we proceed to forcibly feed, we never omit to say grace. Upon returning to the U.S., Alice Paul felt that success would only come with a loud and coordinated campaign to change the Constitution. Her first major spectacle was a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. In 1913, organized by the National American Women's Suffrage Association, it featured 8,000 marchers including nine bands, four mounted brigades, 20 floats, and led by a woman on a magnificent white horse. It was planned to take place one day before President Wilson's inaugural march down the same avenue during which no women were allowed to take part in that march. Can you believe how strange things were in those days? There were no aerial photos to show which was bigger, but that wasn't the point. This demonstrated the power of the movement and made people think twice when they assumed that power only resided in men. In 1914, World War I began in Europe. People were horrified at the carnage as the German army raged across Belgium and against the less well-prepared armies of France and England. The visit to America of a Hungarian woman, Rosigas Schwimmer, galvanized women not previously active in the suffrage struggle to petition the President to keep the U.S. out of the war and to offer mediation instead. Rosigas Schwimmer met with Wilson, as did Jane Adams, the social work leader and head of Hull House who came from Chicago. It was much easier to visit presidents in those days. At that point, President Wilson seemed to hear them. He called the war in Europe a cause with which we have nothing to do whose causes cannot touch us. As alarm with the continued violence of the war in Europe continued to grow, in early 1915, the leaders of the three women's movements, Alice Paul, the street activist for suffrage, Jane Adams, the peace activist, and Cary Chapman-Cat, who was head of the more conservative wing of the suffrage movement, met in Washington, D.C. to form the women's peace party, declaring that peace and thus war is a women's issue. Believing that women's full participation in the political process was essential to ending global conflict, members of the women's, oops, back up one, I think, there's a, you know, one more, there's a boat, isn't there a boat? There it is, the boat, the graphic, the women's peace boat. Believing that women's full participation in the political process was essential to ending global conflict, members of the women's peace party declared themselves for both women's rights and world peace. Three months later, 47 women boarded a ship and crossed the Atlantic to meet with women from both sides of the war to see what they could do to stop the carnage. They hoped that diplomatic intervention could bring the war to a swift end and prevent additional loss of life. They resolved at that historic conference to be present at the time and place of whatever peace settlement would be signed and to urge for reconciliation instead of revenge. After the conference, they traveled to the belligerent and neutral countries both, urging a ceasefire and for the neutral countries to mediate a negotiated peace. After that year, some took part in another peace boat financed by Henry Ford. I'm glad it avoided the submarines and that everyone made it back home alive. As my grandmother brought my father and two of his sisters along at the invitation of Henry Ford, my father was seven years old at the time. He had a great, he and his sisters had a great time on board the boat, but the adults argued a lot. Things moved swiftly after that. In 1917, soon after winning re-election on the campaign slogan, he kept us out of war. President Woodrow Wilson called on the U.S. Congress to authorize a war to end all wars. That's when the women's movement took different paths. Henry Chapman Catt persuaded her group to support the war and tone down the demands for suffrage. Her position was we don't want to alienate the men in Congress that we will depend on soon to vote for our cause, a very sort of realistic position, really. There was, during, once war was declared, there was only one mass parade in Washington during those years. Women walking in silence, carrying banners, listing the names of suffrage supporters. I thought that was an amazing photograph. I mean now I have a petition out there that you can sign and we can put it on the Internet. We don't need to do it this way. Maybe I have to drink something here. Alice Paul, on the other hand, continued besieging the White House, demanding the franchise. Women picketed the gate to the White House six days a week from 10 to five for many months. This was the first time it had ever been done and the women had ever done it. In the summer of 1917, women started to be arrested and again the women went on a hunger strike and were force fed. The film, the iron jawed angels documents that dramatic time. Even the anti-war activists were split. Jane Adams wanted to minimize the suffering caused by war and was willing to work in common action with the allies helping with conservation and distribution of food apart from military networks hoping that it would lead to international cooperation. Others such as my grandmother felt that any effort to support the war effort was a denial of their pacifist principles. She sided with people like Roger Baldwin who went on to form the American Civil Liberties Union but who at that time created the American Union against militarism. Together they worked to organize opposition to conscription. So after the U.S. entered the fray, Wilson with the aid of the courts turned on the pacifist activists and prosecuted opponents of the war who refused to fall in line. Under the espionage and sedition acts, thousands were arrested for such crimes as giving speeches against the draft and calling the army a god damn legalized murder machine. I don't quite know whose quote that is but it might have been Eugene Debs, it might have been Eugene Debs. After the war, the takeover of the Russian Tsarist regime by the Bolsheviks sparked a red scare in the U.S. led by Attorney General Mitchell Palmer. This was called the Palmer raids. My grandmother was not caught up in a raid but she was listed on the spider's web created by the right wing Lusk Report in 1924 that attempted to ferret out socialists and pacifists and charged them with communism. It was a grim time. So World War I altered the course of the 20th century and not necessarily for the better, in my opinion. Jane Adams and Rosika Schwimmer and Lola Maverick Lloyd's prediction prior to the entry of the U.S. into the European war was vindicated. The U.S. entry foreclosed the possibility of a negotiated peace among belligerent powers that were exhausted from years mired in trench warfare. In 1981, excuse me, 1918, armistice was declared on the 11th day of the 11th month at 11 a.m. That 100th anniversary will be coming up in less than two weeks, two months, a month and a half, whatever, yeah, in November, yeah. And I wonder how it will be commemorated. The terms of the Versailles Treaty that followed sowed the seeds of conflict for the next century. So one wonders, if the U.S. had not entered the war and instead offered mediation, is it possible that Hitler, Nazism, World War II in the Holocaust could have been avoided? Did the war speed up the acceptance of suffrage? Investigating these questions could take many hours, but I hope that as the 100th anniversary of suffrage approaches, education and enlightenment for everyone will make opportunities to hold discussions on the subject, on the struggle women waged to get the right to vote 100 years ago and its ramifications for today. I'd like to tell a not-so-heroic story about Vermont's role in that campaign. As you know, to ratify an amendment, it has to pass both houses of government by a two-thirds vote and then be ratified by three-quarters of the state legislators. The Vermont General Assembly in 1919 did not take up the 19th Amendment issue. By 1920, with only one more state needed to ratify the amendment, Vermont's governor, Percival Clement, an opponent of women's suffrage, resisted strong pressure within the state to call a special legislative session to consider ratification. Clement argued that the state could not afford the expense involved. With the 19th Amendment, when the 19th Amendment became the law of the land later in 1920, the Vermont General Assembly still had not ratified it. So women took advantage, Vermont women took immediate advantage of their federal vote. In the next gubernatorial election, Clement's candidate was defeated in the Republican primary by James Hartness, who had been the leading voice to ratify the 19th Amendment. According to estimates, Hartness captured about 75 percent of the 10,000 or more votes cast in the election by women. So this is another story of both Vermont's stubbornness and the impact caused almost immediately by the presence of women's votes in the ballot box. So what to say of the subsequent 98 years bringing us up to the Me Too movement? Many women fought hard to get an equal rights amendment passed. It was a one sentence amendment that could fit on a banner. Quality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the U.S. or by any state on account of sex. But it failed to win support by three quarters of the states. So now, legally, you could say there is really no legal equality between the sexes. Many nations have passed the CEDOC Convention, which is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which makes the ERA global, but we don't recognize CEDOC either here in the U.S. But many wonderful things have happened. The United Nations held four world conferences on women, where women shared the suffering and challenges their sisters experienced due to misogyny, notions of male supremacy and discrimination. I attended the last one in Beijing, China in 1995, and the film I made about it is out there, a couple of copies, $10. In addition, women, through the years, fought for family planning and obtained the right to birth control and the right to abortion. Oops, no, one up or so. Back, yeah, it should be there. It's just a, yeah, 1325, 1325, in the year 2000, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Security Council Resolution 1325, which reaffirms the important role that women play in conflict prevention, conflict resolution, and peace building. Women need to be at the peace table at the end of conflicts, otherwise it will just be men with guns glaring at other men with guns. Implementing this resolution has been a major focus of international will ever since the resolution was passed. So are we able to show, Borgia, a video, the little video that I, it's just, will that, when she clicks, will it, the movie picture? Okay. Well, it will come up next, yeah. So I'd like to end by highlighting and honoring the two strands of the women's movement right now, okay, currently exemplified by the protests at the Kavanaugh candidacy for the Supreme Court, stressing the need for recognizing women's rights as human rights in the elevator. The woman said, you are allowing someone who violated a young girl to sit on the Supreme Court. You are telling women that they don't matter. And then here is a short video of another kind of a protest by peace activists, media Benjamin, let's see if we can do that, who takes the confrontational tactics of Alice Paul into the boardrooms of power. And this is a certain amazing short coverage of her taking over a sort of conservative ballroom, a boardroom, and speaking out quite eloquently as she was carried away. So we're going to see if that will work. By the way, Medea Benjamin was here in town just a week or so ago. I don't know whether some of you know her. She's the founder of Code Pink. And she's the founder of Code Pink. And Code Pink was named chosen because Bush established a lot of levels of alert against terrorism or disasters. It would be either yellow or purple or red. But they left out pink. And people felt, well, pink is too soft. Pink is too woman-y. So it was not used in the official list of alert colors. So Medea and the other feminists said, well, we'll take pink. We will issue an alert for Code Pink. And they have been very active at disrupting events and doing more than that. She has written several books. The latest when she was here last week was on Iran. And that is the subject that she is talking about, though she's not meant to be. There it's going to come. Let's see if we can use the sound. Yeah, we'll be able to. Oops. Sorry, I should have. All right. It's running on the websites. They were after her very quickly. Well, maybe we can show this when we get the sound on. Basically, that's all I wanted to say. But I do recommend this book, Roses and Radicals. And that we, at this precise moment in history, these issues and this history is very important to look back on and to realize that the struggle has been going on for over a century and it's not over yet. So thank you very much. Can you tell us what you would say here? Well, this was a think tank, the Hudson think tank that was discussing Iran's missiles and what a great threat they are to the United States. And that, you know, we have to, I don't know what, because the clip doesn't give too much of his comments. But it was basically, you know, supporting the Trump position that Iran is a danger to the United States and to the world. And she was arguing with that. She has been to Iran. I think I can hear a little bit of it. She says, look at what happened in Iraq. Is that, do you want to, could you say, you can hear it a little better than I can? Can you say what she's saying? Anyway, you know, her courage to disrupt the status quo is what I really admire her for. I think she should be given the Alice Paul Award. Alice Paul being so courageous back in the day and to go to prison and to refuse to eat and to have to be force fed three times a day. I think media Benjamin and the other women in Code Pink and the women in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom too are getting more and more ready to take nonviolent action, I hope, as time goes on. So are there any questions? Yeah. One thing I forgot to say when I was introducing Robin is Robin's family was the founder, one of the founders of the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom and Robin maintains that organization today and has been on the board. And it's one of the oldest peace organizations in the world. I think that one of the things that was so important about World War One is that it actually brought into being an international peace movement and an international anti-war movement. I think probably for the first time, isn't that correct, Robin? I mean, before that point there had not been a terrific international consciousness that people have the sense or should have the sense to avoid war. And Robin's family was very active in that struggle and she and her family were the founding people of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom which still exists today. And I just wanted to bring that up because Robin is a real warrior for peace. A contradiction, but a warrior without guns. So we've given up on the audio. I just wanted to make a comment that Alice Paul was not the only person who was force-fed. Many of the suffragists in England had the same treatment and were jailed and force-fed. I'm specifically thinking of the Pankhursts, but the whole cadre of them were force-fed. It wasn't just Alice Paul. Yes, yes, definitely. Somehow she's gotten most of the publicity, but the Pankhurst sisters and their mother, I think, were very active in trying to stop World War One. Though one of them then became a supporter of it. So there's a wonderful book written about that. Yeah, yeah, definitely. But it's interesting when you see those two coming together. They come apart at some points, but they come together that women naturally want to stop war, don't want their sons and fathers and brothers to be out killing other mothers, fathers and sons. And so there's that impetus to most of the movements in suffrage and equal rights of women to stress peace as a part of the platform, whatever the group is. Do you think that there is a unified unification of the different groups of women interested in peace and human rights? Do you think there's a groundswell of one unified group? Well, I think there is a huge groundswell, yes, of women everywhere. The issues are multitudinous, and the way in which senators are telling that the calls that have been coming into their offices from women talking about their experience with assault or rape, it's as if a huge terrible Pandora's Box has been opened. It's not terrible, but one may be wonderful eventually when people are able to really speak their grief and speak their pain and feel that they're being heard. I think that will make a very important change in the US, but on the other hand, I don't know if Kavanaugh is selected for the Supreme Court. It will both bring deep dismay, but also probably great energy to commit to making long range changes. After all, there will be other Supreme Court judges that will need to be elected. There are the midterm elections coming up when I can't believe that there will be a shift to the Democrats. And then after that, who knows what will happen depending on, I think, the energy of the outrage that has happened over the last couple of weeks. Don't you agree, or what do you think? Yeah, way back there. It's great to hear your, Robin, your synopsis and your history and the chronology and all of all of that. It's just so powerful through the years and how long it takes. Where is the thrust of the peace movement now as far as there's so many areas to be working on? Is the organized group identified any particular plans or objectives? Are you asking about WOLF Women's International League in particular? What is it focused on? Well, internationally it's focused on that 1325, the Security Council resolution that women must be brought into the peace table. And this is meant on occasion, for example, a couple of years ago there were hearings, efforts to resolve the crisis in Syria. And WOLF worked to bring women activists and women community people from Syria to Geneva where it was going to take place. And using 1325 to say these women have to be part of the, they have to be at the table. They have to be part of the resolution that happens. And they were stiff-armed despite the fact that that resolution is passed. So, you know, it's like with many things. A law is passed but it doesn't matter until it's implemented and until people insist that it be implemented correctly. So WOLF is working very hard in that area. We had our last Congress in Africa for the first time because this was an organization formed in 1915. So it was mainly European countries and the United States that were active in creating women's international league. But now our executive director is encouraging sections to form in India. And I think there's some 10 different sections. So that's really exciting. Now here in Burlington where we have a branch, we just sponsored the visit of the two Hibakusha to Burlington, the atomic survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the woman, Mrs. Sasasota, is 86 years old and the man was 78 years old, I think. And they told very riveting stories about their experience and we managed to get them into virtually all of the high schools in the area. The whole student body came out to hear these women speak and the woman and man speak. And I attended the one at the University of Vermont and it was so moving to see young people really concerned about issues of war and peace and about nuclear weapons that the idea of making small nuclear weapons that are more usable, that is one of the proposals of President Trump, which I think would be disastrous because to think that they're more usable would mean that they might be used, you know. And so the students, they lined up, especially the girls students at UVM lined up one after the other to hug Mrs. Sasasota. So they were so moved by her speech. So in fact, I'm meeting later tonight with the people who, other women in Wilf who planned that and we are hoping to have more, to be in touch with the students, what they made of all that, whether they're going to become more active themselves on these issues. So that's been our main activity in Wilf and for the last in the fall so far. Though we might be active in some sort of commemoration of Armistice Day. Watch for that. What time is it? I wasn't keeping time at all. I do have a question. Do you really believe that if women were involved in peace processes that there would be less war? The opposing view is always well look at some of the women who have been in power, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, other women, have they been that different? And do you really believe that if women were involved it would be a more peaceful world? I think it's a matter of the critical mass of women to not have one woman up there with the whole burden of the state on her, if she's the head of the state, that continues to be male dominated and militaristic. But if they can, and I think in some of the Scandinavian countries there is a close to majority of women in their parliaments, and that this is a factor for them not to be not as willing to enter into sort of NATO experiments and NATO adventures spreading not so much war as spreading militaristic viewpoints in the Middle East. The expansion of NATO seems to me very dangerous really and that some of Trump's ideas actually I think are not crazy. I mean the trouble is he has the exact opposite view as well as a reasonable view. And I mean he suggested taking our troops out of South Korea. That seems to me very reasonable but that got immediately sidetracked and ignored. But even just to hear it being proposed was a surprise and was pleasant. Do you have any contact with the Vermont Council on World Affairs? Well I attend some of their events and we sponsored an event together of women coming through town who had been to Russia and had been on a tour of Russia and had interesting things to say that were not sort of what we read in the newspapers but more about how Russians are working together and are supporting peaceful initiatives and many of them are prosperous actually and working as small-time capitalists to build companies and all that. So that was one person that we co-sponsored and I love to attend their events when I can. Do you? Are you a member? Yeah I haven't during the day but they do bring a lot of visitors here. Yes, that's true. Did people hear the name of the group, the Vermont Council on World Affairs? Is Wilf doing anything about Senator Leahy bringing the nuclear F-35s to Burlington? Talk about local. What a good question. The question is about the F-35 airplanes coming to the airport here and oh yes, I mean we have been very involved in that issue as well as along with Save Our Skies Vermont that is against the jet bombers coming here. I think once they get here people will wake up and will say how could we be allowing such an outrageous vehicle to be in our airspace and destructive to our children's hearing especially that school, Chamberlain School which is very close to the airport and the impact on children where you know they take off and you have to not just cover your ears but it distracts children from even what they were thinking of to think that learning can take place in an atmosphere like that. So why are we allowing that to happen? Why are our four leaders, the two senators, our representative Welch and our mayor going along with this? I mean we had a vote during the last election and 55% voted to not bring the airplanes here. The South Burlington and Winooski City Council have also asked that the planes not come here. We are being like so many parts of the world like South Korea who the Koreans are, they've been asking for our troops to leave and the bases to leave and how about Okinawa where a new base is being built against the wishes of the majority of the Okinawan people. We are suffering from this too like a third world country and I think it's, I wish that we could have a more robust opposition. I know some people think Welch's decided there's nothing we can do about it but I think there is a continual effort that we need to wage and that will grow as soon as they arrive and we see how horrible they are. Yeah, working on, yeah. They have a suit against them going on. A suit going on, yeah. Recently an F-35 crashed in North Carolina I think and it was not in a super populated area like if it crashed here. I mean these planes are made of so many different metals and chemicals that the fumes would be highly toxic and, you know, not just from the fumes but for polluting the landscape. So I think they have not done enough testing to really justify placing such a dangerous vehicle in our midst. Yes, apparently. I would guess that more than the pollution the fact that we have to stockpile nuclear weapons here in Burlington is alarming. I don't want to live next to a nuclear stockpile and that is their task. Yeah, I mean the authorities claim that well we don't intend to have the nuclear weapons here but what are they saying when they say that? I mean because you're right, the plane is made to carry nuclear weapons. Does that mean that they will train here using dummies of some sort and then they will fly somewhere and get the nuclear weapons put on the plane and keep going? I don't think that sounds like an efficient military strategy myself but they claim that there won't be nuclear bombs stationed here but on the other hand there's a lot of work going on out there, a lot of building, a lot of concrete being poured and so we don't really know what is happening. Does anyone have an idea of what's happening? There's a chance that the what? There's a possibility that they're going to be storing the nuclear arms in Platsburg. Oh, Platsburg. No, that's not much better but Platsburg actually had wanted this over there. They wanted it. Well, in any case, either way, in terms of us being the target of the enemy, if that's what it comes to, bombing Platsburg or bombing here is pretty devastating for both of us. Peter Welsh was on the radio just before I came to this meeting. Peter Welsh was on being interviewed just before I came to the meeting and the caller called in with the question about it and he is totally sold on it that none of the politicians are changing their mind about anything. I think if we all revolted and voted them out no matter what we're going to get in, who knows? They have no idea what it sounds like. I live in the flight path. I have enough noise from the F-19s. I go in the closet in the bathroom and close the doors and if I'm on the telephone people say to me, what is all that noise? Yeah, yeah. Well, I think you're right. We need to get people who will run against those who support this. In fact, there was talk of trying to get someone to run against Bernie. And there is someone. I don't know who that person is yet but I think there is a person who's taken a position in this election period against the F-35. There was the man who was running for James Ehrler who did not support the F-35. He ran in the primary but he lost. I'd like to ask you what you think the future emphasis of the Me Too movement should be in the coming period. Wow. Well, I think it's to run for office themselves as much as possible and I think many people are. The demonstrations going on in Washington are starting to look like they're taking over the Senate building and the Russell, whatever it's called, building and just occupying it. I would think that that would be making the politicians really think twice. And when they come home to see women as active as they are, have any of you taken part in the marches so far? There was one that came down to the democracy statue on Main Street that was on Saturday. I think there was another one as well. Becoming active is what needs to happen and to run for office yourself. Maybe there are other things. What do you think? Some of them what? I think some of them should be defeated. When you see them march out, the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, and they all seem to be, I mean, not to be critical of age, I'm getting aged myself. But they all look as though they should have retired some time ago and that they're feeling very, they're speaking out in a way that they don't usually speak because they feel profoundly threatened, I think, for the first time. I mean, they're part of the patriarchy and this is challenging the patriarchy and they're sort of looking around and saying, what is happening here? But I think what's happening is going to get bigger and bigger in the next few years. Thank you very, very much.